Making Room for Mystery
Love Never Dies, prt. 7
Wildwind Community Church
David Flowers
May 16, 2010
Today’s message is for anyone who might have had any concerns at all that in the past few weeks I have somehow slipped into heresy! I want to assure you that has not happened at all. I can assure you that my faith in God is more vibrant at this moment than at any time in my life. I have never been as excited as I am now about all I am learning and how I see fruits of God’s Spirit growing in my life day by day. But today’s message is for anyone who has had those concerns. Because for me this whole thing has completely not been about rejecting Christianity -- it has simply been an increasing openness to mystery. Mystery is critical in spiritual understanding and if we lose touch with mystery, then no matter how devout we are in our practice of Christianity, we have lost touch with God – because God simply IS mystery!
Wildwind Church has always been about mystery! This is from our statement of core values on our website.
6. Mystery - We value the mystery of God by acknowledging that he is to be found as much in questions as in answers, seeking as in finding, and doubting as in believing. We will say and do nothing that portrays God as being without mystery. (Job 42:3; Eph. 3:2-9)
Emphasis on mystery is a core part of who we are. Now by this I don’t mean talking about abstract intellectual questions. When Nicodemus tried asking those kinds of questions to Jesus, Jesus said, “You are procrastinating with your questions.” Later in today’s message you will see how Christ responds the same way to some of his own disciples, saying, “You’re missing the point.”
Actual spiritual conversation engages us with mystery. Engages us –not just in our heads, but in our hearts. Actual spiritual conversation invites us in to that mystery – not as objective outside observers, but as participants in the mystery. We don’t like mystery. We like clarity. There’s nothing wrong with clarity. Wesleyan theology says that Jesus Christ is the best representative of God that has ever been on earth. That is a clear statement and we embrace that wholeheartedly. Clarity is great, and useful, but clarity can blind us from truth, just like the sun provides the light by which we see, but also can blind us when we look at it the wrong way. The very power of the light itself is what creates clear shadows, right? I do not reject the idea of clarity, but I am hoping today that we can get acquainted with mystery – mystery is what is left in the shadows – what is not known in spite of what is known. Mature faith needs both mystery and certainty. We cannot say that only certainty is appropriate for faith, because faith is actually most needed when we are not completely clear – when we do not claim to completely know something. I am not asking you to blindly agree with anything I am saying. I am asking you to think on it and compare it to your own experience. Tell me, from your experience is it true that the brightest light casts the darkest shadows? Why would that not be true in the spiritual life? From your experience, is it true that faith is most needed when things are not completely clear? None of this means anything unless it resonates with you – unless the Holy Spirit confirms in your own heart that what you are hearing is true.
So I want to talk to you about mystery today, and on the impact mystery often has on us. We’re into chapter 6 of the Gospel of John this week. Let me present this to you in a bit of a unique way. Kind of out of order a little bit…
John 6:28-30 (MSG)
28 …what do we do then to get in on God's works?"
29 Jesus said, "Throw your lot in with the One that God has sent. That kind of a commitment gets you in on God's works."
30 They waffled: "Why don't you give us a clue about who you are, just a hint of what's going on? When we see what's up, we'll commit ourselves. Show us what you can do.
Then Jesus talks for a while. Quite a while, actually. Thirty verses later here’s what we read:
John 6:66 (MSG)
66 After this a lot of his disciples left. They no longer wanted to be associated with him.
Now what on earth happened between verse 30 and verse 66? What happened is Jesus started saying things people didn’t understand and didn’t know what to do with. In other words, the mystery of God made flesh started talking all mysterious. And it turns out that most of his disciples were not interested in mystery. They got scared. They got freaked out. It turns out that, like many of us, most of Christ’s disciples in his own time wanted something predictable, something they could get their heads around – something they could own. Don’t we today? How many have felt their cheese moving in the last few sermons? How many have felt nervous and unsettled by things I have said? How many have actually found themselves angry about this, feeling like we actually have a right to absolute clarity and to not have to tolerate mystery and uncertainty? That’s a normal response. But my friends, it is a response that deadens faith, and again I say that simply throwing it out there and asking you to let God do with it what he will do with it. Jesus stepped into a world full of certainty – 613 rules about who God was, how God worked, and what our response was to be – and injected into it a new angle, new perspective, and quite a bit of uncertainty. He even spoke in parables – stories deliberately designed to be unclear – and in doing this, invited us into mystery with him. Mystery is not sitting around contemplating heady theological concepts, mystery is entering into something we know we cannot fully understand and letting it become part of us, and letting it grow and shape us. Paul dealt with mystery when he wrote:
