Every few years my home congregation relies on the Sunday school kids to lead the Vigil of Easter liturgy (known as Holy Saturday to many). Traditionally, the liturgy consists of twelve scripture readings from the Old Testament that reveal the saving work of God leading, ultimately, to the proclamation of Jesus' resurrection as told in John's Gospel. Twelve Old Testament texts read, no, enacted (!) for/by us as we hear again of God's promises and steadfast love. We are talking about some of the classics, too. Long, meaty, and marvelous stories like the rhythmic story of creation in Genesis 1, Noah, his family, and the flood (parts of Genesis 7, 8 & 9), Ezekiel 37 and the rattling valley of dry bones, and the ever-popular Jonah and the day he gave that big fish indigestion.
For weeks leading up to Holy Week and the Vigil, the Sunday school kids of Edina Community Lutheran Church rehearse these texts. That is, each grade is assigned one of the stories that they will collectively share with the whole congregation on that night of nights when Easter light breaks the doom of Good Friday. It is a raucous several weeks as the kids learn, challenge, create, question, color, memorize, visualize, and rehearse these texts together Sunday after Sunday. All the classrooms are buzzing.
And then the big day comes! The kids become the story tellers of scripture as they perform these texts for the entire congregation. The assembly moves in small groups from room to room as scripture comes alive for them, and God's word is preached. In 2017, the Sunday school class of 2nd graders that I co-taught had Exodus 14 and the parting of the Red Sea. It was fabulous! These preacher-kids created a set rife with sea creatures on wall, costumes with swords and tambourines and beards, and two 13-foot bolts of blue fabric that served as the Red Sea.
The script was enacted and the story told as the adults and youngest ones of the congregation were invited into the story playing the part of the Israelites. And at the appropriate time, Moses parted the Red Sea (the bolts of fabric opened up), and Miriam and Moses led the people to freedom. Of course, in dramatic fashion the sea swallowed up the sword-swinging Pharaoh and his army as three 2nd-grade boys offered up a convincing death scene despite a few giggles. And at the end, Pharell Williams' song, "Happy" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6Sxv-sUYtM) was played as we all danced along with Miriam! A perfect ending to this story of God's liberating activity for God's people! We performed the text 6 times for 6 different groups in the span of 25 minutes.
I learned so much about that Exodus story through the kids for those several weeks of reading, creating, and rehearsing! At the time I didn't know it, but the Sunday school kids were teaching me what a repertory church looks like!
"Repertory church" is a term coined by Rev. Dr. Anna Carter Florence in her recently released book (July 11, 2018), Rehearsing Scripture: Discovering God's Word in Community. Florence believes that church ought to be like a theater repertory company, a band of actors who perform together regularly. In her view, the church is called to do the same, except our script isn't Shakespeare's "Macbeth" (though that's fun too!), it is scripture--God's word for God's people. The repertory church gathers to pay attention to scripture, much like actors pay attention to a script, and experiment together with voice and action, and rehearse over and over until--together--we discover something true.
How shall I say this? Florence's book is amazing. Amazing! I wrote a 5-star Amazon review for it (printed below) because I believe her proposal for the church to embrace a repertory approach to the Bible will breathe new life into God's church. She provides examples, guiding questions, and tools to take into the our communal experience of scripture so that we can encounter the living, acting, moving Word of God. Florence asks the question: "Could the repertory church be a place where we turn our silent reading into speaking and performing and living the text--out in the world? (85)" She answers her own question in this book with a resounding "Yes!"
One of my favorite parts of Florence's book is her use of Maurice Sendak's children's book, Where the Wild Things Are. She wrote,
"Maurice Sendak may not have realized he was writing the perfect description of our biblical interpretative task when he wrote his classic children's book, Where the Wild Things Are, but he was. Maybe, every time we open our Bibles, we should open our mouths too, with a collective shout, 'Let the wild rumpus start!' (7)"
As a father who has read this book to his three kids a zillion times, I love this interpretative lens for exploring God's word. We are called, as Florence says, to put on our wolf suits, to make mischief of one kind or another with scripture, to holler and dance and parade around with the text together, and to discover something true for our lives and for the world. I think that's precisely what the Sunday school kids accomplished together for our congregation during the Vigil of Easter at Edina Community Lutheran. They have showed us how to be the repertory church! It was a wild rumpus that revealed to me and to our whole congregation the truth of God's liberating word that leads us from death into life!
I am excited to take Florence's book and allow her to guide me and my communities of faith to be members of a repertory church! I think her book will do the same for you.
Check out Florence's book here: https://www.amazon.com/Rehearsing-Scripture-Discovering-Gods-Community/dp/0802874126/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1533751640&sr=8-1&keywords=anna+carter+florence
And here's my Amazon review:
In Rehearsing Scripture, Anna Carter Florence seeks to fulfill what the Protestant Reformation began some 500 years ago: to put scripture into the hands and hearts of all God’s people. In her book, Florence gives us the permission and the tools to approach the Bible together—communally—with humility, humor, and a hankering for the something that is true. She calls our attention to nouns and adjectives in the text, but most importantly to the verbs: the speaking and acting of God and God’s people. With guidelines and questions, examples and stories, insight and wit, Florence empowers us to discover how to rehearse scripture together so that it may be realized in our communities of faith. Frankly, this book is a game-changer in how we experience the word of God. Take this book, use it as your wild-ride ticket, and let Florence show your church staff, your Bible study, your youth group, your congregational small group, your Sunday school class, your whole faith community how to “jump in and hang on to the text and one another” in order to see something true and “to speak a truth for the world.”