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This week, as we come to the end of the
Easter season, we pick up the theme from St. Paul’s first
letter to the Corinthians. Chapter 15 is probably the first
written account of the resurrection, actually written down
before the Gospels were recorded. St. Paul offers the first
attempt to theologize, to interpret the meaning of the
resurrection event:
But in fact, Christ has been raised from
the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.
As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made
alive.
He builds in a great crescendo to this
incredible grand finale:
Lo! I tell you a mystery. We shall not
all sleep, but we shall all be changed. In a moment, in the
twinkling of any eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet
shall sound and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we
shall be changed.
Then shall come to pass the saying that
is written: Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where
is thy victory? O grave, where is thy sting? Thanks be to
God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Here is the hope. Here is the promise.
For today, I’d like to lift one phrase, somewhat out of
context:
“Lo! I tell you a mystery.”
Mystery, not to be confused with “scary”
as in Agatha Christie, Stephen King or Mary Higgins Clark.
St. Paul is not talking about that kind of mystery, but
rather mystery as truth beyond fact, vision beyond the
visible, wonder above what we know of the world below. In
the book some of us are studying right now, Eugene Peterson
describes it as “perplexed amazement, shattering
astonishment, reverence, awe, wonder.” He says it’s the
feeling we have when we discover that reality is either
more or other than we thought it was; when we discover
that the more or other is God. (Eugene Peterson,
Living the Resurrection, page 27-28)
Lo! I tell you a mystery.
1. It is mystery rooted in the
very nature of God.
Part of our problem in understanding God
is the very attempt to understand God in the first place. If
God could be fully comprehended by the human mind, if we
could actually answer all the questions and resolve all the
conundrums about the divine, then God would no longer be
God. Our minds would have trumped God’s nature and tamed and
contained God into something we can understand, something no
larger than the human brain. Instead, in the Bible God is
always “more and other” than we imagine or think or grasp or
understand.
Last Sunday night, one of our moms
stopped me at Sunday Night Alive and said her daughter had a
couple of questions she thought maybe Pastor Jack could
answer. The questions:
Where did God come from?
If God made the world, where
did God begin?
I had to fight the desire to try to look
really smart and find a really good answer. All I could say
was what the Bible says: “In the beginning…God.” When
everything else began, God was already there. I felt like
saying, “Lo! I tell you a mystery…” So often, we feel like
we need to be able to understand it all, explain it all,
answer it all, and in the process take out all the wonder,
all the awe, all the reverence, all the mystery.
Maybe the writers of the Old
Testament and Harry Potter had it about right.
In the Old Testament and in the Jewish
tradition today, the name for God is not to be spoken. It is
spelled with four consonants—YHWY—so that it really
can’t be spoken. We insert the vowels to get the word
“Jehovah”—kind of a nickname, a way of speaking of God
without actually saying God’s name, because even to name God
is to suggest we can bundle God up into a little package and
put a name on it. This God is above every name, beyond all
of our categories, always “more and other” than anything we
can grasp or think.
And Harry Potter? Well, his
arch nemesis was simply referred to as “you know who.” He
had a name which could not be spoken. And when Harry finally
spoke the name, it meant he had power over “the one whose
name could not be spoken” once and for all, and all
the fear, all the awesome power was drained from the
unspoken name.
How different from our day and our
tendency to use the name of God as nothing more than a
punctuation mark (“Oh God,” “My God”) without ever really
meaning “OH!! God!!” or truly allowing God to be “MY God.”
Every once in a while we need to be swept off our feet by
the mystery, the awe, the wonder, the shattering
astonishment of this God who is:
Immortal, invisible God only wise,
In light inaccessible, hid
from our eyes.
Lo! I tell you a mystery…a mystery
built into the very nature of God.
2. And the mystery is to be found
at the very center of life.
We are blessed in our day with incredible
knowledge. Isn’t it wonderful that we no longer need to fear
an eclipse as if it were the end of the earth the way our
ancestors did? Today we understand the movement of the
planets. We are no longer threatened by polio like we were
when I was a kid. I remember the first vaccines and the
images of children in iron lungs. I am so glad we have
discovered the cure and know how to deal with it. I am so
grateful for Einstein and Darwin and all the gifts of
technology. I am even thankful for Bill Gates and Google.