2 Corinthians 12:9 (NIV)
9 But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me.
This is mystery. Power in weakness. Mystery deals in things that are out of our hands – beyond our control and comprehension. But we are not taught to live with mystery. We are raised in ways that rule OUT mystery. We must be active. We must produce, and we must KNOW. We must know exactly who God is, how God works, how God will approach us, exactly how God would have us believe from issues ranging from theology to politics to parenting to marriage and on down the list. We must grab God, tell him the game plan, then get him out there catching the passes we are throwing. We must get God to bless our plans. We think God wants to be our co-pilot!
We are in very great danger of mocking God with our religion because of how mystery-less it is. I believe most religion treats God as a tool, as nothing more than a co-pilot, tries to enlist God to help us with our projects and plans rather than helping us get our own egos and need to be right out of the way and surrender to mystery. Some of the most obnoxious, egotistical, arrogant, self-righteous people I know are Christians, largely because we learn a version of Christianity that doesn’t help stamp out our ego, but merely directs our voracious egos from “secular” projects and plans to “Christian” ones. Now, with God himself behind our plans, our egos can really run amuck! But God isn’t interested in being anyone’s co-pilot. In fact, contrary to what you might think I’m going to say, he doesn’t even want to be in the driver’s seat. What God already knows is that what you’re driving is junk and it needs to be scrapped and given a proper burial so that you can find out who you REALLY are.
Colossians 3:4 (NIV)
4 When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
This is mystery! The mystery is that we do not even fully know who we are! Are we prepared to realize that and live into that mystery? When we embrace the mystery that we don’t even fully know who we are, it puts our perspectives and plans in opinions into proper perspective. We live in mystery.
Do you see what I’m trying to do in this series? I’m trying to get you to see Jesus – to get you past religion, past doctrinal interpretation and disputes, and to simply see him in the context in which he actually was – to hear him the way the Jews heard him. See, when the Jews heard Jesus, he was often distasteful and offensive and hard to deal with (as we’re about to see) precisely because he came from inside their own belief system and posed a threat to that system, as he questioned their prized positions and doctrines and spoke in parables. So does Jesus not pose a threat to our system today? Aren’t we taught to read scripture and realize it is always we who are being addressed? That is what I have always been taught. So are we to read about his exchange with the woman caught in adultery and realize the person he extends mercy to is us, about the man whose hand was cured and realize that Christ wants to heal our wounds, and about his love for sinful people and realize that is us, yet somehow believe that when we read about what a threat he was to the religious system, that was only for them and not for us? Do we realize that for anyone taking Jesus seriously at the time of Christ, they would have had to step beyond the box they called Judaism at the time and place bold faith in him and follow him without knowing at all where he was leading? And do we think that we get to sidestep all of that uncertainty and mystery and discomfort because that applied only to them and not also to us and say, “God, thanks that just by chance I get to live in a time where we ‘get’ everything?” As soon as we begin considering ourselves the chosen ones, the ones who have it all figured out, and the ones who have no reason to drop to our knees in front of the unfathomable mystery of God and let out a big, fat, “I DON’T KNOW” -- that’s the final nail in our spiritual coffins and we have become exactly like those satisfied ones Jesus confronted time after time in the gospels. The ones to whom he said:
John 9:41 (NIV)
41 …If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.
It is precisely religion’s rejection of mystery, its presumption that it really understands all this, its willingness to decide who’s in and who’s out, that sets us into the same category as the blind ones Jesus spoke to that day. Let’s look at part of the mystery in the text here today:
John 6:28-66 (MSG)
28 …what do we do then to get in on God's works?" (exciting, thrilling, benefits to us)
29 Jesus said, "Throw your lot in with the One that God has sent. That kind of a commitment gets you in on God's works."
30 They waffled: "Why don't you give us a clue about who you are, just a hint of what's going on? When we see what's up, we'll commit ourselves. Show us what you can do. (dazzle us, impress us)
31 Moses fed our ancestors with bread in the desert. It says so in the Scriptures: 'He gave them bread from heaven to eat.' " (surely you can do better than this)
32 Jesus responded, "The real significance of that Scripture is not that Moses gave you bread from heaven but that my Father is right now offering you bread from heaven, the real bread.
