[The Easter Life is] A Life of Mystery (Rock Springs UMC)

Our scripture reading today is 2 parts Ecclesiastes chapter 3

Ecclesiastes 3:9–14

verses 9 to 14 and then Mark chapter 16 verses one through 8.

Mark 16 · chapter mention

Mark, this is the end of the Gospel of Mark.

It's it's Mark's account of the resurrection.

And, and before I read it, I want to give a little bit of

introduction to that because most current productions of the

Bible printings of the Bible will, will have, will go through

Mark one through 8. And then they'll either be an

asterisk and the rest of it in parentheses or the rest of it in

italics, something like that rest of it in brackets saying

that most ancient manuscripts lack the everything in Mark past

verse 8. This is no longer controversial

within the world of biblical scholarship and archaeology.

Biblical scholars are fairly confident, very confident, that

Mark, as it was originally written, ended at verse 8 and

the remainder was added sometime later.

That doesn't mean the remainder isn't scripture.

We could obviously still consider that scripture, but

we're going to stop at verse 8 because I want to talk about

Mark today as it was originally written and kind of compare it

and contrast it a little bit with the other 3 gospels and how

they deal with the resurrection. So just saying all that up

front. Let's start now here.

Ecclesiastes chapter 3, verses 9 to 14.

Ecclesiastes 3:9–14

What do workers gain from their toil?

I've seen the burden God has laid on the human race.

He has made everything beautiful in its time.

He has also set eternity in the human heart.

Yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

I know there is nothing better for people than to be happy and

to do good while they live, that each of them may eat and drink

and find satisfaction in all their toil.

This is the gift of God. I know that everything God does

will endure forever. Nothing can be added to it and

nothing taken away from it. God does it so that people will

fear Him. And then mark chapter 16 verses

Mark 16 · chapter mention

one through 8. When the Sabbath was over, Mary

Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome brought spices

that they might go to anoint Jesus's body.

Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise,

they were on their way to the tomb, and they asked each other

who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb.

But when they looked up they saw that the stone, which was very

large, had been rolled away. As they entered the tomb they

saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right

side, and they were alarmed. Don't be alarmed, he said.

You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified.

He has risen. He's not here.

See the place where they laid him.

But go tell his disciples and Peter, He is going ahead of you

into Galilee. There you will see Him just as

he told you. Trembling and bewildered, the

women went out and fled from the tomb.

They said nothing to anyone because they were afraid.

May the Lord add His blessing to the reading and to the hearing

of His Word. We're talking today about the

Easter life we've got. I've got two more Sundays today

and next week. Next week will be the last

Sunday on this series on the Easter life.

And next week we're going to be looking at Pentecost, looking at

the coming of the Holy Spirit into the life of the Church 50

days after Easter. But today we're going to talk

about this Easter life as a life of mystery.

There is an awful lot in this world that we do not understand,

that we cannot explain. There is much in our faith that

we believe, but we cannot explain, not in a sense of of of

scientific or historical confirmation or accuracy.

There's much that we just don't know, and that is as it should

be. If we could know everything

there is to know about God, then we would be greater than God,

right? I mean, I know a lot more about

my dog than my dog knows about me.

I hope my dog knew more about me than I know about my dog.

My dog should be the one taking me for a walk rather than the

other way around and carrying that little bag around.

You know, I shouldn't have said that.

I'm sorry. I don't know where that came

from. If we can fully comprehend God,

we are greater than God. The fact that we cannot fully

comprehend God is extraordinarily good news

because it means God is beyond us.

God is greater than we are. That also means that there are

simply are things in this life that God has created and in

which he has placed us that we cannot understand.

There is mystery. One of those mysteries in in in

some respects is motherhood. Motherhood is particularly for

men. Motherhood is completely

mysterious, I think. I think, you know, for men,

fatherhood also has some mystery in it.

And for women, motherhood too, that there are things we wish we

knew that we can't understand. We wish there was a manual to

tell us exactly what to do with our kids and when to discipline

and how does discipline and when to Schumer when to do when and

what and how and where and how how to do it.

