The Artistic Journey of Creating Holy Week Banners & Altar Cloth - by JoAnn McNeely

Several months ago, I was asked to make some new banners that could be used during Holy Week. I normally start the process of making banners with some brainstorming. I look at the colors used during that liturgical season and then research any symbols that might be associated with it. Then I begin to sketch ideas. 

This time the process was a bit different. I started by considering the color. Though at Savior we begin Holy Week in purple, we soon switch to red, as red is the appropriate color to use

This next step is where everything changed! Before I even began to think about images or to brainstorm, a fully formed design came to mind. I was given a design complete with color that symbolically depicted Jesus’ crucifixion on Calvary. The image was of three crosses. The middle panel of the banners had a larger cross representing Jesus on the cross and the two side panels had crosses representing where the two thieves hung. The side panel crosses were smaller in scale, only showing the outside crossbars. I was amazed and grateful to receive this image that was simple but so suited to Passion week.

This image is a simplified depiction of the Holy Week banners, showing the three panels with crosses.

The Baptismal Font cloth follows the focus on the crucifixion. The image on the cloth is called a “staurogram”. It is an ancient symbol used by early Christians when writing about the crucifixion or cross of Christ. The staurogram, a combination of the Greek letters tau and rho, looks like a human figure hanging on a cross.  The symbol was used in many of the oldest manuscripts of the New Testament where the noun “cross” or the verb “crucify” ought to appear.

The image on the cloth is created out of beads to symbolize the light of Christ – “a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel” Luke 2:32

Much more can be said about the “staurogram” symbol. For those that would like to dive deeper, here are two reference articles to explore - The First Image of Christ on the Cross and The Staurogram.

This photograph is a real image of the Baptismal Cloth. Look at the beautiful handcrafted beading that displays the Staurogram cross image!

Meet Savior's Newest Vestry Members

At Savior’s annual meeting last week, the congregation voted to elect Ellen Hsu, Erika Olsen, and Nadine Rorem to the Vestry. Get to know these new Vestry members — and learn a little bit more about the Vestry! — below:

Ellen Hsu: Ellen serves on the Prayer and Communion Ministry Team and as a Scripture reader; her gifts include administration and leadership. She is senior rights and contracts manager at IVP. She has attended Church of the Savior since 2005 with her husband (Al) and sons ( Josiah and Elijah).

Erika Olsen: Erika serves on the Welcome Team and with VBS. She has gifts in mercy, hospitality, shepherding and leadership, which give her a heart to see the church care for people and the community well; she has a particular passion for building relationships in cross-cultural contexts. Erika is a stay-at-home mom and works part-time for Peoples Resource Center as the Food Pantry Coordinator for a school based food pantry. Erika lives in West Chicago with her husband Andy with their three children.

Nadine Rorem: Nadine currently serves at Savior as a Prayer and Communion minister, and she has gifts of hospitality, prayer and discernment; she is also a spiritual director. Nadine works at Wheaton College as a professor in the Biology Department enjoying the beauty and wonder of God’s amazing creation. She has a passion for cultivating spiritual growth in those with whom she interacts.

In addition to these new members, we thank Al Hsu, Janis Hultgren, Steve McNeely, and Deb Nickerson — the Vestry members rotating off this year — for their service to Savior.

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Ever wonder about what the vestry is? The following questions and answers should give you a better sense of how the Vestry serves the congregation here at Savior.

What exactly is the Vestry and what does it do?

The vestry is the governing board of our church. It has two main functions: first, it oversees the finances and property of the church; the Vestry are the legal representatives of Church of the Savior. Second, it provides big-picture discernment and direction. As a group, we try to discern what God is doing in our midst and walk in step with that (Exodus 13:21).

Why does it have such a funny name?

In English churches, hundreds of years ago, the best place for a church’s leaders to meet was in the “vestry,” the room where clergy put on their vestments before services. The group took on the name of the place, much as we say, “The White House,” (a place) to mean the leaders who work there.

Who is on our Vestry and who leads it?

