By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
Fourth Sunday After Epiphany-C, February 3rd, 2019
(5-14) Sermon Series: Growing Up In Christ (Eph. 4:15)
During the 1950’s and early 60’s, when TV was in its infancy, game shows were more relational than competitive; and much less technical too. Three of those early shows were What’s My Line, To Tell the Truth and I’ve Got a Secret.
I’ve Got A Secret had a Panel of celebrities competing with each other to guess the amazing, humorous, or interesting ‘secret’ of a contestant. It wasn’t so much the contestants who were competing, but it was the celebrities competing with each other and the contestant trying to keepu their secret as long as they could.
In today’s text from Ephesians, Paul has a secret, not to keep or to hide, but to tell. It is a secret most translations call a ‘mystery’. It is not a mystery like in a movie or a novel, but it’s a mystery that has just come out in the open and needs to be made known. This mystery is the mystery of Jesus Christ. It’s a mystery that has been made known, but can still be just as mysterious as the mystery of love.
THE MYSTERY…HIDDEN (9)
But the first question arising from this idea of spiritual mystery is why. Why was Jesus a mystery in the first place? Why does Paul call Jesus Christ a mystery when most everybody there and now here too, already knows who Jesus was?
Besides, is it even favorable to have a faith that is mysterious? Religion, like life can be dangerous and unsettling, so who wants more mystery? When we are young we like mysteries and riddles, but when we get older what you need is facts. You want Christ more as a solid rock, not a misty, risky, spiritual mystery.
Catholics call the Eucharist or Lord’s Supper part of the Paschal Mystery, but our baptist spiritual forefathers didn’t have room for such mysteries, so they threw that idea out. I guess their lives were mysterious enough, so they preferred a Jesus with all the mystery solved, not left unresolved.
So why would Paul still call Christ a mystery? Well for one thing, Paul says this mystery was: Not made known to other generations (5). This doesn’t mean God was keeping secrets from us, but it means the past generations weren’t ready. What we know about the biblical Jesus is that the world needed a love like Jesus had, but it still wasn’t ready to receive him, nor accept or learn about God’s love through him. The world wasn’t ready for Jesus, and still isn’t that ready, but God was ready, and so were those who needed to know God’s love.
This is why Jesus was not born until ‘the fulness of time’ (Gal. 4:4). The gospel is good news because we can understand it and realize we need it. Even though the world rejected Jesus, he came in the world when humans were then at least capable of understanding what God’s love meant and what Jesus taught. Jesus came at the right time or ‘in due time’ (Rom 5:6) when people knew how to make a choice either to accept or reject God’s love.
This story of Jesus is a story of salvation, not just a story about an event. It is a story of what human power and self-righteous did to Jesus as much as it is a story of what God did for us in Jesus. When we understand what happened to Jesus, we see clearly who we are, who we aren’t, and who we can become, both good and bad. So the story of Jesus is not only about what we need, it is also a story of what we don’t want. The story of Jesus is a story that confronts us not only with our need, but also with our choice.
So, when Paul says the mystery was ‘for ages past kept hidden in God (9) this was not due to God’s reluctance to reveal, but due to lack of human understanding, to sin, to ignorance, and also to human arrogance. But, besides this, there is another reason the truth of Christ’s love was, and still is, a mystery. It is not just that the mystery of God’s love waited on us to be capable of understanding and choosing it, but the mystery of God’s love is a mystery that always belongs to God’s and is never ours alone.
God keeps hold of the mystery of his great love, even when he is revealing, sharing and showing to us. This is important to know, because there will always be a mystery to God because God has to remain mysterious to remain God in our hearts and minds. The day you can know everything there is to know about God; what God thinks, what God does, or who God is, is the day you can always start to claim to know everything God knows, and you can pretend to be God yourself. Some people think they are, but that’s because they have no room for mystery in their own lives.
The mystery of God’s love remain a mystery, just like love itself is a mystery, so that love can remain love, and not be corrupted by human manipulation. Think about it this way: while history can be seen as a story of growth, development, and progress, it can also be understood as a story of resistance, rebellion, failure, sin, rise and fall. This is why the ancients understood Eden as ‘the way we were’, as much as, the way we still are. Perhaps, over the years, as much ‘good’ has been lost due to human rebellion and sin, as has been discovered by human ingenuity and brilliance. When we humans get a hold of something good, like medicine, technology, and power; we can do some very wicked and destructive things with them, can’t we?
So, with our human capacity to corrupt what is good and right, is it any wonder that the gospel took so long to come into the world? The ‘mystery’ of God’s love remained hidden in God so that God could reveal it on God’s terms and the message could remain God’s message of love and could not be so easily misunderstood as a message of our own human making. This is why the mystery comes by ‘revelation’ as a ‘gift of grace, through faith’ rather than through human effort or expertise. The truth of Jesus remains a mystery because it is God’s mystery; a mystery that even when it is revealed to us, must still remain beyond our human grasp so it is not stained with human corruption and sin.
