THE MYSTERY
Ephesians 1:3-14
Prayer: Heavenly Father by the power of your Holy Spirit reveal to us the plan that you set forth before the beginning of time, make it known to us so that we can know, with the eyes of our heart enlightened, the hope to which you have called us, so that we might live for the praise of your glorious grace. Amen.
I'm going to start this sermon by telling you my main point, laying my cards on the table as it were right away. The point I want to make is that if we are to live as Christians, that is, to fulfill our vocations as witnesses, signs, and instruments of the Gospel, we need to understand the larger story we are a part of and how we fit into it.
Journey with me if you will back to sometime between the years 1995-2000, to a little bedroom in a simple Minneapolis bungalow. A tall, lanky, blond teenager is lying in bed in the middle of the night staring at the ceiling fan as it goes around and around and around. As he lies there he thinks:
Why is there in a universe? What if I had never been born? Why do I exist? What am I supposed to do with my life? Is there any meaning behind it all? Why don't my parents fix the radiator so it's warmer than 40º in here, it feels like an ice box!
As you may have guessed that philosophically probing and intellectually profound teenager was me. I asked the same questions that I am sure many of the rest of us have one sleepless night or another. These are the great "WHY" questions that have vexed restless minds across the millennia.
Of course many people have offered a variety of answers of varying degrees of quality to these questions pertaining to a purpose, plan, or meaning behind the cosmos.
I would like to draw attention to one recent example of such an answer, one which I consider rather poor. I am not sure how many of you here are familiar with the bestselling DVD and now book called "The Secret." If you're so inclined you can YouTube it and watch the first 20 minutes of this cinematic infomercial for free.
The movie is a cross between Tony Robbins and The DaVinci Code. It promises to reveal an ancient secret that was buried, coveted, and suppressed. A secret that was, up until 2006, only known by the greatest people in history, and a precious few motivational speakers. Now that this secret has at long last been revealed, all of us hard working stiffs can know how to get everything we've ever wanted: happiness, health, and wealth merely by thinking the right thoughts. The so-called secret that is actually "revealed" is rather disappointing. It is the "law of attraction" that says the universe exists to give us what we think about. If we think about bad things the universe is blindly obliged to give them to us, if we think about cars, mansions, yachts, and stacks of $100 bills--or Benjamins as the kids call them--well then the universe by virtue of the magnetic power of our thoughts must give them to us.
As an aside I am using this sermon to test the secret, I thought for days about writing the best sermon ever and we'll see if the universe delivered.
My point in talking about "The Secret" is not so much to mock and ridicule it or debunk it, but to lift it up as a kind contemporary anti-type to idea of a hidden purpose, plan, and meaning behind the universe found in our passage from Ephesians. Also there is an interesting connection to be made between "the secret" and our sacramental practice, that is the way we understand what baptism and the Lord's Supper are all about, both of which coincidentally are part of our worship today.
"The Secret" as it is presented in the DVD is an anti-type to the Mystery in Ephesians because "The Secret" is all about us, about how we can master and control the universe for our own benefit.
The Mystery on the other hand is all about what God has done for us in and through Christ, action that has been sealed with the Holy Spirit. This passage is Paul's great prayer of blessing celebrating the story in which the life story of every single Christian is set. It is only by understanding and celebrating this larger story that we can understand the smaller stories and by extension our own.
This is massive cosmic stuff. Note the scope of the language used in 8b-10, which I hold contains the central message of this passage. The Mystery is God's plan (a word which here really means something like a blueprint) for the fullness of time (read: all the ages), to sum up all things, everything in heaven and on earth in Christ. Notice here the obvious allusion to the creation language of Genesis 1, "In the beginning God created heaven and earth."
The Mystery is this blueprint, God's eternal plan for the cosmos. This is narrative framework for every story. The question then becomes what does this blueprint look like in practice and what does it have to do with what God did before Christ, especially with regards to Israel.
What our passage makes clear is that this blueprint is the climax in Christ of the same blueprint of creation and covenant that God has been working with since before the foundation of the world and that he was working with in relation to Israel.
