“A Funny Thing Happened

On the Way to the 21^st Century...”

Luke 13:31-35

It was a true mystery!

The members of Blessed Redeemer Lutheran Church couldn’t figure out what was going on! Something was very wrong – or actually, very right! Maybe “unusual” would be a better way to say it.

You see, the kids at Blessed Redeemer actually wanted their parents to bring them to Sunday School! Even on Sundays when mom and dad wanted to sleep in, the kids were waking them up and sometimes even begging! “We WANT to go to Sunday School!”

Now this was just not normal! I mean, you know how kids are!

And to add to the Sunday School mystery at Blessed Redeemer Lutheran Church, it came out that the children were all clamoring to attend the class taught by Mrs. Gladys Olson, a shy 80-year old widow who’d never even had children of her own. This puzzled everyone, including the pastoral staff. Mrs. Gladys Olson was just not the sort of personality you’d think kids would be drawn to. And not only that, but the other Sunday School classes were state-of-the-art, educational-consultant-designed experiences that made use of the latest modern technology. The classes featured pop music, videos of kid-celebrities, and used the church’s Internet connection to explore Christian subjects out on the Web. Classroom time was interspersed with outside activities including ball games, field trips, and time in the new video arcade the church had just installed in the Fellowship Hall.

All that had been popular for a while, but now the kids seemed to be tired of it. Now the children, almost to a person, wanted to go to the Sunday School class taught by Mrs. Gladys Olson. She did not go in for all the glitz and glamour and flashing lights of the modern curriculum. No, to attend Mrs. Olson’s class was like going back to another time and place.

The room she used was once the Lady’s Parlor, but Gladys Olson had transformed it into a dark maze-like series of passageways called a labyrinth. Unlike a maze, you couldn’t get lost in the labyrinth because all the paths led to the same sacred gathering place in the center. If you could stand above the labyrinth and look down on it, you would see that it was constructed in the form of a cross.

When the children arrived, a helper asked them to remove their shoes. They were given a small electric candle to carry with them, reminded that the only rule was silence, and that they should think about God. Then they entered the labyrinth. Some went to the left, some to the right, some straight in. Along the walls there were occasional pictures – of scenes from Jesus’ life – or of nature – or of people. And also along the way were some stopping places – one with a bowl of holy water with which one could anoint oneself and make the sign of the cross – another with a small kneeler where you could stop and pray – yet another with a freshly picked bouquet of flowers that you could bend over and smell. And through the passageways of the labyrinth, the children went to Sunday School.

Once gathered in the inner circle, Mrs. Gladys Olson greeted the children by turning to the one on her right, taking her hands and saying, “The peace of the Lord be with you.” “And also with you,” the child responded, then turning to the person next to her to repeat the greeting. Once all the children had been welcomed this way, one of them was called upon to light the seven candles of a Menorah set on a small altar table in the center of the circle. Then the children turned off their electric candles one by one, each in turn around the circle. And once their individual lights had been extinguished so that the light of God in the Menorah could be the only light, Mrs. Gladys Olson led them in a song.

Glo-ria! Glo-ria! In excelsis Deo!

Glo-ria! Glo-ria! Alleluia! Alleluia!

This was sung all-together at first, but then became a round with the left side of the circle singing a part, and then the right side. And even though these were children who sometimes had a hard time keeping the cadence – and the tune – the sound was almost heavenly.

Then Mrs. Gladys Olson invited the children to sit cross-legged on the floor. She herself sat in a chair because she did not do “cross-legged” anymore! Then she started the lesson.

“Once upon a time, Jesus…”

And she told one of the stories about the Lord. She did not explain the story, or try to apply it to their lives. She simply told it and gave it to them as a gift – to take with them and think about during the week.

When the story was over, it was time for prayer. Each of the children could come forward and take a slip of colored paper, then tear off a piece – each piece representing someone or something for whom they prayed. Some of the children tore the colored slips into dozens of small pieces. Then they silently dropped them all into a big steel bowl. When everyone was done, a stick of incense in the bottom of the bowl was lit as a sign of the prayers going up to God, even as the paper pieces brightly burned away. They were all silent until the flames had gone out. Then the whole group joined hands and said The Lord’s Prayer together. Then Mrs. Gladys Olson took the hands of the child on her left and said, “The peace of God go with you.” “And also with you!” came the reply. And all the way back around the circle the blessing went. When it was over, the candles on the Menorah were extinguished, and the inner space became dark. The children sang another song, and then they re-lighted their candles, and silently walked back through the labyrinth by another way.

When their parents met them on the outside, the most common statement made by the children was, “I can’t wait to come back next week!”

And many of the people at Blessed Redeemer Lutheran Church scratched their heads in wonder. What had gotten into their kids? It was truly a mystery!

And it WAS just that!

MYSTERY!