From 5 to 15 members, elected by the church, who serve 3-year terms. The Vestry also includes the Rector (Kevin), Associate Rector (non-voting, Karen), and Senior Deacon (Sandy Oyler). The Rector and Wardens lead the vestry. The Rector leads the meetings; the Senior Warden reviews and helps shape the agenda; and the Junior Warden oversees bylaws revisions.

The Presentation of Our Lord

This year at Savior, we are going to observe the Presentation of Our Lord on February 1st. This is not a new feast by any means, but not one Savior has typically marked. So what is this feast, and why observe it?

The Presentation of Our Lord is best understood in the whole context of the liturgical season of Epiphany. In the liturgical calendar, the weeks between the Feast of the Epiphany (on January 6th) and the beginning of Lent make up a short interlude between the major fast/feast cycles of Advent and Christmas, then Lent and Easter. This season of Epiphany (or Epiphanytide) is celebrated in various ways:

• In some churches, Epiphanytide runs from the Feast of the Epiphany to the Presentation of Our Lord (February 2nd), and is marked by white or gold vestments, altar cloths, etc. These four weeks of Epiphany are then followed by Ordinary Time until the beginning of Lent.

• In others, Epiphanytide runs from Epiphany until the start of Lent — a date which varies, so the season can be as short as four weeks or as long as nine weeks (this year, we have a moderate seven weeks). Some churches use gold to mark this season.

• And in yet others, this is a secondary season of Ordinary Time. The "ordinary" comes from the way that weeks are counted in ordinal numbers from the last major feast — Second week after Epiphany, etc. — but also indicates that this is a season between the major fasts and feasts. This is typically how Savior has observed the season of Epiphany.

The difference between this season of Epiphany and the longer season of Ordinary Time after Pentecost is that these weeks focus on events in the life of Jesus that remind us of how Jesus revealed (and continues to reveal) himself to the world.

The Feast of the Epiphany is followed by the Baptism of Our Lord, then the Presentation of Our Lord; the final week before Lent begins, we commemorate the Transfiguration. In between these celebrations, the Gospel readings for each week walk us through the miracles and teachings of Jesus during his time on earth. These two celebrations commemorate how Jesus revealed himself as king to non-Jewish people living in a far-off land (the Magi) and how God revealed Jesus as his Son at his baptism.

Similarly, the Feast of the Presentation commemorates the day 40 days after the birth of Jesus (technically February 2) when Mary and Joseph brought the infant Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem and encountered Simeon and the prophet Anna. These two faithful servants of God recognized Jesus as the Messiah, the one who would redeem Jerusalem. As with the Magi and as at Jesus' baptism and transfiguration, this is another moment when God miraculously reveals Jesus as Messiah.

And so this year, we at Savior are going to celebrate the Presentation, reminding ourselves yet again that God is revealed in the person of Jesus, and that Jesus is God made incarnate in order to bring about our salvation. Our gospel reading will be Luke 2:22-40, which tells the story of Simeon and Anna encountering the infant Jesus. We also will have a short "presentation": we invite children and youth to bring back the baby Jesus they found in the Epiphany rosca, and they will process these babies into the sanctuary at the offertory.

This short procession gives us the chance to engage the story with both our minds and our other senses, entering into this particular revelation of Jesus as Messiah in a new way. We hope that through our celebration, the entire congregation — children, youth and adults — will be drawn into the wonder of the story of Jesus and, along with Simeon, rejoice that we have seen our salvation.

Image credit: Presentation of Jesus at the Temple in cloisonné enamel from Georgia, 12th century.

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Sarah Lindsay currently works as the Director of Communications and Coordinator of Family Ministries at Savior, as well as serving as the College Ministry Resident. Sarah has a background in teaching (English literature and writing) and she enjoys reading and writing. She has been an Anglican since she discovered liturgical worship in college; she and her family joined Savior in 2017.

Fr. Kevin's Top Sermons of 2019

It’s January, which means it’s time for best-of-2019 lists. Here are Fr. Kevin’s favorite sermons from the last year:

Each year, I look back on my sermons – this year, there were 34 – and pick out 3 I think worthy of a second listen (or a first, if you missed that particular week). So here are my utterly partial picks:

• “Christ the Disappointer:” when John the Baptist is disappointed by what Jesus isn’t doing (something we all experience), I love how Jesus responds to him – with a blessing 

• “Two Seemingly Incompatible Principles for Our Money:” Sermons often emphasize giving and leave out earning, saving, etc. I tried to zoom out to see the Bible’s bigger picture for how we handle (God’s) money

• “I Did the Job No One Wants (by Joseph of Arimathea):” a first-person sermon takes much research, writing, and memorizing, but all that took me deeply into Jesus’ final hours and death

 And one honorable mention: “Jesus Teaches: Don’t Criticize Others. No Kidding.”