V.erses 3-5 of our passage says that God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing, that he chose us before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless, and that he predestined us for adoption through Christ. Here Paul is both reaffirming and reinterpreting the idea that God has been working from the same blueprint all along, doing so in light of the Christ event. The language of blessing and election are straight out of Genesis 12, where God chooses Abraham to bear his blessing for the nations. The notion of being chosen and blameless evokes the covenant made between God and Israel where God declares that Israel is his treasured possession, priestly kingdom, and holy nation (Ex 19). The language of adoption is linked directly to the Old Testament concept of a Father-child relationship between God and Israel (Ex 4:22). In evoking these common images from Jewish theological thought, Paul is reaffirming that this mystery is not new, but really what God has been planning all along. However, in applying these ideas to a community that includes the Gentiles and saying that this was God's plan all along Paul is offering up a radical reinterpretation. This is no innovation for the sake of pure change; no, Paul is reinterpreting what this mysterious plan encompasses only because of what God did in and through Christ and revealed by the power of the Spirit.
Verse 7 offers yet another example of such a reaffirmation and reinterpretation of the creation-covenant blueprint. The language of redemption and forgiveness through the blood of Christ are a reaffirmation and reinterpretation of the Exodus. The idea of redemption is connected to the buying of a slave's release. Just as God redeemed and released Israel from Egypt by the blood of Passover, God sets us free from the true slave master "Sin" by the blood of Jesus.
And finally the idea of inheritance found in verses 11 and 14 is yet another example of the blueprint reaffirmed and reinterpreted. In the Old Testament, the concept of inheritance is closely tied to the Promised Land. This land has been given to the Israelites by God as an inheritance for them to pass down into perpetuity. An idea that is still very powerful in our own time. What Paul says is that this inheritance which his audience of those who hoped first in Christ have been predestined for is not a land at all, but in fact the entire cosmos, a cosmos that is in the process of restoration and becoming a new creation in right relationship with God.
To briefly summarize, Paul through this prayer has declared amazingly that we who are in Christ have received knowledge of God's eternal plan for the whole cosmos. God has chosen to reveal it to us so that we might understand what God has done, is doing, will do, and the revolutionary ramifications that has for how we live now. In other words, we know the story and our place in it; these are first steps to understanding the part we are to play.
This is where I want to make a connection between the Mystery and the sacraments. Interestingly enough the word sacrament derives from our word for mystery. The Greek word musterion was translated into Latin as sacramentum and the rest is history. What our cosmic blueprint and the sacraments have in common is that both help us understand God, our relationship to God, and how we fit within God's narrative. In fact, I believe that one reason God gave us these sacraments is as a constant reminder of the larger framework in which our individual stories take place. The sacraments do so by constantly drawing our attention back to God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In the sacraments we are reminded that we are who we are because of what the triune God has done, is doing, and will do for us and indeed the cosmos. When we remember our baptism and when we partake the Lord's Supper we are put in our place, we understand where we fit into the story, recipients of God's grace so that we might serve as witnesses, signs, and instruments of God's mysterious blueprint to sum up all things in Christ.
A perfect example of this move from revelation of the mystery to vocation is found Ephesians chapter 3:1-12, our New Testament reading from last week, where Paul explains his vocation of witness in light of the mystery, with this I will conclude:
This is the reason that I Paul am a prisoner for Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles--for surely you have already heard of the commission of God's grace that was given me for you, and how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I wrote above in a few words, a reading of which will enable you to perceive my understanding of the mystery of Christ. In former generations this mystery was not made known to humankind, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit: 6 that is, the Gentiles have become fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.
Of this gospel I have become a servant according to the gift of God's grace that was given me by the working of his power. Although I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to me to bring to the Gentiles (read: the nations) the news of the boundless riches of Christ, and to make everyone see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things; so that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was in accordance with the eternal purpose that he has carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have access to God in boldness and confidence through faith in him.
Amen.
January 13, 2008
David Berge
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