Think about it this way. Do you recall those TV shows about ‘Prehistoric People’ back in the early 70’s on TV (It’s about Time, starring Imogene Coca)? I can’t remember all the shows, but I do recall the images of prehistoric people having to deal with some the same problems we moderns are still dealing with. Some of those shows were hilarious and just good fun to watch. Those shows depicted the truth that people are people, no matter what time period we live in. No matter how many problems modern conveniences or technology solves for us, the basic human problem is always with us. This is why the ‘mystery’ that God reveals has been, is, and in some ways will always remain, ‘hidden’ with God.
THE MYSTERY….REVEALED (5)
The mystery Paul means here, is the specific mystery of the Messiah; the mystery of Christ (v.4). Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah is the mystery of all the ages; or as the movie once claimed; the greatest story ever told. What kind of mystery is this?
In the ancient biblical story which tells us of the ancient Hebrews, Israel wanted a king like other nations. Samuel, the last judge of Israel was against it, and so was God, but Israel got their King anyway.
As was anticipated, this did not work out so well, but then David came along. David wasn’t a perfect person either, but he was loved, both by people and favored by God, who named David, ‘a man after his own heart’. Because David, even as a King, had a heart for God, God promised that his kingdom would last forever. This turned out to be problematic because the kingdom of Israel split in two and the nation was completely destroyed by the Babylonians who carried the people off into exile.
When the Jews were finally released after 70 years, it was wrongly believed that their rescuer was the messiah. This proved to be a mistaken hope, so the Jews began to rebuild their city Jerusalem, and their nation Israel. But then came the Greek and Roman powers to came to both threaten and to rule over them, but instead of extinguishing hope, this only multiplied it, so that renewed expectations of a David-style ruler arose again and again, especially among the poor and oppressed.
Jewish excitement escalated when Jesus of Nazareth began his healing ministry, but it did not end with Jesus sitting on a throne, but hanging on a cross. After Jesus’ crucifixion and death, three days later about 500 people claimed to have seen Jesus alive again, risen from the dead, and then soon thereafter, he ascended into heaven to rule at God’s right hand, awaiting a day when Jesus will come again and rule on David’s throne, on earth, once and for always.
When you think about this story, especially with our modern filters; it sounds not only incredible, but remains greatly mysterious. Jesus is King, Jesus rules; but not on earth. Now he rules from Heaven, awaiting the time when he returns to be realized as God’s eternal ruler on earth, as it is in heaven. Surely, we can understand; perhaps now, more than ever, with the world as dangerous as it is, why we need an eternal Lord, ruler, and King like Jesus; but at the same time when he will rule and how he will rule, is as mysterious to us as ever. Jesus’ rule is already and forever, but it is still not quite yet.
But this is not just a ‘mystery’ we live with, but this is the ‘mystery of Christ’ the people of God called the church, have always lived with. The Christian faith, trust, and belief in Jesus begins in mystery. We can clearly see this at the end of Luke’s gospel, when two disciples are walking along the Emmaus Road, trying to figure out all the things that had just happened in Jerusalem.
While they were walking and talking, a stranger (who is Jesus incognito) joins them, but they are unable to recognize him. When this stranger asks them about ‘the things that had just happened’ they give him a report about Jesus death and how they are so disappointed, because ‘they hoped He was going to be the one to redeem Israel’. Then they also tell this stranger about the strange, mysterious reports of the body going missing, and how the tomb was empty.’
After hearing their story, which is the gospel story, Jesus calls them ‘foolish’ for not believing or understanding how the prophets had predicted all this. He leaves them with this great question of mystery: “Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into His glory?”
What is important for us to understand is that the great ‘mystery of Christ’ was, at least here, not the ‘resurrection’, but it was the necessity of the Messiah to suffer before being glorified. Here, the great mystery is the cross. Why did Jesus have to die? How does his death save us? Can you solve this mystery? You might come to believe it, but I don’t think you’ll ever solve it?
Just recently, I was at a pastor’s meeting in Wilkesboro, talking to one of the pastors who is in a Peer-Learning Group with me. We were talking about some deep questions of life and faith, and this retired pastor said to me: “I’ve believe that God saves me through Jesus’ death on the cross, but even now, after all these years, I still can’t explain how he saves me and why God saves us this way. But I still believe it anyway. I believe it because I can’t explain it, but I can know it’s true deep in my heart.