33 The Bread of God came down out of heaven and is giving life to the world."
34 They jumped at that: "Master, give us this bread, now and forever!" (literal bread, of course, that feeds bellies)
35 Jesus said, "I am the Bread of Life. The person who aligns with me hungers no more and thirsts no more, ever.
36 I have told you this explicitly because even though you have seen me in action, you don't really believe me. (had been part of the feeding of the 5000)
37 Every person the Father gives me eventually comes running to me. And once that person is with me, I hold on and don't let go.
38 I came down from heaven not to follow my own whim but to accomplish the will of the One who sent me.
39 "This, in a nutshell, is that will: that everything handed over to me by the Father be completed—not a single detail missed—and at the wrap-up of time I have everything and everyone put together, upright and whole. (not simply my personal Jesus, but the Logos, who is redeeming the whole creation)
40 This is what my Father wants: that anyone who sees the Son and trusts who he is and what he does and then aligns with him will enter real life, eternal life. My part is to put them on their feet alive and whole at the completion of time." (redemption of creation)
41 At this, because he said, "I am the Bread that came down from heaven," the Jews started arguing over him:
42 "Isn't this the son of Joseph? Don't we know his father? Don't we know his mother? How can he now say, 'I came down out of heaven' and expect anyone to believe him?" (denial, argument, etc.)
43 Jesus said, "Don't bicker among yourselves over me.
44 You're not in charge here. (God is not your co-pilot) The Father who sent me is in charge. He draws people to me—that's the only way you'll ever come. Only then do I do my work, putting people together, setting them on their feet, ready for the End.
45 This is what the prophets meant when they wrote, 'And then they will all be personally taught by God.' (scary, because it gets us away from reliance on pure authority – do you think God himself can teach you?) Anyone who has spent any time at all listening to the Father, really listening and therefore learning, comes to me to be taught personally—to see it with his own eyes, hear it with his own ears, from me, since I have it firsthand from the Father. (how do we come to Christ today to be taught personally by HIM?)
46 No one has seen the Father except the One who has his Being alongside the Father—and you can see me.
47 "I'm telling you the most solemn and sober truth now: Whoever believes in me has real life, eternal life.
48 I am the Bread of Life.
49 Your ancestors ate the manna bread in the desert and died.
50 But now here is Bread that truly comes down out of heaven. Anyone eating this Bread will not die, ever.
51 I am the Bread—living Bread!—who came down out of heaven. Anyone who eats this Bread will live—and forever! The Bread that I present to the world so that it can eat and live is myself, this flesh-and-blood self."
52 At this, the Jews started fighting among themselves: "How can this man serve up his flesh for a meal?" (more questions, completely not getting the metaphors)
53 But Jesus didn't give an inch. "Only insofar as you eat and drink flesh and blood, the flesh and blood of the Son of Man, do you have life within you. (God IN you)
54 The one who brings a hearty appetite to this eating and drinking has eternal life and will be fit and ready for the Final Day.
55 My flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.
56 By eating my flesh and drinking my blood you enter into me and I into you.
57 In the same way that the fully alive Father sent me here and I live because of him, so the one who makes a meal of me lives because of me.
58 This is the Bread from heaven. Your ancestors ate bread and later died. Whoever eats this Bread will live always."
59 He said these things while teaching in the meeting place in Capernaum.
60 Many among his disciples heard this and said, "This is tough teaching, too tough to swallow."
61 Jesus sensed that his disciples were having a hard time with this and said, "Does this throw you completely? (What's throwing you now? Does that put you in a place where you are in theological danger, or in the place where the living Christ is teaching you personally, where you – like those disciples – are called out of your box?)
62 What would happen if you saw the Son of Man ascending to where he came from?
63 The Spirit can make life. Sheer muscle and willpower don't make anything happen. Every word I've spoken to you is a Spirit-word, and so it is life-making.