You see, what Mrs. Gladys Olson knows that many people in our day don’t, is that at the heart of every human being – including children - is a spirit that yearns to be in the presence of God. And there is no amount of rock music, video games, clever gimmicks, or 10-point life application sermons that can accomplish that. All those things appeal to the emotions, or to the intellect. And what happens after a period of time is that the emotional rush gets old, or the clever thought gets stale, and people go looking for something flashier, more provocative, and more titillating. Too often in our churches today, we invite people to drink from wells that seem to taste good for the moment, but do not really satisfy the deepest longing of our hearts….

…to be in the presence of the God who created us.

And you just can’t get there through the visceral emotions, or even through the mind.

Where we encounter the presence of God is in the heart – the inner spirit.

It may be that Gladys Olson is 80-years old, but don’t be fooled by her. She has made the transition from the modern to the postmodern world. You see, in the modern period – starting with the invention of the printing press and the ensuing development of scientific rationalism – people placed the intellect far above the heart. The new scientific advances enabled us to understand things about the world we never understood before, and humanity was blessed by that as wonderful advances in medicine and other fields produced great progress. In the modern period, the human intellect reigned supreme!

But a funny thing happened on the way to the 21^st century! We learned that human beings are more than just minds. As the development of the Internet has exposed us to more and more cultural and religious diversity, we seem to have re-discovered the heart – that inner spiritual component of our lives that craves the presence of God. And as the world has moved us from the modern period into what historians are calling a new postmodern time, we are seeing that one of its components is a deep, universal human hunger for a spiritual connection with God!

And that’s what Gladys Olson was responding to when she built the labyrinth at Blessed Redeemer Lutheran Church! People in this postmodern world in which we live – including children! - are deeply spiritual. They hunger and thirst to experience the presence of the living God.

And the way to that experience is not through the mind or even through the emotions. It is through the heart. And the heart is opened not through thinking, and not through feeling, but through experiencing HOLY MYSTERY!

Webster defines mystery as “something unexplained, or secret.” I think I’d want to go a step further and say that Holy Mystery is that dimension of truth or reality that we’ve not grasped yet. And the deepest mystery you and I can probe is not the planet Mars, and not the outer reaches of the universe. No, the deepest mystery we can probe is the Holy Mystery of what it means to be human!

Last weekend, we celebrated the life of Dianne Christman. It was a beautiful service during which the rich tapestry of Dianne’s life was shared by those who knew her and loved her most. I think it would be fair to say that we were all gripped by the beauty of Dianne’s life.

At the end of the service, I shared some words that many people have commented on. They reflected the thoughts of Brian McLaren in coming to grips with the mystery of being human as represented by what remains behind when we die. There, on the altar, was a small box containing Dianne’s ashes. This is what we shared:

Now, the time has come for us to give Dianne back to God. And it is a safe and good thing for us to do. You see, the ashes before us are themselves a sacred story. These gritty, gray particles in the urn before us were borrowed, you know, from the stuff of the universe. Not long ago, they were muscle, bone, hair, and nerve – all the things that formed Dianne’s body. But even before that, they were bread, milk, fruit, and vegetable. And before that, they were water, mineral, rock, and earth. And before that, they were the substance of the stars. And even before that, they were the primeval elements from which the universe was born. And before that…they were in the heart of God!

You and I are more than we think we are, and we are connected to more than we know. When we look out and rejoice in the beauty of nature in the full glory of Spring, we do so because that beauty is a part of who and what we are. When we look up at the stars at night, we do so because the stars are where we come from! And when we sit in the quiet of the sanctuary and turn our hearts toward God, we do so because we are looking homeward!

Holy Mystery.

It is the antidote to the poisonous culture that threatens to destroy us by making us smaller than we really are! It is the healing balm that tells us that our lives mean something and have a purpose far greater than just trying to get by.

Holy Mystery.

One day, some folks came and warned Jesus that Herod was out to kill him. But Jesus would not run away. “I will drive out demons and heal people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal,” he said.

There was a purpose for Jesus’ life that was larger than his circumstances. There were people to be saved from evil, there were people to be healed from sickness, and there was a world to be saved by giving his life on the cross.

You see, Jesus KNEW the Holy Mystery of himself!

Do you know the Holy Mystery of you?

There’s something to be learned from Gladys Olson’s Sunday School class at the Blessed Redeemer Lutheran Church. When given a chance to explore the labyrinth of God’s amazing love even children respond to the Holy Mystery of who and what they are.

Oh, a funny thing happened on the way to the 21^st century!

God recovered the importance of the heart, and invited us to begin a journey into the Holy Mystery of what it means to be truly human!

I hope you’ll begin that journey today - through worship and prayer that value silence, and symbolism, and song, and sacrament – through engaging books and art and conversation and music – through all those things of life that call you upward, and move you onward to more fully become the incredibly beautiful person you were created to be the day you were born in the very heart of God!