This past Sunday, Liberty Church celebrated its third Easter weekend. Easter is one of our most memorable times together each year as well as a hallmark of growth and transformed lives in our communities. Our Easter celebration this year was preceded by weeks of planning from our teams and anticipation from creative artists in our church who contributed their passions through dance, music, painting, acting, film, graphic design, set design, and more.
Liberty’s Creative Team, led by Chad and Shawna Kaszer, wanted to elevate the impactful story of the death and resurrection of Jesus by directing a collaboration of different creative forms. Shawna says, “The focus was on THE moment of death to life and the eternal shift that moment caused.” During the choreographed song, “Forever,” cued lighting transitions transformed the stage from the red wash of death to the bright white dawn of new life. An eight-foot cross that had been fitted with intense white light bulbs suddenly electrified the whole room. The cross, erected by our team of handymen, had also been used to light up a Manhattan street in the video (below) in which Ito Aghayere performed a spoken word.
I had the privilege of writing the poem, “He Breathes,” with Enid Bozic. Enid’s passion for worshiping God through the arts began in 2008, while grading papers for her British Literature class. “I saw a vision of a grand theatric, musical dance piece with a backdrop that took my breath away. I asked God what it was and He told me to awaken and release His visual performers when I move to New York.”
Enid began leading a community group last year that focused on “prophetic art,” in which the group invited the Holy Spirit to inspire them to create visual works of art. She explains that prophetic art is “relying on the Holy Spirit for every brushstroke so that the artist is not in control of the image that is to come but rather is surprised by God in the process.”
Hannah Eckart joined the prophetic art group because she liked the idea of worshiping God through visual arts. “During one of our first group meetings, Enid told us to ask the Holy Spirit what to paint and I kept envisioning a flowering tree jutting out of a waterfall. I painted the image and realized that another artist at the other end of the table had painted the exact same thing! God was affirming our ability to hear from the Holy Spirit and used this image to establish a supernatural unity in our group that we would not have had otherwise.” Hannah has grown as an artist by performing live painting during worship services. She and five-year-old Finley Andrew painted side by side at the Good Friday service. “By learning how to invite the Holy Spirit to use my art prophetically, my art holds a deeper meaning for people, which is immensely fulfilling for any artist!”
The group dynamic of including different artists and media in Liberty’s worship services not only drives the creative inspiration of our artists but enhances the experience of worship for the community. Hannah believes that “the body of Christ is a reflection of the multidimensional nature of God. Some of the most edifying corporate worship is done when each member of the body freely exercises the gifts that God has given them. When dancers begin dancing, singers begin singing, and painters begin painting, different aspects of God are glorified, inviting the Holy Spirit to move more freely among us.”
In this spirit of collaboration, the pastoral staff, worship and creative team leads envisioned an Easter celebration that would add sensory layers to the story of Jesus’ resurrection by incorporating multiple simultaneous expressions of worship. When Shawna Kaszer reached out to Enid and me to write a poem together for the Easter services, her vision was all about collaboration: “I think art is so much more dimensional when God uses more than one person to breathe ideas into.”
Enid and I were excited for the opportunity to write together because of our friendship, but were immensely challenged by how our separate voices would blend together. There is also an overwhelming range of images, perspectives, emotions, and substance surrounding Easter and how it has been memorialized over the centuries. We prayed for inspiration and cohesion and decided to separately write poetry that we could weave together into one poem.
At first the two poems didn’t magically congeal. Enid wrote from the perspective of Jesus feeling light and breath return to his lifeless body. I wrote as an observer outside the tomb, discovering the strangeness and jerkiness of moving from death to life and from despair to hope, discovering a pulse in a grave. She was led to write in sparse, powerful punches and I wrote long, unpunctuated trails. In the end, we offered up each of our poems, eager to harmonize and see our words transform into a message that allowed God to speak into people’s hearts.