So our kids turn out great every time, but we don't have that.

There's mystery to it. And it's been that way from the

beginning. I got a video I want to show

you. You know, in motherhood, it can

be a little competitive sometimes women, you know, might

compare themselves to other moms.

Are they doing it better than me?

Are they doing the right way? Oh, she thinks she's a better

mother than I am. And her kids all.

Well, let's just think about it from Mary's perspective here.

This is an actress who has done a video portraying a a fictional

scene from Mary's life when Jesus is young.

It's not in the Bible, but I I think it it could have happened.

So let's let's take a look. So Jesus did the funniest thing

the other night. We were sitting down to dinner

and I said jokingly, Mama could use a glass of wine, it's been a

long day and next thing I know he had waved his hand over my

goblet and turned my water into a a really delightful Cabernet.

I said, OK, OK, give yourself a rest because he had raised our

dog from the dead just a couple hours earlier.

Mary literally said stuff like this all the time.

And we're always, like, gay. Yeah.

What did she say about Star? Well, we wanted fish for dinner.

And the boats came back empty, and then suddenly there were

fish in the Nets. And like, this morning, we're

all just kind of like, OK, Mary, we all love her babies.

We all think they're special. We all want them to do those

miles on SERS. But she's just, like,

competitive on a new level. My baby actually is super

special. She's probably going to walk

before hers. She might even walk on water.

Wouldn't it be funny? I think they think that I'm

lying. Also asked me recently if if

Joseph was really Jesus's dad. Yeah.

But also, no. It's hard.

You know, there's no real good parenting book for what to do

when your child is the Son of the Lord.

But we're figuring it. We're figuring it out, you know,

and that's, that's the, it's the best we can do is figure it out

along the way. And, and there's a lot that we

don't know, a lot that we don't understand.

Much of life, including motherhood in the life of faith,

can feel like an unsolvable mystery, like a black box that

we can't penetrate. And, and sometimes it feels like

we're taking shots in the dark and, and making the best guesses

we can make and hoping things turn out for the best without

really knowing how they're going to turn out.

And here's the thing, humans are very uncomfortable with unsolved

mysteries. This is why scooby-doo has been

so successful for so many years as a cartoon, because everybody

loves a mystery. And when there's a mystery,

you'll want to know what happened.

And if you don't like scooby-doo, I don't want to hear

about that. You just keep that to yourself.

But if there is something that's out there that we don't know,

but we feel like, oh, I ought to be able to figure that out.

It's it's almost compulsive thing for human beings to try to

figure out, to try to solve the mysteries.

We're uncomfortable with unsolved mysteries.

But mystery is by definition unknown.

It's mysterious. If it were known, it wouldn't be

mysterious, right? Used to be mysterious, how

infections were transferred from one person to another.

And then someone said they're little, teeny, tiny creatures

that we're going to call germs. And they go from one person to

another. They're so small, so small you

can't see them. And first people who said that.

Everyone else said you are nuts, you are off your rocker.

But it's true. Now we know that.

We know how it happens. It's not a mystery anymore.

It's not a mystery. Mysteries are by definition

unknown. For my thoughts, God is talking

to His people through the prophet Isaiah here.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways.

My ways, declares the Lord, as the heavens are higher than the

earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts

than your thoughts. What God is saying to His people

is you will never fully understand me, no matter how

smart you get, no matter how wise you get, my ways are as far

above yours. My thoughts are as far above

yours are the as the heavens are high above the earth.

And, and, you know, he said that back when kind of people thought

there was a Dome in the sky and, and you could get to the edge of

the heavens. And, and now we know you just

keep going and going and going and going and going.

And there's, you know, it's God's that much bigger, that

much smarter. That's much greater than we are,

which means there will always be things about God that we cannot

know and we cannot understand. It also means there will always

be things about this life which God has created, which God has

given to us and which God has placed us.

