It's Over

Overwhelmingly, that's how I feel about this morning.
It's over! Whew!
I occasionally preach without a full manuscript but rarely preach with nothing written down. When that happens, I at least have thought through (obsessively) about how the sermon will go -- ie, what I'll start with and how it will end, hoping that the Holy Spirit gets me through the middle.
My creative edge came today through having people in the congregation volunteer to read summaries of scripture verses about the resurrection. I talked (preached?) a bit in between the readings and when all was said and done I had taped the pieces of paper together to form the image of a person -- emphasizing the humanity of Christ and the fleshy-ness from today's Gospel.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
There were some things that I could have done better -- had tape already rolled and lined up, pre-selected the readers, actually thought about what I was going to say... but, before I watch the tape and nit-pick the work of the Spirit to pieces, let me share two things that I thought were pretty cool:
1. People laughed and actually were involved
2. It wasn't just adults who volunteered to read -- high schoolers, elementary schoolers and middle schoolers all read -- with no prompting from me. To hear the second grader read in front of the whole congregation absolutely melted my heart.
Who knows what I'll hear, if anything, from folks in the coming week, but for now I'm just glad it's over!