PENTECOST 2

PENTECOST ROTATION — OVERVIEW

TOPIC/STORY:
The enthusiastic, highly symbolic account of the presence of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost among founders of the early church. Found in the book of The Acts of the Apostles.

DATES:
June Year B

WORKSHOPS & ACTIVITIES:
Arts (parachute people), Music (learn or lead song), Drama (object theatre play), Game (variation of Magic Handshake), Kitchen (festive maple popcorn), Computer (invitation, slideshow with song, Let’s Talk (?)).

SOURCE TEXT:
Acts 2: 1 - 21
READ THIS.

AN INTERESTING VERSE:
Acts 2: 12.
Amazed and confused, they kept asking each other, ”What does this mean?” (Good News Bible)
AFTER STORYTIME IN CHURCH, ALL AGE GROUPS WILL START TOGETHER FOR GATHERING TIME. THEN LEADERS WILL LEAVE WITH SCHEDULED GROUP FOR THEIR WORKSHOPS.

BACKGROUND NOTES (& OTHER NEAT INFO):

Who wrote this?
The book of Acts is generally thought to share narrative traits with the gospel of Luke.

Pentecost is:
the day that falls fifty days after Passover. Pentecost means ‘50th’ in Greek. Lots of people and travellers in town for related harvest festival.

Many voices.
Because this narrative romps with such delight through a list of nations and languages of the time, it has a highly inclusive, personalized feel to it.

Continuity.
In Peter’s speech to the assembly of the amazed and confused, he cites well-known lines from the prophet Joel:
“In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.” (Acts 2: 17, New Revised Standard Version.)

Key images in this story:
powerful wind, tongues of flame, words spoken in many languages.

IN THE ARTS

INTERESTING VISUALS

Clearly our painters have had a lot of fun with this story, trying to depict how flames would have been seen.

I quite like this one by Titian

And this from the Jesus Mafa collection

And this by Soichi Watanabe

Terrific poetry.
The Pentecost writer has built this story on some strong figurative precedents. It contains direct echoes, perhaps even an inversion, of the much older Tower of Babel story. The fire and air highlighted in the Pentecost story constitute two of the four main elements, along with earth and water, believed in ancient and medieval times to compose the physical universe.

These components of the figurative tradition continue to speak strongly to modern and contemporary poets. Take a look, for instance, at the stunning closing verse T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, ‘Little Gidding, ’ first published in England in 1942. He wrote with very immediate wartime experiences in mind, such as rockets falling on London and a program for separating the city’s children from their parents, apparently for their own good. (There’s an excellent book by Ben Wicks on this WWII evacuation program called, ‘The day they took the children’.) Many people of Eliot’s generation found themselves giving serious thought to what was quintessentially important.
Look up this poem here , and read the fairly well-known closing section that begins, ‘We shall not cease from exploration...’ See how many metaphorical figures it shares with the Pentecost story.

(I found a neat article that makes some nice connections between the actual church of Little Gidding, this poem and Pentecost. Click here for this UK Guardian article.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Name some ways our church speaks in different ways about God. (Sunday school, special worship events like Scout/Guide Sunday, music and the children’s chorus, newsletters and webpage.)
2. Name specific ways we as individuals can speak about God to others. (Thank you notes, cards and phone calls, neighbourly gestures, just by sharing your youthful presence at church and joining us in Sunday school.)
3. Attempt to answer a variation of the question in the ‘interesting verse’ noted in the overview: What does the story mean to you?

*********WORKSHOPS************

IN REAL TIME WITH THE CHILDREN IN YOUR WORKSHOPS COVER THESE TWO POINTS:
1. REVIEW THE STORY WITH THE CHILDREN. HAVE THEM SUMMARIZE TO DEMONSTRATE TO ALL HOW MUCH MORE THEY REMEMBER FROM PAST WEEKS.

2. EXPLAIN HOW YOUR ACTIVITY CONNECTS TO THE STORY.

...........................................

ARTS -- PARACHUTE PEOPLE
ACTIVITY: MAKE LITTLE PEOPLE WHO ARE LIFTED UP BY THE HOLY SPIRIT AND LAND IN NEW AND DIFFERENT PLACES TO SHARE THE GOOD NEWS.

MATERIAL:
plastic grocery bag, 6 - 8 lengths of string, about 45cm long, pipe cleaners, pennies for weight, scissors, tape.

DIRECTIONS:
Cut a circle about 12 inches in diameter from the groc bag. (One bag should make 2 circles.) Make 6 – 8 holes evenly spaced around the edge of the circle. Tie string thru each of the holes. Make people from pipe cleaners. (Use 1 full length, and a 2nd cut down to 2/3. Bend long pc in half. About 1/3 way down from the bend, wind the shorter pc around body for arms. Bend up tips for hands and feet.) Gather strings from parachute and tie around mid-section of body.

