Mystery

The scriptures referred to are 2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16, Romans 16:25-27 and Luke 1:26-38.

I saw a comic strip on the internet that shows two people. One asks the other, “If there's intelligent life on other planets, why haven't they contacted us?” The next panel shows a planet 65 million light years away from earth. On it we see two aliens looking back at earth through a telescope. “The inhabitants of that planet don't look very friendly,” says one alien. The other looks into the eyepiece and sees what one would see from that distance in space, given the speed of light: a Tyrannosaurus Rex. So maybe the answer to the mystery is that they see what was but not what is.

In today's New Testament passage Paul speaks of the revelation of a mystery. Paul uses the word mystery 21 times in his letters. In 1 Corinthians, the mystery has to do with Jesus the Messiah being crucified. How is that a mystery? Because the world sees what was true before Jesus but not what is true now in him.

In our Old Testament passage we are told that King David wanted to build God a house, a temple. God essentially says, “No. Don't build me a house. Instead I will make you a house.” That is, a dynasty. God promises David that a descendant shall be on the throne of his kingdom forever.

But the passage doesn't really tell us why God refuses to let David build him a house especially when God has no objection to letting Solomon, David's son, do so later. In the parallel passage in 1 Chronicles, the reason becomes clear. David says, “But God said to me, 'You are not to build a house for my Name, because you are a warrior and have shed blood.'” (1 Chronicles 28:3) God did not want a man of war, a man with blood on his hands, to build his temple. Yes, David beat back the enemies that threatened the tiny kingdom of Israel but that doesn't make him any different from any warrior-king of his or any other age. General George Patton said a soldier doesn't win a war by dying for his country; he does it by making sure the other guy, the enemy, dies for his country. That's especially true of kings. The kingdoms of this world are founded and maintained by shedding the blood of others. But just as God wanted a man of peace to build his temple, so ultimately he wanted a man of peace to build his kingdom.

And that's the mystery that Paul saw in the crucified Christ. No one expected that kind of Messiah. No one conceived of a king who lets his own blood be shed. That's just crazy talk. But not the way God sees it.

The world sees life as a competition. If I want it, you can't have it. And the easiest way for me to get it is to simply take it. If I have to take it from you, well, c'est la guerre. As it says in the book of James, “Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts.” (James 4:1-2a)

It's the basis of most of our stories. In many writing classes they tell you to have your main character want something strongly and then throw obstacles in the way of his or her obtaining it. That will get the audience to identify with the character and have an emotional investment in the story. Another thing writers and storytellers are taught is that conflict provides drama: man vs. man, man vs. nature, man vs. machine, man vs. society, man vs. self, man vs. God. Our most popular movies are about violent conflict: fighting supervillians, zombies, evil space empires. They usually end with explosions and the death of the bad guy in a mano a mano fight with the hero. I remember walking out of the first Matrix movie, stunned that they somehow made an action film out of the life of Christ, complete with his death, resurrection and ascension, not to mention John the Baptist!

I enjoy these films but they reflect the worldview of, well, the world. And the fighter heroes of our pop culture are not like Jesus. They deal with evil by harming and killing bad people. Jesus dealt with evil by making people whole, physically and spiritually. If they were sick, he healed them. If they were hungry, he fed them. He dealt with the evil of greed and materialism by dining with tax collectors and showing them the riches of the kingdom of God. He dealt with the evil of ignorance by teaching them the wisdom of the kingdom of God. He dealt with the evil of intolerance by helping whoever came to him, be they Jews, Samaritans or Gentiles. He dealt with the evil of arrogance by modeling humility. He dealt with the evil of sexism by ignoring cultural norms and teaching women. He dealt with the evil of excluding from society those who are deemed disgusting by touching lepers and menstruating women. He dealt with the evil of condemning people to death for certain sins by forgiving adulterers and criminals. He dealt with the evil of violence by refusing to resist those who beat and crucified him.

The world thinks the way to deal with its problems is by making ever more detailed rules and then enforcing them ruthlessly. Jesus dealt with the world's problems by boiling down the rules to their essentials—loving God and loving each other—and offering forgiveness to those who are willing to change. To paraphrase him, the rules are made for our benefit; we were not made for the benefit of the rules. People, especially those who make the rules, tend to forget that. They are unwilling to make exceptions and all too willing to sacrifice those who don't fit into the nice neat categories they've created as stand-ins for reality.