This is exactly what Paul means when he says the ‘mystery of Christ’ ‘has now been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets IN THE SPIRIT’’ (Eph. 3:5 NAS). Did you catch Paul’s phrase ‘revealed…by the Spirit’? This is exactly what happens, not only through the apostles and prophets, but this is also what happened to those two disciples on the way to Emmaus, and it’s what mysteriously can still happen to us. After encountering the suffering Messiah, the text says, that ‘their hearts were warmed’ (Luke 24:34).
We don’t know everything about this ‘mystery’ of Jesus, but we can still experience it. When we suffer with Christ and realize how Christ suffered for and with us, this mystery can be known ‘by the Spirit’ in our own ‘hearts’. This is the only way the mystery of Jesus can be solved; not by fully understanding it, but by living it and by feeling what Jesus felt, feeling what those first disciples felt, and feeling what God feels not just in his love for the world, but also in God’s love for us.
THE MYSTERY……PREACHED (8)
For Paul this ‘mystery’ was at the heart preaching about Jesus. It was a love so great that it was not just God’s love being poured out for Jews in their suffering Messiah, but it was also God’s love being poured out for “Gentiles’ to become ‘heirs’; that is ‘sharers’ and ‘partakers together ‘with Israel’ in the ‘promise in Jesus Christ’ (6).
I find it interesting that the mystery that Paul is preaching is ‘the promise in Jesus Christ’, not just ‘the promise of Jesus Christ’. The promise of Jesus is that we have the promise of eternal life, but the promise ‘in Jesus’ is that all people anywhere, everywhere by coming together in God’s love, share in this ‘promise’ that is revealed not just in how Jesus died, but also how Jesus lived.
What Paul says here became the ‘heartbeat’ of his mission, to take the gospel to the Gentiles, that is to the world beyond Jerusalem---to bring Jews and non-Jews into a family of faith together rather than remaining apart. Interestingly, when Paul wrote this, he was NOT talking about bringing Gentiles into the Church, but he was talking about bringing Gentiles into the JEWISH FAITH, which was fast becoming a CHURCH made for now being open for Gentiles who believe in Jesus. It’s amazing to think, but the church was originally Jewish, not Gentile. As Paul says elsewhere, it’s we Gentiles who have been grafted into the main branch to become part of God’s family (See Romans 11). Jesus is how we become Jewish, to be a recipient of God’s promise, without having become a Jew.
We are also told that this new ‘family’ of faith, both Jew and Gentile also have a job to do; to make ‘the wisdom of God …. known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, (Eph. 3:10 NIV). When people come together around the mystery of God’s suffering love, they have a new kind of political wisdom and power. It is with this new power of political ‘togetherness’ that they receive a ‘wisdom’ (God’s wisdom) that can influence the ‘rulers and authorities’ of the world for good and for God’s glory.
Isn’t that was what was missing in the ancient world; ‘people power’. There was power in the old world, but it was, for the most part’, a power that left most people out. But, here, revealed in God’s suffering love, is a mysterious power that joins with the suffering Jesus to ‘speak truth to power’ so that, the wisdom of God’s love can bring hope, change, and goodness into the world. Can you imagine what would happen in our world, if people ‘spoke to power’ with the right kind of power?
Len Sweet tells how once in his church Bibles were being passed out to the kids on “Bible Sunday. During the distribution one long-standing member went up to a little girl and said, “My goodness, what is that you have in your hand?”
She said proudly, “A Bible.”
He said, “Can I look at it?”
“Okay, but don’t open it.”
“Why can’t I open it,” he asked.
“Because if you open it you’ll let God out.”
Isn’t this what we want to have happen in our world. We want to ‘open’ the book and ‘let God out’. But this doesn’t happen by simply opening, or even reading the book, but it happens when we ‘live’ the book, in a way that the world in all its wrong ways of power, comes to consider and even be confronted with the ‘all-powerful’ truth of God whose power of love and grace is the only ‘power’ that can rightly rule in this world.
But the question remains, how can we preach, proclaim, and reveal to the world this secret and mystery of love in Jesus Christ? How do we get the world to become hungry for the truth we have to share? Take a lesson, not only from this little girl, but also from a little boy.
Listen: Two experienced fishermen went ice-fishing. They chopped holes in the ice, put worms on their hooks, dropped their lines into the water and, three hours later, they had caught nothing. Then a boy came along with his fishing gear. He cut a hole in the ice, put a worm on his hook, dropped his line into the water and, immediately, he caught a fish. He repeated the process over-and-over again until soon he had captured a dozen fish.
The two fishermen watching were flabbergasted. Finally, one of them approached the lad and said, “Young man, we’ve been here now for more than three hours and haven’t caught a single fish. You’ve caught at least a dozen in just a few minutes. What’s your secret?” The boy mumbled an answer but the man didn’t catch a word of it. Then he noticed a large bulge under the boy’s left cheek.
“Take the bubble gum out of your mouth so I can understand what you’re saying,” the man demanded.
