Rediscovering the Mystery

Ephesians 3.1-13

Russ Dean, January 6, 2002

 

            Americans have a fascination with mysteries. Over the years court-room dramas from "Perry Mason" to “Law and Order” have captivated our attention, and directors from Hitchcock to Spielburg have capitalized on our addiction. Whether sitting there in front of the “big screen” in suspense --  palms sweating, heart pounding, wondering what or who is around the corner, or curled up on the sofa, with a John Grisham or Tom Clancy novel in hand, we love the suspense of not knowing. Don’t you love to have it all figured out, just to realize that you are the victim!? The best “gotcha” I’ve had like that in a while was in the recent movie, “The Sixth Sense.” I had no idea what was coming – and it was wonderful!

            And it's not just fiction that loves a mystery, but real life, too. Don't you love surprises? Amy and I both love to surprise and to be surprised. (This morning when I got out of the shower and came into the bedroom to dress, there was a beautiful (new) antique chair there for me to use, from Clarice and George Morgan’s shop. What a great birthday surprise!) And, tormenting each other with the mystery is almost as fun as the gift itself. Two months before her birthday I casually mention "Don't go into the attic and move that pile of boxes back in the corner and look for a small jewelry box..." Or she'll come into my office carrying an envelope, wave it in front of me and say, "You can't look inside this." She mentions it four times before supper, and later says, "You know that envelope? -- You still can't look at it!"

 

            The English word “mystery” comes from a Greek word ("mustarion") and is derived from Greek religion. “Mystery,” has deeply religious roots.  Why is it, then, that it seems the Church is the last place where mystery is celebrated? After 2000 years of theological debate, the Christian Church has formulated its doctrines, terminated its heretics, applied scientific methods to its inquiries, and the result for many American Christians is a Book of Answers (the Bible), revealing a God who is beyond Questioning.

 

            We spend $25.00 to see the movie or read the novel, because not knowing is worth the price, but most Americans who go to Church routinely, under the guise of encountering the Mysterious “I Am,” are satisfied Sunday after Sunday to walk away with dime-a-dozen answers to life’s greatest questions.

 

            In his novel entitled, A Beggar in Jerusalem, the acclaimed author, Ellie Wiesel, has his central character make the following observation:

Once, in the Orient, I talked of suicide with a sage… “Dying is no solution, “ he affirmed. “And living?” I asked. “Nor living either,” he conceded. “But who tells you there is a solution?”. . . You will not convince me he was not right. He was too wise not to realize that one can do without solutions. Only the questions matter (Wiesel, p. 8, emphases added).

 

 

            The Apostle Paul takes seriously the importance of mystery and considers himself, and all who choose the road of discipleship, "stewards of God's mysteries" (1 Cor. 4.1). Only the questions matter. Far too many preachers are determined only to be “peddlers of the answers!”

 

            She was forty-one when she finally died. I say “finally” of one so young, because she had battled two major diseases, survived a terrible automobile accident, and endured an abusive relationship. Her alcoholic father added to her pain. Her life was never trouble-free. So I listened in my own pain as the pastor prayed with her grieving mother "…give her (the mother) the strength that she would never have to ask why..."

            Never ask why? Is our faith just a set of rules, prescriptions that relieve all questioning, if only we follow them correctly? Is our God so rigid as to be unwilling (or unable) to bear our hurts and fears, our doubts and pains? We must ask “why?” – for it is our very nature to do so!

            The life of faith is human life in dialogue with the divine. And for you and me to be engaged in the divine, is to be immersed, always, in mystery.  “Only the questions matter.”

 

            Today, Epiphany Sunday, is the Sunday of “revealing.” It is the Sunday on which the Church celebrates the “appearing” of Christ to the nations. In the persons of “Magi from the East,” the wonderful story of Christmas makes it clear that God’s mysterious salvation is not meant for the Jews alone, but for the entire world.

            The Magi left their gifts and went home “by another way,” geographically, and metaphorically, speaking. But I am convinced they took away from that experience of worship a truckload of questions, and few, if any, simple answers. And I am convinced that the questions that they asked made their journey through the desert worth the long and dangerous trip.

 

            What about your worship? Your faith for living? Do you need to "Rediscover the Mystery?" Epiphany only happens where there is mystery. A God too fully known, too clearly objectified ceases to be God and becomes an idol, an image of our own making.[1] So I am troubled by today’s text, and how to read it. A simplistic reading will imply that Paul discovered the mystery of Christ, and the revelation made everything clear. Simple. Easy.  And many preachers will have you believe this is the way it should be – the “mystery of Christ” has been revealed, and is reduced to a formula for salvation, a prescription for living.  But I believe that the Bible is more descriptive than it is prescriptive (more about our story than about absolute rules). I believe that faith is more prepositional than it is propositional (more about relationship than about absolute dogma).[2] I believe that God is the Great Mystery, and only by a life of ever more carefully constructed questions do we approach God’s presence.

Have we taken mystery out of THE MYSTERY?

 

Let me make several brief suggestions as to how we might Rediscover the Mystery in our own lives, and find God, again, in fresh, new ways.

 

            1) Avoid "pat" answers and religious cliche's.

            How many times have we heard, or said: "It was God's will." Was it really “God's will”? and how, exactly, would we know that? And more importantly, what does that mean to a grieving mother, or to a guilt-ridden father? . . .or . . . "We're not supposed to understand." . . . or . . . "She's better off now." “Pat answers” are no answers at all. They just cover-over the deeper emotions that we all share, and though they are well-intentioned, they do more harm than good. Avoid “pat answers,” and in asking the questions (or in the uncomfortable silence), you might just Rediscover the Mystery.

