Making Room for Mystery

There’s probably a Greek word for it; and if not, there should be.  I mean that humans have a tendency to live in a creative tension between rational solution and the inexplicable.  That is, scientific knowledge balances with a dreamland of visions and events for which we have no words.  Carl Sagan, spokesperson for the measurable and the knowable, nevertheless conceded that we humans are “bathed in mystery”.  The entirety of the Easter event calls the Believer to put aside rationality and to embrace the concept that God’s greatest works are those which are beyond our daily reason.

Acts 3:12-19 needs a synopsis:  Peter & John have been accosted by a cripple looking for alms.  But instead of money, they give him a knowledge of Jesus which makes his legs and feet dance again!  Those standing around were dumbstruck, asking how this happened.  Which introduces our assigned text, “When Peter saw it, he addressed the people, ‘You Israelites, why do you wonder at this…?'”  Why indeed have otherwise devout persons through the centuries tried to rationalize healing and similar sacraments of God’s breaking into our measurable comforts?  That God’s People of Old are astonished at this healing is incredible to Peter.  How can they have failed to recognize the One for whom they’ve prepared for so long?

I find that I have to cherry-pick for nuggets of wisdom in the Letters attributed to John.  In today’s reading (I 3:1-7) we again view the Holy Mystery:  “Beloved, we are God’s children NOW; what we WILL BE has not yet been revealed.”  As a good Wesleyan, I’m delighted that this writer is also Going On to Perfection!  The controversy, both then and now, is over Christology:  is Jesus a man with vital signs and other recordable dimensions–or is there More, a heavenly being from the Beginning?   Evidently those who’re having trouble accepting this Mystery are finding less to value in their Church-community.

Luke’s agenda is to present Jesus to the non-Jews, the “Greeks”.  The Hellenic tradition prided itself on rationality and facts; so this account (Luke 24:36b-48) is pretty radical.  Here we see Jesus appearing to the wide-eyed Disciples–a spirit?–AND eating/retaining some broiled fish–nope, a real guy!  Those affected by the Age of Reason are still trying to figure this one out.  Yet the incident does serve to remind them and us that God’s work is joyfully beyond the explainable powers of the cosmos!

As years go by, we learn more ‘n’ more about our physical surroundings, which is a good thing.  And yet there’s a worldly temptation to ignore those burning bushes which we can’t explain, shuffling our sheep on past to the comfort of a water-hole where we can see the bottom.  Don’t!  Or you may miss the growing awareness of the towers of God’s Kingdom, there in the mist…

God Bless Us Every One                       Horace BrownKing

My explorations of readings assigned for the upcoming weekend can be found ever Tuesday at this spot on Facebook; or at horacebrownking.com