Eye of the Beholder Project

On Sunday, April 14th, we began a project we’re calling Eye of the Beholder.  The basic idea of the project is that all of us have interesting perspectives worth hearing or seeing on

any given Sunday morning experience.  In the interest of broadening the conversation we’d like to hear or see your “take” on the worship service.  I tried to suggest in my sermon that perhaps the story of Jesus appearing to the disciples was a story designed by the early Christians to restate the main theme for them of resurrection — which is that death not only will not have the last word, but that the troubles and fears of life, the great difficulties we face today, are not solved by any kind of spiritual avoidance of the issues, but by face-to-face, I-Thou encounters.
An ’empirical Jesus’, to borrow a phrase from our second reading, which is a Jesus so desperately held up by some as the one unique individual who literally rose from the dead, only leads to trouble — only makes face-to-face encounters with other Jesus’, even one’s who are so different from us — impossible and makes realizing the goal of true religion impossible.  I named that goal as the point of the text: “We’re all in this together.”
What do you think? How might you depict such a life? Or perhaps you want to make the case that something else is more important in these readings. Using whatever artistic medium you find yourself drawn to, we invite you to create a work of art that we will display in the sanctuary for our last Sunday in June (and leave on display for a month or so).  We’ll spend out time on June 30th in worship absorbing that art, revisiting the this great story Saint Thomas and Jesus.
Below are links to a recording of the worship service and to the bulletin which includes all of the texts and readings.
Bulletin
Audio Recording
Video Recording
Have fun!
We hope to gather the art projects together for the end of June.  If you’re participating in this project, please let us know at the church.  It’ll help us plan.