To launch your person, crumple chute and person into ball in your hand, and throw. If person needs more weight, tape a penny or 2 around middle.

KITCHEN – FESTIVE MAPLE POPCORN
ACTIVITY: Make Festive Maple Pentekost Popkorn Klumps! Popping the corn can lead to discussion about transformative power of Holy Spirit (heat/fire make the popcorn pop; kernel start as hard bits, and end up as soft edible things). Make a treat from the popcorn to set out as a Pentecost, Happy Birthday, special occasion treat. Invite the congregation to share.

INGREDIENTS:
2 tbsp maple syrup, 2 tbsp maple flavoring, 4 tbsp granulated sugar, 1/4 tsp salt, optional, 4 tbsp popcorn, 4 tbsp oil, 4 tbsp granulated sugar

DIRECTIONS (MICROWAVE):
Measure and mix the maple syrup, maple flavoring, sugar and salt in a small bowl. Heat 60 secs on HI in the microwave. Stop and stir the mixture several times.

Pop popcorn according to instructions. (No butter microwave will work. Hot air popper would be fun to let kids see popping action.) Place popcorn in large serving bowl, throwing out kernels.

Pour maple mix over popcorn, and stir through. Serve, share and celebrate.

MUSIC – PENTECOST SONG.
ACTIVITY: Teach and learn a Pentecost song. (To go with Computer lab slideshow).
This song comes out of Pentecost 1, and was developed for younger children to work with in the poetry writing lab. I like how this turned out so well, that I think we should make use of it.
It goes to the tune of Polly Put the Kettle On. This may sound a bit juvenile, but the song comes off well on guitar, for instance, with fills and varies strumming styles.

Have the kids practice this song to guitar or piano accompaniment. Can be done a cappella as well.

You can take this into the computer lab at the end of your session, or in a following week to record thru a simple audio recording program, many available for free on the internet. You will later run this song with the children’s voices under the slideshow you will develop in the computer lab.

Or you can offer to teach this song in worship, perhaps during the children’s story portion of your service.

Here are the lyrics:

Pentecost Song
(to the tune of ‘Polly put the kettle on.’)

They were gathered in one place
They were gathered in one place
They were gathered in one place
On the day of Pentecost

A blustery breeze went through the house
A blustery breeze went through the house
A blustery breeze went through the house
What could it mean?

There was something more than candlelight
Something more than candlelight
There was something more than candlelight
What could it mean?

They heard many different languages
many different languages, they heard
many different languages
What could it mean?

The love of God is in this place
the love of God is in this place
the love of God is in this place
That’s what it means!

DRAMA – OBJECT THEATRE PLAY
ACTIVITY: Have kids act out this play using simple kitchen and cleaning utensils to reinforce plot points of this story.
MATERIAL: script, kitchen and cleaning tools (can be picked up cheap at recycling depot).
This idea is posted on Rotation.ca and Rotation.org, but hasn’t been written into this curriculum to date. Here it is.
Click here for the script for 'The Muffin tin & the Good Baker,' posted on this site.

GAME – MAGIC HANDSHAKE
ACTIVITY: Playing this simple game will help the kids remember that the point of the story is to find the flame and pass it on!
HOW TO PLAY:
One (or more people) are ‘firestarters’ and carry the flame. Players go around the room and take turns shaking hands. Those with flame give extra squeeze, as in secret handshake. This transfers the flame to the new player. Keep playing until it becomes apparent that everyone now carries the flame!

COMPUTER LAB – SLIDESHOW + OTHER IDEAS
ACTIVITIES:
• create slideshow using pictures of events in your church family over past year (it’s a celebration, after all). Select pictures from disk. Load into a slideslow program. Tape the song from the music unit. If already done, run this song under your slideshow. If you copy this to a disk, you can play the slideshow at your Pentecost Party. Or if someone has a laptop, you could set up the laptop in your church hall and play the slideshow on it there.

• make invitations inviting people to your Pentecost Popcorn Party. Make these using a simple card maker program.

• test out this idea, using the ‘Let Talk’ program from Sunday Software. In his latest missives, Neil has been all tripped out about sound levels in computer labs. In this case, noise is the object of the exercise! In Talk Now mode, choose a different character at each machine to read the source text. Run all speakers at the same time. Will create one interpretation of the idea of ‘many tongues’ that goes with this story. (This might also work for 2-3 machines in KidPix.)

• you could view the ‘Herod’ tour of Pathways thru Jerusalem to give the children a feel for what the city would have been like in the time of the Romans. Speculate on what you think the scene may have been like after getting more info from this cd.