64 But some of you are resisting, refusing to have any part in this." (Jesus knew from the start that some weren't going to risk themselves with him. He knew also who would betray him.) (So often the questions we ask are simply resistance and refusal, like Nicodemus in chapter 3, procrastinating with questions)
65 He went on to say, "This is why I told you earlier that no one is capable of coming to me on his own. You get to me only as a gift from the Father." (Christ points to God – John 14:6; God points to Christ)
There’s our excursion through this tough teaching Jesus did. And of course it all ends with:
66 After this a lot of his disciples left. They no longer wanted to be associated with him.
Of course not, because that entire section is filled with mystery. The mystery of who Christ is; the mystery of how he hangs on to us and doesn’ t let go; the mystery of Christ saying he is putting everyone together upright and whole, redeeming the whole creation; the mystery of Christ as the bread from heaven; the mystery of what he means when he says we will be personally taught by God; the mystery of eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Christ; and the mystery of how the Spirit makes life. The way the church throughout history has tried to nail down absolutely everything in these concise statements that you either agree or disagree with and it’s agreeing and disagreeing with statements that determines whether or not you’re loved and saved by God – that is a mockery to God. The claim to certainty is the ultimate way to play it safe in the spiritual life and to whatever extent we’re playing it safe spiritually, we’re not really dealing with spirit at all but just our own sanitized and sterilized preoccupations dressed up in religious garb.
But ironically, when we teach Christ as mystery, we say far more about who he is than the clearest and most specific theological or doctrinal statement because God is not this or that – God is all, and above all, and beyond all – so we can do no better than to teach and to understand God as mystery.
Mystery takes what already is, and expands it – moves it to the next level. Mystery does not throw out previous understandings, but sees new truths in old understandings. At one point in this text, Christ’s followers try talking to Jesus from scripture – basically they said, “Moses wowed us with manna in the desert – why can’t you do something at least that cool?” To which Jesus responds this way:
John 6:32 (MSG)
32 …"The real significance of that Scripture is not that Moses gave you bread from heaven but that my Father is right now offering you bread from heaven, the real bread.
In other words, you have missed the point. You’re focused on what happened centuries ago. Spiritual seeing always requires moving into the present moment without throwing out the past. What happened with Moses is real, but please do not miss the mystery here for you, which is not that Moses did such and such a thousand years ago. This passage has something to teach you about what’s happening – IN YOU -- right now. Do you see this? Scripture (and the sermons based on them) is not something we simply pull together to prove this point or that point – it’s something that will allow us – if we’re listening – to hear what God wants to say NOT TO SOMEONE ELSE BUT TO US, not in the past but right here and right now. Christ says rather than accept what God offers to you in this moment, you are attempting to use the scriptures to debate with me. That’s not the point – the point is how will you respond to God right now? That, my friends, is where you and I are invited into the mystery!
That was the point for these people and it is the point for us. Rather than argue this or that theological point, God is calling to each of us and the question is whether we will respond to God’s call, or procrastinate with questions. It’s a scary thing to determine to follow Christ. The fact is that Jesus says things that actually move us not toward greater dependence on religion and systems, but on greater dependence on Christ himself.
John 6:45 (MSG)
45 This is what the prophets meant when they wrote, 'And then they will all be personally taught by God.' Anyone who has spent any time at all listening to the Father, really listening and therefore learning, comes to me to be taught personally—to see it with his own eyes, hear it with his own ears, from me, since I have it firsthand from the Father.
Boy, you don’t hear too many sermons preached on THIS verse. It’s a scary thing to think about telling people that God can and will teach them personally. God can teach people personally, but not if we’ve taught them that God’s voice must sound exactly like our pastor’s voice or else it’s not God. Not if we have taught our people that God must sound just like Billy Graham or Mother Teresa or this or that theologian or scholar or teacher, or exactly like some Christian you know who claims to have it all together and to have figured out the mystery.
The Western church has almost completely de-mystified mystery. The Western church has turned faith into certainty. And worst of all, the Western church has succeeded in convincing a lot of people that it is those who allow for mystery, those who love questions, those who embrace uncertainty and unknowing who are the ones lacking in faith. But where there is certainty there is no need for faith. Faith grows in the shadows, in the places where we are NOT certain.
2 Corinthians 5:7 (NKJV)
7 For we walk by faith, not by sight.
Meaning what? Our walk, our progress forward, is not based on certainties and absolutes, but on the mysterious whispers of God’s Spirit.
So I have two questions for you as we close today. First is where is mystery in your understanding of God? Second, and by far most important, is how are YOU called to embrace and live in that mystery in this moment?
