Words We No Longer Avoid: Mystery ~ Ephesians 3:1-12

 

There are some words we’ve learned to avoid. Not because they answer questions but because they seek to stop them. These are words that stop making sense. They leave a bad theological taste in our mouth or often hit painfully below the belt. They’re often good words but they’ve been misunderstood, misused, and leave deep bruises in our relationship with God and others. Mystery is one of those words.

And the strange thing is that mystery belongs in Christianity. We worship a God who has mysteriously been revealed, Paul says.  But often, when many Christians use the word they mean something very different from Paul. Someone dies unexpectedly, and we say, “It’s a mystery.” Someone gets cancer, and we say, “We just don’t know why God allowed this. It’s a mystery.” A child suffers. A marriage falls apart. A wildfire destroys someone's home. A terrible thing happens to a good person. And people say, “God’s ways are higher than our ways,” because we don't know what else to say. As if God is somehow the architect of misery but can’t be held responsible.

Mystery becomes a way of protecting theology or, even worse, protecting God. “God is in control,” they say to the parents whose child has recently died. “God has a plan,” they say to a tear-filled friend faced with divorce. If you ask why God didn't stop it? Mystery. If you ask how this could possibly be compatible with the goodness of God? Mystery. Listen there’s nothing wrong with questions. Nothing. But saying “mystery” in the face of real tragedy is not the answer.

Mystery is not a get-out-of-jail-free card for God. It becomes a way of silencing the very questions that suffering ought to make us ask. It’s a religious way of saying, “Don't look too closely.” And that's not what the New Testament means by mystery at all.

In fact, I think Paul wants to rescue the word for us. Because when Paul uses the word mystery in Ephesians 3, he isn't talking about why terrible things happen. He isn't talking about cancer, earthquakes, death, or suffering. He isn't saying, “God has a secret explanation for all the horrible things in the world, and someday we'll understand.” He says something much more beautiful: “The mystery was made known . . . it has now been revealed.” And what is that mystery? “The Gentiles have become fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.”

That's the mystery. And once you see that, the whole word begins to change. The Greek word mystērion doesn't mean exactly what our modern English word mystery means. When we hear mystery, we tend to think of Agatha Christie. A dead body. A locked room. A collection of clues. A puzzle to solve. Who did it? What happened? Can we solve it? But that's not Paul's word.

For Paul, the divine mystērion is something that was hidden and has now been revealed. It's not a puzzle that human beings are clever enough to solve. It’s something awesome that God has been doing all along that human beings could not see until God pulled back the curtain. The mystery Paul is talking about isn't “Why did God allow this terrible thing to happen? The mystery is: “Look at the amazing goodness of the God revealed in Jesus Christ.”

And that God is bigger and better than anybody imagined. Gentiles are included. Outsiders are brought inside. Those who were once strangers become fellow heirs. Those who were divided become members of the same body. The people who thought they were out discover that God has been making room for them all along. The mystery is the “boundless riches of Christ.” That’s God's “eternal purpose.” And Paul says that his job is to make everyone see it. That's what mystery means. Not something God is keeping from us. Something unfathomably good that God is revealing to us.  Richard Rohr gets at this beautifully when he says that mystery isn't something we cannot understand but goodness that is “endlessly understandable.

Mystery isn't the locked door. Mystery is the open door of goodness that keeps graciously leading somewhere, with doors that keep opening. It's not that God is unknowable. It's that in Jesus Christ God's mercy is inexhaustibly more. More grace. More beauty. More love. More truth. More of God than we have yet imagined.

I often encounter people who use a false sense of mystery to explain some terrible thing that has happened, in order to silence questions or to keep insisting that something cruel or heartless or terrible is somehow compatible with God or God’s plan. They claim that an understanding of “boundless” love is naïve. They love to quote Isaiah 55:8: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways.” And they use that as a way of saying: “I know this looks bad but it isn’t. God does mysterious things.”

But if you look at the context of Isaiah 55, God’s “thoughts” and “ways” are not about being harsh, or mean, or arbitrary. It’s about God having mercy. God forgiving the wicked. God calling people we never expected. God offering material abundance like wine and milk for free. God's goodness being wildly more expansive than anyone imagined. According to Isaiah and Paul, the mysterious thing, the higher way, is not that God sometimes engages in problematic behavior. The mysterious thing, the higher way, is that God is always, astonishingly, good. The mystery is not that God is worse than we thought. The mystery is that God's love is bigger than we imagined. Let me be clear. I’m not saying that there aren’t real questions around suffering, evil, human existence, and God. I’m saying that the concept of mystery must never be used as cover for bad behavior that is supposedly attributed to God. Mystery says, in the face of tragedy and suffering, that we can bring all our questions precisely because we trust that God is fully revealed in Jesus Christ and God is good.