Whereupon the boy cupped his hands and spat it out. “It’s not bubble gum,” he said. “It’s my secret. You’ve got to keep the worms warm.”
THE MYSTERY…GIVEN (2,8)
Folks if we want to be able to share the mystery of Christ, the ‘secret’ is that we have to ‘keep the worms warm’. The ‘mystery must be alive in us, just like the ‘worms’ were ‘alive’ in him.
While we will never fathom just ‘how’ much ‘goodness’ ‘wisdom’ and even ‘power’ has been revealed in Jesus’ suffering love, God’s love can be released and revealed in us. God’s love is not just a mystery and wisdom that can save the world; but it is also the most the most personal ‘wisdom’ everyone needs to know. It is a ‘wisdom’ that that comes to us all by God’s ‘grace’ revealed in Jesus Christ.
That’s an amazing thought, that God’s ‘grace’ which was revealed especially to Paul is also ‘for us’ (v. 2). God grace is big enough to be made plain to ‘everyone’ (v. 8), but it is also a personal enough that it can be discovered by him, and it can also be discovered by ‘you’ because Jesus Christ has made God’s love accessible by all.
There was a soldier in the Union Army, a youngest son who had lost his older brother and his father in the war. He went to Washington, D. C. to see President Lincoln to ask for an exemption from military service so he could go back and help his sister and mother with the spring planting on the farm.
When he arrived in Washington, after having received a furlough from the military to go and plead his case, he went to the White House, approached the doors and asked to see the President. He was told, "You can't see the President: Don't you know there's a war on? The President's a very busy man. Now go away! Get back out there and fight the Rebs like you're supposed to."
So, he left. He was very disheartened, and was sitting on a little park bench not far from the White House when a little boy came up to him. The boy said, "Soldier, you look unhappy. What's wrong?" The soldier looked at this young boy and began to spill his heart about his situation, about his father having died in the war and his older brother having died in the war, and how he was the only man left in the family and was needed desperately back at the farm for the spring planting.
So the little boy took the soldier by the hand and led him around to the back of the White House. They went through the back door, past the guards, went past all the generals and the high ranking government officials and they all stood at attention as this little boy took this private through the rooms of the White House. The private didn't understand.
Finally, they got to the Oval office itself and the little boy didn't knock on the door, he just opened it and walked in, and there was President Lincoln with his Secretary of State, looking over battle plans on his desk. President Lincoln looked up and said, "What can I do for you, Todd?" And Todd said, "Daddy, this soldier needs to talk to you." And right then and there, the soldier had a chance to plead his case to President Lincoln, and he was exempted from military service due to the hardship he was under (As told in: From the Pulpit by Billy D. Strayhorn).
While is one thing to talk about the mystery, wisdom, and suffering love of God in grand terms of the gospel; or even to preach or share this message of God’s amazing grace, it is another thing to ‘experience’ this ‘grace’ for one’s self, and in one’s own life. But this is exactly what Jesus has done. Like the story of Todd Lincoln taking that solider to the President, Jesus has made God’s love available to us all. As Paul writes, “In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence. (Eph. 3:12 NIV).
How can Paul say this? Paul is able to preach and proclaim this ‘mystery’ because the mystery of God’s love and grace had been “made known to me’ (v.2), he writes. And isn’t this what makes this ‘mystery of Christ’ even more mysterious; that Jesus doesn’t just remain a story in history, but Jesus can still become a story of God’s love being received and being lived in us, through us, and for us, here and now, in our own lives?
In the early 1500s, Nicholas Copernicus was a Polish astronomer who put forth a radical theory that rocked both the scientific and theological worlds. He said that the sun and not the earth was the center of the universe. The earth was just one of many small planets circling a larger heavenly body. Everyone gasped. The implications were enormous. Suddenly, we were not the center of the universe. Suddenly, the sun and moon didn't rise and fall on me. Suddenly I was so very insignificant.
The church fought him on theological reasons. "We are the pinnacle of creation, designed in the image of God. How dare you," the priests said. Science fought him on empirical reasons. "We are the top of the food chain and called to have dominion." But Copernicus held his ground and literally put us in our place, causing not only a stir but a revolution.
What we need today is another kind of "Copernican shift" of the heart. It’s a not a shift saying that life is ‘all about you’. That’s a misunderstanding of what life is about and what the gospel is about. The right way to take this message of grace and love is to God is for you, and God is for me, just like God is for the lost and least of this world.
And the only way to keep our focus keep our focus on the God who loves me, us and us all, is to keep our focus on Jesus. Paul put it this way in Colossians, "Whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him" (Colossians 3:17). Only when you keep your ‘focus’ and ‘center’ in him, can you keep your focus on this love that makes the ‘world’ keep going round. Amen.
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