Need to Know?

I have no idea how my computer works.  My engineer friends tell me about circuit boards and billions of on/off switches.  All I know is that when I push a couple of buttons, the thing begins to be useful.  I don’t know much about my car, either.  I turn the key, it starts.  My days are full of these mysteries:  my appliances do their work, and I don’t need to know how it happens.  Some of the Easter People continue to speculate about God’s miracles, imposing human limits as markers of their faith.  This weekend’s scriptures present Holy Mystery as a virtue, prodding us to accept that Creation continues despite our meager and mortal understanding.

In these weeks between Easter and Pentecost, we read from the Acts of the Apostles instead of the Old Testament.  We pick up the story in 2:14, just after the Holy Spirit had enlivened the Believers with celestial wind and fire and witnessing in all the known languages.  Were they drunk?  No; this is a mystery!  And Peter followed by introducing Jesus as the Christ to the crowd:  “God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power.”(v.24)  The lesson tells us that it’s really OK not to know how all this happened.  It’s God’s; why should I need to know?

The author of the First Letter ascribed to St. Peter writes, ” By [God’s] great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…”(1:3)  That hope is a needed proclamation, especially in times when most of our cultural expectations are tipped over.  Jaded ones sojourning through the ages begin to doubt that there’s EVER a sunrise:  we need a little Easter, right this very minute.  The writer continues, “Although you have not seen [the Christ], you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy…”(1:8)

So here again is “Doubting” Thomas–he shows up every year on this Sunday after Easter because he has so many fans.  “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”(John 20:26)  John has evidently heard in his faith community, just as I have in mine, the comments that “some things are beyond GOD”!  These otherwise faithful folks would be reluctant to admit to worldly blasphemy (those are old words, we don’t use them much), yet I have no other terms for fencing in the Holy.  Jesus later said to Thomas and the rest of us, “Have you believed because you have seen me?   Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”(20:29)

The Enlightenment didn’t do any favors for our spirit-journeys.  We struggle to keep the mystery,  the parable, the analogy alive in this literal age.  There’s no good reason to dissect the Easter Story:  life is richer as we take it for what it is, God’s affirmation of steadfast omnipotence.

God Bless Us Everyone                     Horace Brown King

My musings upon lectionary scriptures for the upcoming weekend can be found every Tuesday at this spot on Facebook; or at horacebrownking.com