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Kevin Miller was editor and vice-president at Christianity Today for 26 years and then associate rector at Church of the Resurrection for 5 years. He has been the rector at Savior since January 2017, and is also the co-founder of PreachingToday.com and CTPastors.com.

Longing for the Dawn: An Advent Meditation

Today’s post comes from Savior member Christine Kindberg; she writes about how Advent connects to the longing we so often feel in many aspects of our lives.

Longing is one of the central themes of Advent—and, as it happens, something I was just talking about with my spiritual director.

Longing, anticipation, preparation. “Come, thou long expected Jesus… joy of every longing heart,” says the hymn. Israel longed for the Messiah to come; we Christians now long for Christ to come again and bring about the fullness of his Kingdom. We lean into the “already—not yet” of the Gospel.

As a 4 on the Enneagram, longing is a constitutionally familiar emotion for me. I usually experience it as an “if only…” melancholy, a fixation on what is just out of reach, a permanent posture of yearning for something I don’t have. I’m a single 31-year-old who longs to be married. I’m a writer who for years longed to have a book out in the world; now that my first novel is out, I long for it to be doing better, for it to open more doors for my second book and the ones after that. There’s a longing that is a restless hunger for more, always more, because whatever is out of reach is the thing that will prove that I am worthwhile. I have a hunch Advent is about a different kind of longing.

When I think about longing in the Bible, two verses come immediately to mind. One is Psalm 42:1, which the NLT renders, “As the deer longs for streams of water, so I long for you, O God.”

When I read this a few weeks ago, I was struck by the thought that a deer’s longing for water is a survival instinct, a spur to action. A deer’s longing isn’t nostalgic melancholy or thoughts of “Wouldn’t it be nice if only…” If a deer is thirsty, it doesn’t sigh over its longing. It moves to seek out water.

In Advent we dwell on our longing for the Kingdom of God to come in its fullness. We long for the justice of the Kingdom, for the righting of wrongs, for the new heaven and the new earth. This longing isn’t futile, wishful thinking for something permanently out of reach. This thirst for the coming of the Kingdom should inspire action, like a deer on a mountainside turns its head toward a stream and picks out a path forward to quench its thirst.

In what might God be calling me to be active in my longing for his Kingdom this Advent?

The other verse that I think of in connection with longing is Psalm 130:6, “I long for the Lord more than sentries long for the dawn, yes, more than sentries long for the dawn.”

This longing is different: there’s nothing that a sentry can do to make the sun rise any sooner. Does that mean the longing is futile? Will the Lord be always beyond the horizon? The sentries cling to their faith that the dawn will come at some point…but meanwhile, there’s the night. Meanwhile, our world is full of injustice, cruelty, hate, mistrust, and division.

And yet, sentries on duty aren’t supposed to be waiting listlessly, sitting around “with their teeth in their mouth,” as my grandmother from Kentucky would say. The longing of a sentry isn’t wistfulness because of boredom. Sentries need to be active in their waiting: alert, scanning their surroundings with close attention even as they long for the safety of the dawn and release from their post.

What might God be calling me to pay more attention to this Advent?

If the sentries were to give up on the coming of the dawn, they wouldn’t be able to continue their mission. If a deer were to surrender to its thirst instead of moving toward the water it longs for, it would die. Maybe the longing of Advent is part of the survival instinct of the Christian life, to keep us from being too easily satisfied with small goods. Maybe the longing of Advent is a posture of yearning that points us in the right direction, seeking God’s presence among us—as it is, already here, and as it will come in greater fullness.

May this Advent season see us seeking more of God’s presence as we long for the fulfillment of his Kingdom and his justice. May the yearning of our hearts be awakened until we can only find rest in God.