One of those people we've sacrificed is Jesus, of course. Because we hate mysteries that don't yield easy answers. Jesus is God, yet he got hungry; he got tired; he wept at a friend's grave; he got frustrated with his students when they failed to grasp the most basic things he was teaching them. Jesus had great power at his command, yet he refused to use it to make himself rich or to meet his own needs or even to stop others from harming him. Jesus is God's anointed king yet he didn't raise an army or claim a piece of land for himself or play politics. And so he also doesn't fit neatly into any of the categories we substitute for what actually is.

One of the more desperate ways to deal with Jesus is to pretend he never existed. Last week I was reading about a 700 page book which argued that Jesus was never an historical person but a myth from the start. No serious historian believes this but I can see why some people wish that were true. If Jesus didn't exist we don't need to deal with him: the paradoxes, the theological implications, the ethical ramifications. We can simply dismiss him as being no more real than Luke Skywalker. You can like him in the way you like Superman but you are under no obligation to follow him.

But if Jesus existed, then he is harder to disregard. To deny he said what he said and did what he did, you can say he was a real person but that nothing written about him by his contemporaries and followers was accurate. Or you can say he was real but got turned into a myth in a couple of decades despite all evidence that it takes centuries to do that with people like whoever King Arthur was based on. Or you can say he was really a real person whose true story was distorted and manipulated by his inner circle, despite the fact that they gained nothing from it except grisly deaths at the hands of those in power. If Jesus is real, he is a real problem for those who don't want to believe in him.

Paul also used the word mystery to refer to another aspect of Christianity: God's plan to unite all things in and through Christ. This answers the other mysteries we contemplate in life: Why are we here? Where are we going? We are here to reflect the love of the God in whose image we are created and work together in that love to make the world what he intended it to be. And the model community, the seed of that harmonious kingdom Jesus spoke of, is the body of Christ.

When we open our hearts to Jesus, when we become united with him in his death and resurrection through baptism, we enter the body of Christ and the Spirit of God enters us. And that means, unlike the kingdoms of this world where citizenship is a matter of geography or conquest, being part of the kingdom of God is voluntary and open to all. Paul said, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female—for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28) Belonging to a religion is usually tied to ethnicity or race. If you are born to a Jewish mother, you are automatically Jewish, even if you don't observe the faith. Most Hindus are Indian; most followers of Shinto are Japanese. But very early in the history of the church it became obvious that Christianity could not be kept Jewish. Gentiles began to come to Jesus and that caused a crisis in the church. But the apostles realized that the Spirit of God was moving them out of their comfort zone and into the wider world.

In Revelation John sees in a vision, “an enormous crowd that no one could count, made up of persons from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, dressed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands.” (Revelation 7:9) And indeed you will find millions of Christians in Afghanistan, Brazil, China, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Greece, Honduras, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Lithuania, Madagascar, Namibia, Pakistan, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Tanzania, Uruguay, Vietnam, Zimbabwe, and so on: more than 200 countries in all. The entire Bible has been translated into 670 languages and the New Testament alone into 1521 languages.

The good news is for everyone. The Spirit of God can work in and through anyone. The people of God have a unity that does not depend on a uniformity of language or race or nationality or gender. To those outside, it's a mystery.

And a bigger one is this: A poor man from a small oppressed country says the god of a nationalistic and ethnic religion has sent him with a message for the world. They kill him and that still does not stop him. From a handful of followers faith in him grows to encompass the globe. The whole thing is a mystery that people are still delving into 2000 years after it began.

Part of the reason Jesus and his movement remain a mystery to some people is the same reason the aliens in the comic strip haven't contacted us. They are looking at how the world was and what they assume it is and always will be. They are not looking at what is happening right before their eyes. Things are changing. God is doing something new and it is greater than anything we can ask or imagine.

No mystery is total, though. You don't have to understand exactly how your computer works to use it. You don't have to understand biochemistry to eat healthily. You don't have to understand how quantum physics works to live in the world that it underlies. We don't need to know everything about God to benefit from his good news about Jesus. But we do have to respond properly to receive the new life in Christ promised us. A check does you no good unless you cash it. A doctor can't cure you if you don't go to him.

When the angel came to her, Mary didn't know all that having God's son would entail. But she knew enough. She trusted in God's goodness and said, “Yes.”

We know more than Mary did. We know what happened after Jesus' birth. We know what he said and what he did and how he died and how he rose again. We have a vision of what the Spirit is doing: recreating the world so that everyone in it reflects the nature of the God who is love. We have an opportunity to be a part of it. And so the chief mystery is: will we, like Mary, be brave enough and trusting enough to say, “Yes?”