Always things about this life which are beyond what we can

know and beyond what we can understand.

There's, there's a quest in, in the scientific community that's

been going on for, for at least decades now, a quest to identify

what they call a grand unification theory, a single

mathematical explanation for everything that exists in the

universe. I I am not a physicist, but I'd

wager every penny I have that that quest for a grand

unification theory will be ultimately futile.

That there is no way human beings are capable of

understanding and explaining everything in the universe.

It's beyond us. It's simply beyond us.

God is the author. God is the creator, and no

matter how much we learn and how much we know and how much

knowledge we gain, it simply opens the door for more

questions about things that we don't understand and can't yet

explain. God's thoughts are greater and

higher than yours. This is what said Solomon says

in Ecclesiastes. He has also said eternity in the

human heart. Yet no one can fathom what God

has done from beginning to end, from beginning of time to the

end of time. God understands it.

None of us do, not completely. We can see little bits and like

the like the blind man. Remember the story of the blind

man and the elephant? You know, we're, we're, I think

it's four or five blind men go up to an elephant and the first

one grabs the elephant's Tusk and says, oh, an elephant is

like a spear. The second one grabs the

elephant's trunk and says what elephant is like a snake?

And the, the, the third one touches the elephant's leg and

says all elephants are like a tree.

The 4th 1 touches the elephant's side and says elephants are like

a wall. And the fifth one grabs the

elephant's tail and says, oh, the the elephants are very much

like a rope. They each had a little piece of

the understanding. None of them had it all.

And that's the way existence is for us.

There are parts of existence that will remain mysterious to

us as individuals and as humanity as a whole that are

beyond our ability to know and understand.

And again, this is good news. If we could understand the

universe completely, that means we are the top of the universe,

we are the apex, we are as good as it gets.

I really hope humanity is not as good as it gets in the universe.

I really, really hope, and I'm putting every, I'm betting my

whole life on it, that there is a God that's greater than we are

and better than we are and gooder than we are, and that we

can trust in. Mystery also is by definition

just sort of unknown. This is for the for the Greek

scholars in the room here. I have to put this in because my

daughter occasionally listens to my sermons and she is a Greek

scholar and, and she would call me angrily if I stopped talking

about what mystery is, as I have talked about it so far, because

the New Testament uses that word a little bit differently.

And mystery is not so much like an unsolved murder or an

unsolved crime. Mystery is something that God

has concealed but then later reveals, and that's the way that

word is used mostly in the New Testament and in almost every

time, maybe every time you see that word mystery come up in the

New Testament, it is in this context.

This was a mystery. God's plan of salvation was a

mystery. God's plan of redemption was a

mystery. God's plan for our hope and for

the future of the universe was a mystery.

But now God has revealed that mystery, and it is Jesus Christ,

his life, his death and his resurrection.

So it's, it's that's, you know, the folks in Jesus's day were

saying, yeah, it was a mystery to Moses.

It was a mystery to Abraham and Sarah.

It was a mystery to Isaiah and Jeremiah was a mystery to to

Ruth and Esther. But it's not a mystery to us.

We know the answer and the answer is Jesus.

Jesus is God's way. Jesus is the life that we have.

Jesus is the truth of God. Jesus is salvation.

Jesus is Lord, Jesus is King. Jesus is redemption.

Jesus is healing. Jesus is God has revealed it in

Jesus truth, 100% truth. But we have to acknowledge

there's a lot about Jesus we still don't and can't

understand, not fully and completely.

Just take for example, what we teach and, and have expressed in

the church about Jesus for for hundreds, thousands of years now

that Jesus of Nazareth is both fully God and fully human, fully

God and fully human, right? I mean, I, if you haven't heard

that, then shame on me and every other preacher that's been here

throughout your life that Jesus is fully God and fully human.

But what does that mean? How does that work?

That seminary professor explained it like this.

To say that Jesus is God, Jesus is fully God and fully human, is

to say that you're going to take 1 quart of water, like that's

the human, and one quart of oil, that's the God part, and you

pour them together in a single quart container and it all goes

in. That doesn't make any sense.