There are so many blessings of our intellectual and
technological age, and yet, as Eugene Peterson says,
sometimes technology comes with “an intolerance of mystery.”
He says, “Technology can squeeze all sense of mystery
and wonder and reverence out of our lives.” (Peterson,
Living the Resurrection, page 37)
One of my favorite Charles Dickens’
books is the little known Hard Times.
Writing under the rapid change of the
British industrial revolution, Dickens challenged the
utilitarian economy of his time which threatened to sap all
the life out of life—a time not unlike our current
technological revolution. His lead character is Mr. Thomas
Gradgrind, giving instructions to his newly-hired
schoolteacher:
“Now, what I want is facts. Teach these
boys and girls nothing but facts. Facts alone are wanted in
life. Plant nothing else. Root out everything else. You can
only form minds of reasoning animals upon facts; nothing
else will ever be of service to them. Stick to the facts,
Sir!”
Dickens says:
The schoolmaster backed away a little and
swept with his eyes across his students, looking like little
vessels, ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into
them until they were full to the brim. (Hard Times,
page 1)
Dickens’ central theme is the
impoverishment of life which happens in the absence of
wonder, emotion, love, feelings, compassion and mystery.
Chapter VII is entitled “Never Wonder” and concerns Mr.
Gradgrind’s daughter, Louise, who was overheard saying to
her brother, Tom, “I wonder…”
…upon which Mr. Gradgrind stepped forth
and said, “Louise, never wonder! By means of addition,
subtraction, multiplication and division, settle everything
and never wonder.” (Page 64)
But lo! I tell you a mystery!
Mystery, wonder, amazement, awe and
reverence are at the very heart of what it means to be
human, to be truly alive. I remember hearing Bishop Dwight
Loder say one time, “You know, I am constantly amazed by
life. I am even amazed on the golf course. If I hit the
ball, I’m amazed. If it makes it to the fairway, I’m
amazed. And if it goes in the hole, I’m amazed.”
Mystery—in the very nature of God,
at the very heart of life…
3. Calling us to worship and
praise
When the Psalmist tried to take it all
in, when he began to consider the wonder of creation, the
moon and stars, the incredible miracle of babies and
infants, God’s care for humankind, when he encountered God
as “more and other,” he was amazed, astonished, stunned, and
he wrote:
O Lord, Our Lord, how majestic is thy
name in all the earth.
Thou whose glory in the heavens is
chanted by the mouths of babes and infants.
When I consider thy heavens, the work of
thy hands, the moon and stars which thou hast made,
what is man that thou art mindful of him?
O Lord,
our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth.
(Psalm 8)
Our daily patterns of prayer, our
traditions of Sabbath-keeping, our commitment to corporate
worship are all about creating space for wonder, mystery,
worship and praise. In a day when our lives are so dominated
by demanding schedules and daily routine, when we are
bombarded with the seduction of technology and the
omnipresence of iPods and BlackBerries, when work and
responsibilities fill our time (in fact, while I was writing
this, an ad from Daytimers popped up on the screen—trying to
help me be more productive!), we need to create space for
God to be at work in us. We are called to create Sabbath
days or the Sabbath moments when awe and amazement, mystery
and wonder can find a place in our lives and our souls if we
are to live with a sense of wonder, worship and praise.
Trying to find a way to end this sermon,
I came across a small volume I had forgotten we even had.
It’s a beautiful setting of Walt Whitman’s classic:
Why! who makes much of a miracle?
As to me, I know of nothing else but
miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of
Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of
houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the
beach, just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love…
Or sit at table at dinner with the
rest,
Or look at strangers,
Or watch the honeybees busy around the
hive,
Or birds—or the wonderfulness of
insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of sundown—or of
stars shining bright.
These, with the rest, one and all, are
to me miracles.
To me every hour of the light and dark
is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a
miracle.
To me the sea is a continual miracle;
the fishes that swim—the rocks—the
motion of the waves.
What stranger miracles are there?
As for me, I know of
nothing else but miracles.
Lo! I tell you a mystery. |
