Folks who dedicate their lives to figuring out personality types and the human psyché are brave souls who willingly enter the wilderness of human existence to discover some bits and pieces which just might contribute to our understanding of who [and whose] we are.  They are the same folks who provide insight into the minds, emotions, and thrills of those who love a good mystery. World’s-best-story.com offers some observations which can help us who enter the charted but often forgotten paths of previous Lenten journeys we make as Jesus’ disciples.  The cyberspace gurus at World’s-best-story.com identify some significant characteristics of those who gladly focus their attention on a good mystery, be it cozy, hair-raising, or other.  Such readers might well be individuals who 1) already love to solve life’s little mysteries presented almost daily, 2) delight in gathering clues, considering the evidence, hoping to uncover the truth, 3) seem to be folks who are “…analytical, intuitive, and logical thinkers,” 4) who also might have a sense of justice and a moral code which shape their hopes and understanding of how life is lived in community, in society, and in our own back yard as well [thank you, Dorothy Gale, and your little dog Toto, too].  That is a fairly good list of characteristics for Jesus’ determined disciples to embrace, too, as we embark on yet another Lenten journey into deeper understanding and more fervent faith.

            Last Sunday Pastor Pat gave us fair warning that he was adjusting the Gospel reading to include a passage immediately preceding [this is a significant clue regarding its appropriateness for clarifying what we hear!] the appointed reading for the Transfiguration. He wished to enlarge upon what would be proclaimed that day, AND, as far as Luther himself and the Confessions are concerned, such a concern WILL ALWAYS be on the side of the angels.  Our good and learnéd preacher was concerned that we might miss – given the usual gaps in the telling of Mark’s gospel from week to week — the context of the gospel proclaimed, something often as important as the appointed passage itself.  The Transfiguration Gospel begins, “…six days later.”  Please check your memory banks, but my guess is that neither you nor I save for our pastor preparing for his umpteenth sermon ever preached had a clue about what had happened “…six days before.” It was an exceedingly busy time, including Peter’s Good Confession that, despite his impetuosity, was when the brash disciple realized that Jesus WAS the Christ, the Messiah of God.  His request for Jesus to drop any notions of going to his death in Jerusalem was appropriately discarded in his deepening understanding of Jesus’ identity, transfigured by what had startled him on the Mount of Transfiguration.  One might hope the same for the rest of us, too!!!

            Once Jesus’ transfiguration and exchange with his disciples had taken place, there was no going back.  His disciples had been plunged deeply into the mystery of redemption, and perhaps much to their surprise, their role in it, too.  We play no less of a role in God’s great mystery of redemption, even when it strikes us as a mystery beyond our fathoming.  Aren’t we supposed to be happy and contented disciples, neither weary nor heavy ladened simply because Jesus has pulled the plug on suffering while casting a balm of blessed peace over all of us? SORRY!!!  We ask and expect too much too soon!

            Decades ago, when teaching at Purdue University [a.k.a. the Clemson of the Midwest], I would drive onto campus each morning listening to WBAA, the wonderful public radio station of the university. Two programs caught my attention each day: the morning concert hosted by my late, lamented, and most irascible friend Greg Zawisza, or the wondrous program, Radio Reader, in those days already ten years on the air. Radio Reader’s host Dick Estelle had revised an earlier format [1934] at Michigan State University’s WKAR, the place of both his studies and employment. His new format ran from 1964-2016, enough time to have enlightened and enriched my happy period at Purdue and so many others lives too! Mr. Estelle would offer a concise introduction and a superb, brief synopsis of whatever was being read over time. Then, his dulcet voice, well trained by his mentors at Michigan State, would spin out another 30 minutes of bliss and clarity. I soon realized that there were not many other story tellers in my life who provided such consistent narrative.  More surprising, even my own church’s telling of God’s good news in Christ from week to week was NEVER as unimpeded nor as articulate and uninterrupted by delay as Mr. Estelle’s fifty-two years of sharing well over 500 novels and other books day after day. Lectionary appointed readings, intervening festivals, and changes of season all frustrate a clear, consistent telling of the good news by packaging the biblical text into tiny, not always well or obviously related portions week to week.  [Do remember: Sunday’s Transfiguration gospel began, “…six days later”]