That's the incarnation. Somehow God is completely both

somehow. I'm sorry, somehow Jesus is

completely both. The Trinity is another one that

that we we say, we state because we believe and we affirm that

it's true, but we cannot fully explain it because we absolutely

insist that we do not worship three gods.

There is one God, but that God, one God, exists in three

persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

And Jesus is not part of God. Jesus is fully God and, and the

Father is not part of God. The Father is fully God and the

Holy Spirit is not part of God. The Holy Spirit is fully God,

but there's not three gods. There's only one God.

People that have not grown up with that teaching hear that and

they say that makes no sense. To which we have to, if we're

going to be honest, we have to say you are right in in in terms

of common human scientific understanding, that makes no

sense whatsoever. It's one of the reasons why

Orthodox Jews and Muslims consider Christians to be a

polytheistic. They say you can't see one of

the other. You can't have this three in

one, but it's not really three. It's just one.

But that's what we teach. And that I used to think I could

explain it. I say it's like an egg.

It's like an egg. You got the shell, you got the

yolk, you got the white three parts.

They're all one egg. I found out later that was a

heresy for which the Church used to kill people.

We're not doing that anymore. Obviously I'm still here because

it it doesn't. Because the shell is not the

full egg. You see, for that metaphor to

work, the shell would have to be the full egg as well as just the

shell. And the white would have to be

the full egg as well as the just the white.

And the yolk would have to be the full egg as well as just the

yolk. So it's, it's a great metaphor,

but it doesn't explain the Trinity.

It's a belief that we have. I'm 100% convinced that it's

true, but we cannot explain it. Not fully, not completely.

It's a mystery. It's a mystery beyond all

question. The mystery from which true

godliness springs is great. He appeared, that is Jesus,

appeared in the flesh, was vindicated by the Spirit, was

seen by the angels, was preached among the nations, was believed

on in the world, and was taken up in glory.

This is the mystery. The mystery has been revealed.

It is Jesus. The mystery was hidden.

It has been disclosed, it is Jesus, his life, his death, his

resurrection, his ascension, ruling at the right hand of the

Father. We say that we believe it, it's

100% true. But there is still so much about

Jesus that we cannot fully comprehend and understand

because if we could, that would make us greater than Jesus.

As we live the Easter life now, then how do we respond to

mystery? If there's so much in this world

that is mystery and so much in the life of faith that is

mystery, how do we respond to that?

Let's, let's, oh, I left out a slide.

We'll jump back that. Well, I'll just tell you because

you remember it because we just read it a few minutes ago.

The women went to the tomb. They were expecting to find

Jesus's corpse in the tomb. They had bought spices to take

to anoint him with as part of the their their burial rituals.

And when they got there, the stones rolled away.

There's one Angel, not multiple angels, one Angel who tells them

Jesus is not here, He has risen. Go tell his disciples and Peter.

They want to make sure Peter knew he was still included, that

Jesus is going to meet you in Galilee.

And it says the women left and told no one because they were

afraid. Their response to that mystery

was fear and silence, fear and science.

And Matthew presents a different picture when the women go and

the Angel tells them, and then Jesus himself appears to him.

And then they go back and tell the disciples and the disciples

go to Galilee and meet him there.

Luke gives us a little bit of a different picture to the women

go, they go back, they get the message from the angels, from

Jesus. They go and tell the disciples.

The disciples don't believe them and two of them go and look for

themselves. Then Jesus appears to them in

Jerusalem later that day, and they're like, oh, it's true,

except for Thomas, who's not there, and John.

Similar kind of thing. Similar kind of thing, except we

see Jesus hanging out with the disciples a lot before his

ascension. All four gospels have a

different emphasis and a different focus on on what they

want to leave their hearers with about the message of the

resurrection. Matthew wants wants people to

leave and and finish the story of the resurrection with a sense

of clear mission and calling. Go and make disciples of all

nations. Those are Jesus's final words to

his disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father Son, the

Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything.