Think about how radical that would have been for Paul's first readers. There were stark boundaries everywhere. Jew and Gentile. Insider and outsider. Clean and unclean. Us and them. And Paul says: You thought those boundaries were permanent? Look again. You thought God was only interested in your people? Look again. You thought you read Scripture rightly? Look again. You thought you understood who belonged? Look again. The Gentiles are fellow heirs. They are members of the same body. They share the same promise. The mystery is that through Jesus God's purposes are boundless riches.

Christian faith does not give us a God whom we can finally contain. Every time we erect a border around God Jesus forces us to look again. He keeps surprising us with the mystery of God inviting us to look again. We thought God was primarily interested in the righteous. Jesus eats with sinners. Look again. We thought holiness meant keeping our distance from the unclean. Jesus touches them. Look again. We thought power meant domination. Jesus kneels and washes feet. Look again. We thought enemies were people God wanted us to defeat. Jesus tells us to love them. Look again. We thought God's answer to violence would be greater violence. Jesus absorbs violence without returning it. Look again. We thought death had the final word. Then Jesus walks out of the tomb. Look again. This is the mystery of Christ. And this is why mystery belongs in our series: Words We No Longer Avoid.

Christian faith isn't about knowing everything or explaining everything. Christian faith is about learning to trust what we know—and what we don't know. And what do we know? God is Christlike and better than we could hope for or imagine. It doesn’t mean we can’t ask questions. It doesn't mean we can’t wrestle with deep pain. It doesn't mean we just shrug our shoulders and give up. Paul is not advocating intellectual laziness. Quite the opposite. He has encountered something so profound that he commits to spending his life trying to understand it and help other people see it.

But he also understands that he does not possess God. He has received a revelation. He has not received a cage in which God can be kept. And maybe that's the humility that mystery gives us. We can say: I trust love. And: I don't understand everything. We can say: I believe God is good. And: I still have questions. We can say: I’m confident in Jesus. And: I am still willing to be surprised.

Because there is a difference between certainty and trust. Certainty says, “I have figured this out.” Trust says, “I don't have to figure everything out in order to keep walking.” And perhaps that is what Paul means when he says that the mystery has been revealed. God hasn't given us every answer. Through Jesus, God has given us enough revelation to know the character of the One with whom we are walking. A God who has been revealed. A God of Grace. Of Love. Of Inclusion. Of Sharing. Of Reconciliation. A God who is creating a new humanity. A table with more seats than we expected. A kingdom larger than our boundaries. A God whose mercy keeps surprising us. That is the mystery.

And there is one more thing in Ephesians 3 that I don't want us to miss. Paul says the mystery is not merely something we are supposed to know. It is something we are supposed to live. He says that God's wisdom is being made known through the church. Through us. We are part of the revelation. People who mysteriously should not naturally belong together belonging together. People with different histories, cultures, assumptions, and ways of seeing the world become one body in Christ who share the same boundless love. The mystery becomes visible. It takes flesh. It looks like hospitality. Reconciliation. Forgiveness. People making room. It looks like somebody saying, “I thought you were outside the circle. And now I know that God has already invited you in.”

Maybe that is why mystery is not an escape from reality or a cover for God. It is an invitation to see God and reality differently. To look at the world and wonder: What good thing is God doing here that I cannot yet see? Not: “What horrible thing is God secretly responsible for?” To look at the world and wonder: “Where is grace unfolding that I haven't noticed?” “Where is love breaking through?” “Where is reconciliation beginning?” “Where is God making a way where I assumed there was no way?” “Who have I mistakenly placed outside the circle?” “What if God's eternal purposes are larger than my imagination?” That is a different kind of mystery. And a mystery worth recovering.

Because the Christian claim is not that God has mysteriously hidden the truth from us. Or that God is somehow responsible for every terrible thing. The Christian claim is that God has mysteriously revealed God’s self as incredibly gracious and kind. God is Christlike and in God there is no unChristlikeness.

So maybe we don't have to be afraid of mystery anymore. We don't have to use it to shut down questions. We don't have to use it to justify suffering. We don't have to pretend that every terrible thing must secretly be God's will. We grieve what is terrible. We name what is wrong. We ask our questions. We say, “I don't know.”

And then we turn toward Jesus. And listen. And look. And pay attention. Because there is still more. More grace to receive. More love to imagine. More people who belong than we have been willing to welcome. More beauty than we have noticed. More of God than our little explanations can contain.

And we don’t solve it. We receive it. Enter it. Live inside it. Let it change the way we see God and one another. Because mystery isn't where faith ends. Mystery is where faith finally becomes spacious enough to breathe and capable to trust. And maybe the most faithful thing we can say is not, “I always understand God.” But: “I have encountered the goodness of God in Jesus Christ—and know that there is still mysteriously more.” Amen.