I loved celebrating Easter weekend with my church and watching all these ideas come to life. It seemed effortlessly appropriate, even obvious, that the church provided the space for a creative explosion of all kinds of inspired art and devotion from all of the volunteers. Lead Pastor Andi Andrew marveled on her blog that the vision that prompted them to plant Liberty Church was so much larger than they had imagined, “Within our dream, were the dreams of countless others coming into fulfillment. I sit in front row seats to a breathtakingly beautiful avalanche of love spilling out into the city that my heart loves…Poets, dancers, artists, worshipers, videographers, sound engineers, lighting technicians, hosts, song writers, guest team leads, events teams, children’s leaders—People that love Jesus, and love His house with a fierce passion, and overwhelming personal sacrifice to open the doors to all and say: “Welcome to the family. Welcome home. We’ve been waiting for you.”
In this unprecedented year at Liberty, I believe the creative arts are speeding ahead to convey something completely unexpected that God wants to do in New York and beyond, the joy unspeakable he wants us all to experience firsthand, and our extreme pleasure to glorify God through everything we create.
By Emily Kirkendoll
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“He Breathes”
Dark bliss, suspense,
Victory: a smile on his lips;
Weightlessness, until, unless,
His Father’s voice, thunders:
Arise!
A tiny glimmer
Light, like the burning sun,
Grows brighter;
Caught, in its invisible pull
He breathes (gasp).
He breathes!
Our Father’s life source
Filling every lung, limb, organ,
Returning to the shell—
A form to testify, for our sake:
We have a pulse!
The earth convulsed
And the Life came back to life
In the darkness, in the cave,
Faintly heard, gaining force.
Rocks move out of the way,
The light of the world spills out,
Rumors spread overhead—
Birds, trees, the swirling air, practicing:
“Ashes to ashes to life. Dust to dust to LIFE.”
Afraid, yet full of joy,
Worshipping, and full of doubt.
We hear the angel in lightning announcing resurrection:
The Way has been made,
The Word must be made known
To those who race to the tomb
But are slow to react, slow to believe,
Because this news supersedes
Everything they have read,
Because this is the living among the dead.
He breathes!
And we have a pulse.
A drumbeat, loud in our ears
Spreading through the arteries of our planet
As transformed lives change course
Because there is forgiveness of sin,
The shed blood of Jesus in continual flow—
Forgiven, forgiven, forgiven, forgiven—
The power to move past our human errors
And draw nearer to our ideal,
Our perfect Savior.
We have a pulse!
The earth convulsed and the Life came back to life.
In the darkest cave it is faintly heard gaining force.
Rocks moved out of the way
And the honey light spilled out across the pebbled path.
Rumors spread overhead among the gossip birds and the whispering trees
And the swirling air practicing a foreign language:
“Ashes to ashes to life. Dust to dust to life.”
And oh, there is an angel resting on a gravestone
Wearing nothing but lightning,
Mentioning Jesus crucified as a casual fact
And not the tragic ending we still feel bitterly.
We will have to get used to this alternating current,
And learn its rhythm:
Hope in the face of death:
Pitiful, impotent death.
Afraid, yet full of joy,
Worshipping, and full of doubt.
we have the privilege of articulating
That the Way has been made
To people who sprint to the tomb
But are slow to react, slow to believe,
Because this news supersedes everything they have read,
Because all these tombs are filled with bones dusting off,
Because this is the living among the dead.
And we have a pulse.
It is a drumbeat loud in our ears
Spreading through the veins and arteries of our planet
As each transformed life changes its course
Because there is forgiveness of sins,
The shed blood of Jesus in continual flow—
Forgiven, forgiven, forgiven—
Renewing and renaming thirsty souls—
Forgiven, forgiven, forgiven—
And supplying the ability to move past our human errors
And draw nearer to our ideal,
Our perfect Savior.
Dark bliss
Victory, like honey on my lips
Weightlessness
My Father’s voice, thunders:
Arise
A tiny glimmer
Light, like the rising sun
Grows brighter
Caught, in its magnetic pull
Breathe (gasp)
Breathe
My Father’s life source
Filling every lung, limb, organ
Returning to the shell
A form to testify, for their sake
And so I begin
Angels, remove the stone
Death, where is your sting?
My life given, a ransom for all
Behold, the keys to eternity
In my hands
I’m coming
I’m coming for my own
Brief, then no more
Until I return, on clouds
Holy Spirit, I leave you with
Spoken Word: “He Breathes” from LibertyChurchNYC on Vimeo.
