"this Holy Mystery"

“This Holy Mystery”

1 Corinthians 2:1-16

As you know, life is full of mystery.

The deepest, richest and most complex theories that science can ever come up with highlight the fact that there is still a depth of mystery that goes way beyond it all.

We can study biology and human genetics and know everything there is to know about fertilization, reproduction, pregnancy, birth, and childhood.

Still, when we see our newborn child, two eyes meet ours with a look that seems to say, not “Who are you?” but “So—it’s you!” and we glimpse a mystery that no physical explanation can ever begin to explain.

It’s similar with music.

A physicist can explain what happens when a particular instrument is played.

But why some music makes us want to laugh and cry and dance, why some music is profoundly comforting and some deeply disturbing, is a mystery.

And the deepest mysteries of human life—love, death, joy, beauty and the rest—are some of the deepest mysteries of them all.

I was speaking with the life-skills kids this past week when I asked them “How many of you think there is something wrong with this world?”

Everyone raised their hands.

Some muttered, “This world is messed up!”

Then, I asked, “How do you know this?

Have any of you ever known anything other than this life you are now living?”

Everyone answered, “No.”

Then, I asked, “If this life we are living is all we know.

How in the world do we know it is messed up?

How do we know something is wrong, not right, not the way it should be?”

“How do we know?”

“We haven’t experienced anything else.”

“Could it be that God’s Spirit speaks to our spirits, giving us a knowledge we aren’t even aware we have?

Could it be that we know things are not right in this world because God is telling us so?”

(pause)

We know things are messed up and wrong, but we don’t seem to know how to fix it, do we?

It’s quite a predicament we are in.

It’s quite mysterious.

This is where our Scripture passage for this morning comes in.

Paul tells us that at the heart of the Christian message there is a clue to the deepest mystery of life.

One of the reasons why the mystery of the gospel is a mystery is because nobody in Corinth or most other places would ever think of looking for the secret to life, the universe, God, beauty, love and death in a place of execution outside a city in the Middle East.

That’s why, as Paul says, not only were the Corinthian Christians themselves, for the most part, neither wise, or powerful, but also he himself, when he announced the message to them, found himself in fear and trembling.

Imagine yourself standing up to make a speech in front of a group of people you don’t know and having nothing to say except some stammering words about a strange thing that happened a few years ago that you know sounds crazy but which you happen to be convinced contains the secret to everything.

Would you be nervous?

Think about it; you’d watch the people’s faces and see a lip curl here, an eyebrow lift there, people glancing at one another with knowing looks, shaking their heads not only at the stupidity of what you are saying but at the insult to their intelligence.

And yet there is power in it.

And even though Paul wasn’t using any normal persuasive tricks of the trade, people’s hearts, minds and lives were being changed.

There is truth in it.

It carries its own power—God’s Power—which can and does work even through quite simple and even unimpressive human testimony.

This can be a source of enormous encouragement for those of us who want to share our faith with others, even though we might not consider ourselves great and persuasive speakers.

And this works because the Holy Spirit is the One Who reveals and gives faith to us.

Paul writes, beginning in verse 10: “these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.

The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.

For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them?

In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.

What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us…

… ‘who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?’

But we have the mind of Christ.”

This suggests a very intimate relationship with God.

It’s an internalized connection that somehow involves participating in Christ rather than just outwardly trying to imitate Him.