EASTER MESSAGE SHARED THROUGH UNIQUE SERVICE
Tens of thousands of Christians celebrated Easter on Sunday across the Twin Cities, but few worship services were as unusual as the one held at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.
Giant puppets danced with children; seed packets were distributed to remind the congregation to sew peace and justice; and instead of a sermon, participants walked in deep meditation around a replica of an ancient maze.
The unique worship, designed to reach people with no church home, was sponsored by the Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church, 511 Groveland, Minneapolis.
"For people who don't have a church home, this presents the Easter message in a different way," said Charles Gaby, director of youth and young adults for the church. "It presents Jesus as the reminder and the revealer, as the one who walks the journey with us. We have forgotten who we are. He reminds us we are the sons and daughters of God."
The newest thing about the worship was also probably the oldest.
Stretched out on the Guthrie stage was a 40-square-foot labyrinth, a copy of the exact design embedded in the floor of the great Cathedral at Chartes, France.
It is a series of spiritual paths totaling about one-third of a mile, which people in the 12th century used as a mini-version of a pilgrimage. Cathedrals across Europe once used labyrinths as alternatives for believers unable make actual pilgrimages to sacred places.
Many of those labyrinths have been covered over and are seldom used anymore. But the concept of the maze and its spiritual purpose is today being reclaimed by students of a more mystical kind of Christianity.
Following the worship at the Guthrie, the labyrinth was carried across the street and set up in the church's art museum where pilgrims could walk the sacred paths in solitude throughout the afternoon.
Called the Loring Park Easter Festival, the labyrinth ceremony targeted the Loring Park neighborhood, an area of the city packed with young adults. But the congregation bridged the generations. Young people with spiked hair sat next to gray-haired traditionalists.
For the little children, the highlight of the 45-minute service filled with visual and musical beauty was the finale: a 20-foot puppet that emerged from a black tomb, its head draped in flowers like a veritable virgin mother of springtime. The puppet danced with children, waved its massive arms around the singers and thrilled the audience.
"It's a way to reinvite people from our own congregation who we have lost," said Christopher Jackson, a diaconal minister at the church. "The dominant message of Jesus is sacrifice. But the story of bondage and guilt doesn't fit everybody."
Clark D. Morphew
Posted For 4-08-96
