We all love a mystery. And we enjoy following Sherlock Holmes or Lord Peter Wimsey, Falco, Cadfael, Miss Marple, or whoever else it may be, as they unravel it for us. But the greatest mystery of all is life itself. And that is so much harder to unravel. Is there a God out there? If there is, why did He create this world, teeming with so much life, and then give us the freedom to build or to destroy, to love or to hate, and to ask so many awkward questions? If there is a God, what does He think He’s doing, and what, if anything, am I here for? Is there any purpose in my existence, or is death simply the last full stop on the final page of a book which ends without coming to any conclusion?
I suppose most of us are here tonight because we are at the very least inclined to the view, contrary to that proclaimed on the Humanist bus adverts, that probably there is a God. What we do here in music and prayer and stillness, as well as in our speaking and listening, helps us at least sometimes, however provisionally, however tentatively, towards answering those big existential questions. We continue to wrestle with our doubts and fears, and we know that we cannot prove that the time we spend in worship has purpose and value. Yet we find that what we believe helps us to make sense of the lives we lead out there beyond the doors of the church, and as we cling to that faith, we are given just enough understanding of the mystery that is life to carry us forward for another day, another week, another year.
Yet St Paul insists that the mystery has now been revealed. What mystery would he have had in mind? How can he be so sure that it has been laid bare? If the revelation to which he points was enough to answer the questions that were being asked in the first century, is it still relevant to the questions we ask in the twenty-first century? Can we draw strength from his assurance, and if so, how?
In modern usage a mystery ceases to be a mystery as soon as it can be satisfactorily explained. When we know ‘whodunit’ the mystery is over. In New Testament usage however, a mystery is a secret which has been, or is being revealed; but because it is a divine secret, it remains a mystery, a truth accessible only to those to whom understanding has been given.
For Paul, the first important aspect of this great mystery is the way Christ has opened salvation to Gentile believers on the same terms as to Jews. There had been hints of this in the Old Testament, as we saw for example in this evening’s reading from Isaiah. The Jews of Isaiah’s day would certainly have regarded both eunuchs and foreigners as second-class citizens, but Isaiah insists that the Lord will give to the eunuch who holds fast to God’s promises an everlasting name that shall be better than any number of sons and daughters. Foreigners likewise – Gentiles as Paul would have called them – if they keep the law and hold fast to God’s promises, their sacrifices will be accepted, and ‘my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples’ (Is 56.7). In short, the God of Israel has been revealed as the God of all. His Spirit has been poured out on all who believe in Him, with no distinction between Jew and Gentile. Moreover, if the Old Testament was inclined to see a distinction between the normative, heterosexual, God-fearing man (and I do mean man), and others on the fringes of society – like the eunuchs and foreigners in our first reading – it has now been revealed in and through Jesus that the love of God reaches out to us all, without distinction, whether we are male or female, weak or strong, homosexual or heterosexual.
If the first aspect of the mystery now revealed in Christ is this rich fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy, the second aspect is the way in which the divine secret, God’s plan for the salvation of the world, has fulfilled the God-given aspiration for communion with the divine which lay at the heart of the so-called Mystery religions of the world in which Paul was proclaiming the gospel. In the Mystery religions, the mysteries were the secret rites into which the worshippers were initiated. Paul is not suggesting that the rites of Christian worship are a mystery in that sense. In particular the mystery that has been revealed in Jesus is not a secret reserved to an elite minority. The mystery to which we as Christians have access is a far more wonderful mystery than anything that might be vouchsafed to the devotee of a Mystery religion. As Christians we have received the Holy Spirit, and so are drawn into a profound and intimate knowledge of God by virtue of our incorporation into the very body of Christ, ‘in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge’ as he puts it a few verses after our reading (Col 2.3). That is indeed a breath-taking claim of such vast scope as to answer all our questions.
The mystery has now been revealed, and it is both more wonderful than we could have imagined, and more accessible than we could have supposed – Christ in you, the hope of glory. The mystery is not something out there to be discovered by much study or even the undertaking of an extensive programme of spiritual exercises. It is the gift of God, freely and generously available to all who respond to the love of God, as we have seen and known it in the person of Jesus Christ. And it is ours, by his grace, if we will put our trust in Him, and so allow his Spirit to enter into our hearts and transform our lives. The mystery at the heart of our religion is the Spirit of one who is Lord of all things, yet came to live among us, not just to show us what God is like, but to act in accordance with God’s nature. And it turns out that the dominant characteristic of God is not the awesome power by which he made the world. In Jesus we see that the mystery at the heart of God’s world is the love by which he reaches out to us, the love which made him so vulnerable that we killed him. And yet that divine love was so powerful that in Jesus it triumphed over all the forces of envy and malice and human power that were ranged against him, and supremely over death itself. By the power of his resurrection we know that, dwelling in Him, death is not after all the last full stop on the final page of our lives, but rather the gateway to a new stage of life, freed from the limitations of our bodies as well as the temptations that drag us down.
The mystery has been revealed. Our perception of it is spiritual, but it is grounded in historical reality, it is eternal in scope, since it relates to the divine plan of salvation, and it is eschatological in the sense that it will only be fully realised at the end of time. Mysteries don’t come any bigger than that. However, the invitation to us is not so much to comprehend this great mystery intellectually, as to accept it, to believe it, to live it. That is what we are called to do, both as individuals in whom Christ dwells as we dwell in Him, and as members of the church which is his body in the world to-day. As we share in his life, by the power of His spirit dwelling within us, we shall enter into the mystery that has been revealed in Christ, discovering what it means, sometimes painfully, sometimes joyfully, in this world never completely, but in the end triumphantly. The mystery has been revealed … Christ in you, the hope of glory.