 

            2) Establish traditions or rituals of your own.

            What traditions do you practice? Neither Amy nor I ever ate a meal at our home without pausing for a "blessing." We are trying to follow this tradition in our own home. Nothing  "magical" happens; "blessed" food is no more nutritious than "unblessed" food, but in giving thanks, we acknowledge God’s presence in our lives. Rituals cause us to recognize the sacramental presence of God in this world.[3] If you don't have any traditions or rituals, go home and develop some - you might just Rediscover the Mystery.

 

            3) Evaluate your language for God.

            The way we "image" God determines our worship. It also determines our understanding of people and government and systems of all kinds. It determines our values and even how we "image" ourselves. Amy and I came through seminary at a time when the faculty practiced, and required its students to practice, what their conservative critics dismissed as “political correctness.” We have, on the contrary, come to view “inclusive language” as an important matter for the life of the church. For us: God and our world have not been the same since we began thinking carefully our language.

The language we use for God, for example, creates an "image" for God. The theologian Rosemary Radford-Reuther has said, "If God is male, the male is God." I think she is right. How do we teach our daughters that they, too, are created in the image of God, if God, because of the language we use, appears to them to be a man? If God is a King, a Sovereign Ruler, what does this say of oppressive governments and dictators? What does this say of our ethical responsibility to the poor, the dispossessed? If God is a Warrior responsible for slaying thousands, how easy it will be to validate our own violence – we must only convince ourselves that God is on "our side."

 

            The language and images used of God in the Bible are predominately masculine. But there are exceptions: in Deuteronomy, God is depicted as a mother eagle (32.11); Hosea likens God's love as that of a mother for her children (11:3); the "Wisdom" of Proverbs is a feminine image (1:20); the Psalmists pictures God as a loving mother bird providing shelter under her wings (57:1); Jesus compares himself to a brooding hen (Matthew 23:37) and tells the parable of God as a woman in search of a lost coin (Luke 15:1).

            No single image could possibly describe God without objectifying God. Without defining God. Without creating God in our image.[4] Without taking out the Mystery. And if we did so, we would violate the commands "You shall have no other gods before me" and "you shall create no graven image." The mystery of God requires all of the creative variety of language we can muster.

            Nowhere is our use of language more apparent than in the hymns that we sing. And we have just come through a Christmas season that was frustrating for some of you, as it was for us! The hymns have been changed. (How could they do that!) But the editors of our hymnal have sought to present a God of many names, a God of mystery, through the words we use in our praise. I admit to you that I don’t understand all of the changes made, and some of them are awkward to sing, having learned them differently. (But, what about our children? Once they learn them, as we did, they will sing them naturally, and what will the “new” language convey to them about God’s image, and theirs?) Some of the hymn changes do seem “politically correct,” if not theologically correct, but I support the theology of our hymn editors, and am grateful for a church who will suffer through the difficulty of change in pursuit of a mysterious God. Changing anything is difficult, and changing our music is extremely difficult – but it is extremely important, we believe, if we are to rightly understand God and our world.[5]

            Check your language - you might just Rediscover the Mystery.

 

            4) Finally, be still, and listen.

            It should be no surprise that we had de-mystified God. At the pace that we live, who has time for a mysterious God? We need a simple God, a neat and orderly faith. But the wise men learned that the journey to God passes through the desert of silence.

 

There is a quiet place

far from the rapid pace

where God can soothe my troubled mind

sheltered by tree and flower

there in my darkest hour

with God my cares are left behind me.[6]

 

            Where is your quiet place? Listen  - you might just Rediscover the Mystery.

 

            If the mystery of Christ has been so revealed to you that there are no questions. If your faith is summarized by answers, perhaps you need to reconsider the nature of faith. The life of faith is never easy, but it is always worth the journey.

It is our prayer for this New Year that Christ might appear to us all, again, and be to us all a life-long, life-changing mystery.

May it be so. Amen!

PASTORAL PRAYER

 

O Great Mystery

   all in all,

      three in one,

         one in us,

Forgive our selfish need to know you

   too fully;

Forgive our selfish need to reduce your Mystery

   to our simplicity.

God of the Magi,

   come to us in mystery;

      be our epiphany this day,

and send us home

   by a different way!

 

Amen.

 

APPENDIX: BRING MANY NAMES

Brian Wren is a hymnist who has written much about inclusive language. Let me share with you the lines to one recent hymn, "Bring Many Names"

 

Bring many names, beautiful and good;

celebrate, in parable and story,

holiness in glory,

living, loving God.

Hail and Hosanna,

bring many names:

 

Strong mother God, working night and day,

planning all the wonders of creation,

setting each equation,

genious at play:

Hail and Hosanna,

strong mother God!

 

Warm father God, hugging every child,

feeling all the strains of human living,

caring and forgiving

till we're rconciled:

Hail and Hosanna,

warm father God!

 

 

Old, aching God, grey with endless care,

calmly piercing evil's new disguises,

glad of good surprises,

wiser than despair:

Hail and Hosanna,

old, aching God!

 

Young, growing God, eager still to know,

willing to be changed by what you've started,

quick to be delighted,

singing as you go:

hail and Hosanna,

young, growing God!

 

Great, living God, never fully known,

joyful darkness far beyond our seeing,

closer yet than breathing,

everlasting home

Hail and Hosanna,

great, living God!