I've commanded you and I will be with you always that mission.

Jesus's final words are to give his disciples a job.

And Luke, Jesus's final words are to give his disciples hope,

a prophecy. You're just, you know, 11 folks

and well, you know, all told there about 120 followers of

Jesus there and, and, and, and you're very small.

You have no power, you don't have no influence.

But you need to understand the Holy Spirit's going to come on

you and you're going to be my disciples.

You're going to be my witnesses all over the world, friend and

foe alike. He gives them hope by

prophesying a future in which they are his witnesses

throughout the world. John has a different emphasis.

John's emphasis is on service and on community.

You have fallen away, but I forgive you and I restore you.

You're still my people. I'm still your people.

If you still love me, and if you want to show that you love me,

then love each other and serve each other and love and serve

the people around you in the community.

John leaves with an emphasis on relationship and community and

reconciliation. Mark emphasizes the mystery

These women experience something that is beyond their ability to

grasp and process and understand, and they are shocked

and stunned and frightened into silence.

It is so overwhelming they can't tell anyone about it.

Now, obviously they eventually tell people about it because

we're here. But the story marks telling, the

thing Mark is emphasizing, is the mystery of the resurrection,

that something incredible happened that shocked those

women into silence. And I think that's a good

example for how to respond to men to mystery.

Silence is not a bad response. Being quiet, being still is not

a bad response before God, who is all powerful and all amazing

and all wonderful. Psalmist says it this way.

When his people were God's, people were facing a threat.

And God says to them through the prophet, be still, be still and

know that I'm God. I will be exalted among the

nations. I will be exalted on the earth.

You're facing a threat that's too big for you, too great for

you that you can't handle. Calm down, be still, and trust

that I will be God. We hear it that silence is not

only not a bad response, it's a good response.

It's a good way to approach the mystery of God because silence

allows the mystery to be mysterious.

We have this compulsion to explain, explain, explain,

solve, solve, solve, solve. Sometimes we just have to let

the mystery be mysterious. We have to say, I don't know.

I don't get it. I can't really understand it,

but I believe it. And here's why I believe it.

Here's how I've experienced the truth.

I can't explain this, but I can tell you what's happened to me.

I can tell you what my friends have experienced.

I can tell you what folks in the faith have experienced over the

years and the centuries, in the millennia, and just 'cause I

can't explain it doesn't mean it's not true.

Silence allows the mystery to be mysterious, and silence is an

expression of humility before the mystery.

It is an acknowledgement that God's ways are beyond us, God's

thoughts are beyond us, that we cannot fathom from beginning to

end what God has done and is doing.

What we can do is trust and believe in the face of the

mystery. It's humility.

Psalm 131 is only three verses, and that's all of them right

here. Oh, Lord, my heart is not lifted

up, my eyes are not raised too high.

I do not occupy myself with things too great and too

marvelous for me, but I have calmed and quiet in my soul,

like a child quieted at his mother's breast, like a child

that is quiet. It is my soul.

Oh Israel, hope in the Lord from this time on and forevermore.

There are wonderful, marvelous, incredible things out there, and

at times it's good for us to look on those things and to

ponder those things and reflect on those things and explore

those things and sometimes occasionally even understand

some of those things. But sometimes when we look upon

that mystery, we just need to look down again and sit quietly

with God. That word for child there in in

Hebrew is is more specific than we have in English.

The word there means a weaned child so that this child is not

at his mother's breast to get something.

He or she is at his mother's breast to rest in mother's arms,

to receive comfort and strength to to just be there with God and

the baby. Baby's children can't understand

their moms. No baby understands how much

their mom loves them. None.

It's beyond them, absolutely beyond them.

It's absolutely beyond us to fully understand God's love.

But we can rest in that love and put our hope in the Lord.

Not in our understanding, not in our ability to explain, but in

God Himself, both now and forever more.

