“The Mystery Revealed”
Romans 16:25-27; Ephesians 3:1-12
St Paul’s United Methodist Church
Helena Montana
Richard C. Hulbert
January 4, 2015
Some of the most mundane events in the daily life provide a window to eternal truth. I have a small
laptop I use for teaching classes. I use it for developing and projecting Power Point slides onto a screen.
Lately, the laptop has been misbehaving, contributing disruptions to class presentations. So I spent
hours this week trying to solve the mystery of the laptop computer. If you use a computer you know
precisely what I mean when I say this beast is full of mystery and the joy, excitement and relief when
suddenly by typing into the thing the correct information the mystery is solved and it works correctly. It
is a moment of revelation, a moment when the mystery I worked so hard to resolve is no longer a
mystery
A “mystery” is something we encounter in daily life that is difficult to understand or explain. We might
say “his death remains a mystery.” A mystery can be a novel or play or movie dealing with a puzzling
crime. In fact, a mystery is a kind of puzzle and the human species has rarely encountered a puzzle that
he or she was not challenged to solve. Jigsaw puzzles remain popular because there is something inside
us that cannot stop until the puzzle is solved and the underlying picture is revealed.
I recently discovered a humorous list of life’s remaining unsolved mysteries. These include:
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Why do toasters always have a setting that burns toast to a horrible crisp which no decent
human being would ever eat?
Why do dogs get irritated when you blow in their face, but when you take them on a car ride,
he sticks his head out the window?
Why does Goofy stand erect while Pluto remains on all fours? They are both dogs!
Why a person who handles your money is called a “broker”?
If a man is talking in the forest, and no woman is there to hear him, is he still wrong?
These are unsolved mysteries of life. But the thing about these mysteries is that while they may be
difficult to solve, they are probably solvable if we apply our intelligence and missions of research dollars.
They are like a 5000 piece jigsaw puzzle, difficult but solvable.
However it is not so with the mystery of God. I recently read this statement: “God will always be the
deepest mystery we encounter in life.” God is the great imponderable in our lives that is difficult to
understand or explain. I recently read an article exploring this very topic. The author says that after
years of avoiding organized religion, he surprised my friends by joining a Presbyterian church. They
asked me, “Does this mean that you now believe in God”? His response was “that depends on what one
means by ‘God’”.
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He then went on to say that he had come to see God as the name we put on the mystery of the world
that is beyond our capacity to understand. He says that it is not that God is a mystery to be solved, but
is mystery itself. God is mystery – the unexplainable mystery of the world around us as we swirl among
billions of stars, as well as the mystery inside billions of cells that interact to create us.
This understanding of God as mystery is operative in the Bible. We see it in Genesis when Moses asked
God for his name. God answers, “I am who I am”, or “I will be who I will be”. God remains shrouded in
mystery.
We see the mysterious nature of God in Job. His friend Zephyr rebukes Job for insisting on a rational
answer to the question of his suffering. Zephyr says “can you discover the depths of God? Can you
discover the limits of the Almighty? They (depths and limits of God) are high as the heavens, what can
you do? Deeper than Sheol, what can you know?” God – shrouded in mystery.
The Psalmist says “God is the Lord and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one fathom.” God is
beyond human capacity to understand.
In Ecclesiastes we read “whatever is far off and most profound, his greatness no one can fathom”.
Again, God shrouded in mystery. We cannot begin to understand God’s greatness.
One writer says “God contains all, but cannot be contained”. God is greater than all there is. God is
mystery, the source of all mysteries.
We are confronted with imponderable mystery in the lives we live. We are probably not as smart as we
think we are. Yes, we can build machines that seem to be smarter than we who built them, but we have
also built machines that can destroy us. Though we probe deeply into the mysteries of life, the deeper
we probe, the more mysterious is that which we find. We cannot and are likely to solve the puzzle of
the universe or the intelligence of the cell. At the end of the day all is mystery can that mystery is what
we call God. We remain humble at the feet of mystery. This may be what the currently popular movie The Theory of Everything – is about. In a lifetime of exploring one theory that explains everything, he
continues to search. Some may say that he is seeking to unravel the mystery of God? Will he succeed
through scientific pursuit? So far, “no cigar!’
If God is mystery that cannot be solved, then where does that leave human beings who are driven by
some internal force to solve mystery? It is ever possible to understand God, discern God’s nature, or to
have clarity about God’s will in a confusing world? The answer to that question is, I believe, what
Advent is all about.
I am interested in that passage of Matthew where Jesus said God remains shrouded in mystery except
as he may reveal Godself. Mathew’s Jesus says no one knows much about God except as the Son may
choose to reveal Godself. There seems to be a window left slightly open through which we get a
glimpse into the mystery of God. Here is where we see why we celebrate Jesus’ birth and why Easter is
so important and why we scrutinize the life that Jesus lived, the words attributed to him. We focus on
this life because we believe that it is in this life that the mystery that is God reveals Godself. Or, better
we say, at least God reveals that tiny part of the mystery that is God that God chooses to reveal.
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So now we come to today’s scripture. In Romans, we find Paul talking about “the revelation of the
mystery that was kept secret for long ages but is now disclosed”. Again, Ephesians, Paul says, “he has
made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he has set forth in Christ”.
Paul’s writings are replete with references to God as mystery revealed in a human who was proclaimed
to be the Messiah in the years following his death and resurrection. In Jesus, the mystery of God is
revealed, at least to the extent that the Son chooses to reveal the Father, as Matthew suggests.
And so I close this advent season reminding us all what it means that Jesus is the decisive revelation of
the character and passion of God.
Marcus Borg in his book Speaking Christian puts it this way
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In Jesus’ compassion for the marginalized, for “the least of these” we see God’s
compassionate character.
In Jesus’ passion for the kingdom of God, we see God’s passion for a transformed world
– a world of justice and nonviolence in which no one needs to be afraid.
God’s character and passion as we see them in Jesus also have a confrontational
dimension: they include the indictment of what gets in the way of the well-being of all
of us, and of all that is.
I close with the observation that God chooses to reveal his character and passion in the person and life,
death and resurrection of Jesus. This indeed is the most joyous time of our year, but also the most
joyous time of our life! A savior is born who is Christ the Lord. Amen.
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