            I think now, all these years later, that I miss the great fun and “narrative tension” of my years driving into the Purdue campus.  Someone wise recently defined “narrative tension” as “… a phenomenon that occurs when the interpreter of a story is enticed to wait for an outcome, characterized by an anticipation tinged with uncertainty.” [https: //www.google.com/search?q=%22narrative+tension%22&oq=%22narrative+tension%22&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCTc0NDVqMGoxNagCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8].  In other words, “narrative tension” is at the heart of a good story’s telling, and that includes the gospel, too!!!  It is the mystery needing to be solved with no quick fix.  It is the hope that what we’re hearing will proclaim the truth.  It is the growing sense that the justice and righteousness of life well lived is at the heart of what our heart’s desire must also be as Jesus’ disciples.  In essence, it is the heart of our Lenten journey.  Alas, it usually remains somewhat of a mystery, just beyond our ability to grasp it, to speak it, and sadly, even to live it.

            Those classic mysteries [Christie, Innes, Marsh, Sayers, etc.] are also often the first choice for folks who concern themselves with the gospel, the opportunity to read something that solves or at least addresses and mitigates life’s challenges in a beneficial way, even when the simplest things still seem entrenched as mystery.  This is not a recent distraction.  Something as simple as the childhood joy of connecting the dots is part and parcel of this, already engaging the juvenile spirit.  The “Nine Dot Puzzle” is the 1907 offspring of an 1867 article in the French journal Le Sphinx.  The “Nine Dots” appeared in the London journal The Strand in an article featuring Sam Lloyd, “the Prince of Puzzle makers.”  Lloyd sent his readers into a frenzy trying to establish the least number of lines it would take to connect nine dots arranged in a square three dots deep and three dots wide. [Try it!  You only need a square comprised of nine dots arranged 3 x 3!] That puzzle is the ancestor of our childhood “Connect the Dots” books revealing bunnies and whatever else captured the artist’s or editor’s imagination. Crime Queen Agatha Christie’s first mystery novel was The Mysterious Affair at Styles, written in 1916 and published in 1920 in which she introduced some of her more endearing characters.  A best seller, it was one of the first ten books to be published by Penguin Books when that venerable publishing house began in 1935.  The Mysterious Affair of Learning to Understand the Gospel is learning how to connect the various points [dots] of reference, the appointed lessons, into a coherent whole.

            So, what is this mystery?  What are the dots we need to connect?  Bible scholars, preaching professors, and parish pastors can sometimes be overheard muttering, “Context, context, context!” with an anguished frenzy. Those folks know in their bones the horrid damage done to people’s souls, minds, hearts, reputations, etc. by bible passages ripped out of context, of a particularly nasty phrase wrenched out of scripture to act as a sledgehammer for our own ideas about whom God should/must/ought to condemn to eternal suffering, of tidy quotes smugly aimed at putting “those folks” in their place.  Nevertheless, by Pastor Pat’s insistence that we hear the full context, even taking the necessary time to read the specific narrative rather than depending upon spiffy little slogans of scripture which don’t require too much thought (thank you very much!), we may just have a chance to hear what has been spun out over time.  Where IS Dick Estelle and Radio Bible Reader when you need it? Sorry, it never existed, much to our loss. [May Mr. Estelle meanwhile rest in quite deserved peace…] Meanwhile, we pray, beloved of the Lord, that we’re granted the grace to connect these dots!  Three times from the Baptism of our Lord to the First Sunday in Lent, Year B, we will have heard clearly (hopefully not missing because of lack of attention or worse, absence) that a) Jesus is God’s beloved Son, and b), thanks to the waters of baptism and so much more, we are God’s beloved, too [I John 4]. Gospel conundrums are myriad, but they should keep us pondering so we can devote ourselves to understanding and proclaiming the “Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life,” the Good News of Christ and the life granted to God’s faithful. That mystery will remain with us until at long last we see Christ face to face.