I do think there's a temptation when I preach these kind of

sermons in my own head, so I put this in here specifically for

me. They don't get comfortable with

mystery. That's not the idea here for us

to get comfortable with mystery. The idea is for us to remain

uncomfortable with mystery and mystery is a part of our lives

throughout. I'm going to play one more

video. It's a really short 1:00 and

it's 2 songs mashed together. The first part is, is was the

song was originally written by the 1st singer who Amy Cardi, if

I'm remembering her name properly.

And she's singing about her experience just starting off in

college and how she already feels lost.

And it's just two days and she already feels lost.

And then another woman who online goes by the the name I'm,

I'm sad Alex. And she extends it to 10 years

after college and how she still feels lost.

Let's listen together. I'm two days into college and

I'm three lectures behind. There's this guy, let's name him

Colin. He says he wants to be mine, but

it doesn't really sit with me quite right because he doesn't

really like the things I like and I keep accidentally look at

myself out of my dorm in the middle of the night.

I'm 10 years out of college and I'm still 10 years behind all

those things I thought I'd have by now.

We're still so out of sight and it doesn't really sit with me

quite right. I'm 32 years into this life.

I should have more double use than else.

Got so used to hell I don't even feel the fire when it's in my

face and I'm a plate and I think and am I OK?

Should I change to something safer?

Bat and very good on paper. Settle down and fall in love.

And they were calling and it up. Did everybody succeed now?

Are they happier than me now? I I love this how both of these

young women are simply acknowledging the mystery of

life. I'm here.

I thought I'd, you know, I've been looking forward to college

for year. What can I get away from home?

I come in, God. And now I'm here and it's all a

mystery and I'm already baffled. I'm already behind.

I'm already lost. But once I graduate, I'll get

things figured out. Then it'll make sense.

And 10 years later, it still doesn't make sense.

When I thought life was going to be, it's not what I thought I

was going to experience. I haven't.

I look around and everyone else seems to have it all together

and they know what's going on and they seem happy and I don't

and what's going on and I don't understand and I don't know.

And that's life. That's the life of faith.

Not to be comfortable with mystery, but to be willing to be

uncomfortable with mystery. I'm sad Alex struggles with the

uncomfortable with mystery. She had a bunch of comments on

her song saying, hey, what about 20 years out of college?

I'm a lot older than you. I'm 42 now.

What about 20 years out of college?

So she wrote another verse. I cut it out because she's not

at that point writing out of her own experience, beautifully

written, beautifully sung, very aspirational about how by 20

years out of college it'll all be OK and all of these things

she doesn't understand. Now.

It'll be all right. It'll be all right.

I'm 40 years out of college. I'm saying no, yeah, no, no, no.

Allow the mystery to be mysterious.

Don't get comfortable with it. Be willing to be uncomfortable

with it. And then when we're uncomfort,

we take our discomfort, our uncomfortableness, our fear, our

worry, our anxiety, and we take that to God and we rest in God's

arms and say, I don't really understand it, but I know Jesus

is the answer. I don't really know the way, but

I know Jesus is the way. I can't explain all the truth,

but I know Jesus is the truth. I can't figure out everything in

my life, but I know Jesus is the life and I'm going to rest in

that. I know there is nothing better

for people than to be happy and to do good while they live.

That each of them may eat and drink and find satisfaction in

all their toil. What a wonderful blessing right

there in the heart of the scripture.

Enjoy life, eat, drink, enjoy your life.

Do the ordinary stuff of everyday life and enjoy it

because this is a gift of God. I know that everything God does

will endure forever. Nothing can be added to it,

nothing taken away from it. God does it this way so that

people will fear Him. When we encounter God and we are

afraid before the mystery, we are right smack in the will of

God. God doesn't want us comfortable

before His mystery. God wants us in all and even a

little fearful so that we learn to trust in Him instead of

thinking we can depend on ourselves.

Allow yourself to be uncomfortable with the mystery

because this is the life of faith and this is the Easter

life in Jesus name, Amen.