Interactive Prayer Stations on Cleansing the Temple & Epiphany (John 2)

Jesus cleansing the temple is usually told during Lent. However, I’ve been going through the gospel of John at the beginning of Epiphany starting with Jesus calling the disciples. So the prayer stations are a combination of John 1 when Jesus calls Nathanael, John 2 when Jesus cleanses the temple, and the season of Epiphany.

Also, I’ve sprinkled in opportunities for worshippers to reflect on ways that they want to intentionally participate in the St. John’s community regarding their personal faith growth.

Interactive Prayer Station #1: fig tree epiphanies

Materials: tall glass vase, long sticks, paper stars, fishing line, beads, pencils, star words

Nathanael was skeptical of Jesus, but something about Jesus seeing him under the fig tree transformed his skepticism to believing. We are not privy to what about Jesus seeing him changed Nathanael, but epiphanies have a mysterious way of transforming people.

I used the star pattern on this blog site and folded them up to resemble figs. I used a tall vase and branches to make a simple tree to hang the “figs.” We had done this in the previous worship services so this station is just adding more “figs” to the tree. You can read more about star words and a list of words here.

The star pattern will look like this:

The fig tree looked like this: