“A Secret That Everyone Should Know”
God's will and purpose is a mystery to be proclaimed
Sermon Preached by
The Reverend Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, April 25, 2004
Text: Colossians 1:24-29
I want you to imagine for a moment that you have been reading a 350-page murder mystery novel and you've reached the 349th page. Following the classic method of the writer of many such books, the actual perpetrator of the murder is to be revealed by the sleuth once all the different suspects are brought together in one room. Just as the sleuth is about to reveal what in 348 pages you have building up to, the climax that would make the reading of the book worthwhile, someone enters the room and shoots the sleuth, and you never find out who did it!
Let me ask you this question: “Would you buy another novel by such a writer?” No, of course you wouldn't. Because what holds you throughout the whole of the story is the mystery that is to be revealed. If the mystery is not revealed, then somehow all the build-up means nothing.
Sometimes, my friends, mysteries are meant to be revealed. But, there are other times in real life when they are to be kept hidden. I look at the world and realize that, for example, in a court of law there are rules of evidence to protect the innocent. Myths, legends and secrets and all manner of innuendo are inadmissible. There are certain things that we shouldn't know, to protect the innocent and maintain justice. But more often than not, secrets and mysteries need to be revealed.
As many of you know, I lived in South Africa, and as you can imagine when the Truth and Reconciliation Commission gave its report on all the things that had occurred under apartheid, many of us were sitting on the edge of our seats wondering what would be revealed. What secrets, what mysteries had remained hidden? Many of us found the testimony shocking. Things that we had no idea were occurring on all sides of the racial divide. We were shocked and amazed by what we heard. It all needed to come out in order that truth and justice might prevail.
The same is true with the inquiries into Walkerton's water or what happened on 9/11 or government scandals. It's important that what has been a secret or a mystery be revealed in order that justice prevail. The difference between whether things are revealed or should remain hidden is a matter of timing.
Now, I say all of this as a prelude to our understanding of this morning's passage. For the apostle Paul, with a classic legal mind, is working his way through an argument. He's making a case. He says he is suffering for preaching the gospel because that which has been hidden has now been revealed or disclosed, in order that the world might know God and might experience Christ.
I want to look at the development of his argument today because it has a great bearing on our lives. The first part of the argument is that a secret has been revealed. He uses two very powerful Greek words to describe this: The first is mysterion, from which we get the word “mystery.” The mysterion that Paul is talking about is God's enactment of His purposes throughout history. That's what the secret is. He believes that the secret revealed is that God has demonstrated here on earth what God is in heaven. Through the cross and the resurrection and the life of Jesus of Nazareth, God's holy will and purpose has been demonstrated to humanity. The mysterion is God's will and purpose.
He also uses another word to describe this revealing: planeroo. The best way I can describe it is that it's like having a package with a magnificent gift in it and the planeroo is the taking off of the wrapping in order that you might see the beauty of the gift within. He says that Jesus Christ is taking away the wrapping in order that we might see the love and the purposes and the grace and the forgiveness of God. What the term literally means is to disclose or to make apparent. So, Paul is saying that Jesus of Nazareth in his life, death and resurrection is making apparent the purposes of God in history.
Now, for 2,000 years of Christian history, on the surface that might seem to be a fairly straightforward thing. But in its time, in particular, it was radical. Some of you have asked me, and understandably so, what I meant on Easter Sunday when I said it was amazing that it was women who went to the tomb and found it empty. Now, it doesn't amaze me, but in the context and the time in which the Bible was written, the women's witness to the empty tomb elevated women to a status that had hitherto not been achieved. It was understood in the time of the Bible that women could not be proper witnesses to events. If women gave testimony it was to be discarded. Under rules of evidence a woman's testimony didn't have the same validity as a man's. But the Christian faith is founded on women who went to a tomb and found it empty and bore witness to the men - who one would think would have been the ones to receive this message or be the first to learn that Jesus was raised from the dead.
My point is that the Christian message in its earliest forms was a radical departure from the culture and mores of the day in which it was proclaimed. It was seen as a very strange proclamation that God, in the form of a man - in Jesus - would reveal His will and purpose. To the Jews it was incomprehensible, to the Greeks it did not fit with their philosophy and to the pagans it was an anathema. But Paul said that he was willing to suffer for the sake of letting the world know that God in his mysterious wisdom had revealed Himself in His Son, in Jesus of Nazareth.
Paul was willing to suffer ridicule, be despised, thrown before leaders and princes, kicked out of countries and off islands, for the sake of proclaiming this. He was willing to lay down his life for this belief that the secret had been revealed, the mysterion had been unwrapped, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. This was particularly so because he believed that the proclamation of the gospel was a proclamation of revelation. The purpose of the preaching of the gospel was to let people know that the mystery had been revealed, to let people know the love and purposes and the will of God, that what had been hidden was revealed in a person. And Paul was willing to die for it - that the secret be revealed.
His passion went beyond that. It went to the belief that what had been revealed was for everyone, and this is critical. Paul understood that the Christian message was simple. That doesn't mean it's simplistic, or that it is without rigour and cannot be substantiated in thought. No. What Paul was saying was that it is simple in the sense that a Galilean Jew has revealed the love and will of God. That is one of the reasons why the early Christians, particularly the slaves, and those who were just ordinary soldiers and ordinary people on the street, were able in their hearts to accept this message about what had been revealed with such fervour.
In the church in Colossi, the church that Paul is writing to, there were some who were trying to cloud that vision and simplicity. They were purporting to add to the gospel their own myths, legends and ideas. Unless you had a secret, elite knowledge of those myths and legends, you could not understand the love of God. What they had was over and above what had been revealed and if you didn't join their party or become one with their views, you could not have access to the secret.
I got up this morning and realized I had been about to make a fool of myself. I was hoping to tell you that Canada had won the women's curling championship and I thought I had seen the news first and would be able to announce it. I had a secret. I had been on the Web and found the news first. Then I discovered it had happened not this morning but yesterday and everyone already knew about it. But isn't it lovely to think that you're the only one who knows something, that you have the inside track, the wisdom that nobody else has? It feels good, but it keeps others out.
Paul was concerned that those who were changing the simples message of the gospel into myths and legends were taking it away from the ordinary, common people. Paul understood that the ordinary, common people saw in Jesus something profoundly different from the pagan culture in which they lived.
In a letter written in the second century to a pagan named Diognetus, there is a magnificent statement about what the early Christian community was eventually to become. It was written to tell those who were trying to create their own vision of what the Christian faith what it really meant. It's one of the most wonderful statements, I believe, of what a Christian is, written we don't know by whom, remember, 200 years after the birth and death of Jesus:
Christians are indistinguishable from other men either by nationality, language or customs. They do not inhabit separate cities of their own, or speak a strange dialect, or follow some outlandish way of life. Their teaching is not based upon reveries inspired by the curiosity of men. Unlike some other people, they champion no purely human doctrine. With regard to dress, food and manner of life in general, they follow the customs of whatever city they happen to be living in, whether it is Greek or foreign.
And yet there is something extraordinary about their lives. They live in their own countries as though they were only passing through. They play their full role as citizens, but labour under all the disabilities of aliens. Any country can be their homeland, but for them their homeland, wherever it may be, is a foreign country. Like others, they marry and have children, but they do not expose them. They share their meals, but not their wives.
They live in the flesh, but they are not governed by the desires of the flesh. They pass their days upon earth, but they are citizens of heaven. Obedient to the laws, they yet live on a level that transcends the law. Christians love all men, but all men persecute them. Condemned because they are not understood, they are put to death, but raised to life again. They live in poverty, but enrich many. They are totally destitute, but possess an abundance of everything. They suffer dishonour, but that is their glory. They are defamed, but vindicated. A blessing is their answer to abuse, deference their response to insult. For the good they do they receive the punishment of malefactors, but even then they rejoice as though receiving the gift of life.
My friends, the simple life. Following in the path of Jesus of Nazareth. Christians do not try to elevate themselves with their wise talk or use their myths and legends to hide the truth from others. They live in the light of the one they believe revealed the love of God. Oh, Paul did not believe there was a perfect church. He didn't believe that Christians were the object of revelation. No, but they certainly are the ones to proclaim it.
I once received a poem that describes the church beautifully:
I think that I shall never see
A church that's all it ought to be;
A church whose members never stray
Beyond the straight and narrow way;
A church that has no empty pews,
Whose pastor never has the blues;
A church whose elders always speak,
And none is proud and all are meek.
Such perfect churches there may be,
But none of them are known to me.
But still, we'll work and pray and plan
To make our own the best we can.
No perfect church. We are not the object of revelation. We are the ones who proclaim what has been revealed. Nothing more, nothing less. But, my friends, I do believe that maintaining the simplicity of the message is so important today. In an age of myths and legends, as lovely as some of them may be, Paul believed the secret was revealed in Jesus of Nazareth and it is our job to proclaim it.
But there is something more and it is beautiful. Not only is the mystery to be revealed. Not only is it for everyone. But also, it is to be received.
Paul understood that the beauty of the message of the gospel (and it's the thing that gives me such pride and joy in proclaiming it) is that it gives us a knowledge of God. But not only that, it also shows us the power of the difference it makes when Christ lives in us. Not at a distance, far removed in the aeons, but by virtue of His resurrection and Spirit in our lives. Paul is not saying, as some were, that we become divine. He was saying that by the power of the divine living within us we can follow the divine. The spirit of Christ in us is still, though, the spirit of Christ.
When we realize that everything in our lives changes. Very often I find we easily become confused. All manner of voices out there and things that we like to see and read. I remember a professor of mine saying, “Andrew, before you ever preach a word, before you ever do anything, don't look at the commentaries first, look at the text, then look at the commentaries. Look at the message first and what it says, and then read what other people have to say about it with interest.”
My friends, very often we become like the Colossian church. We read what all the other people have to say, but we don't read the Bible first, we don't go to the message first and then look at the other things. The danger in doing things backwards is that we lose the power of the message and its simplicity, and we deny ourselves the hold on and the love in our lives that the presence of Christ brings.
When we try to complicate matters, we very often lose the central meaning. Let me explain to you how this happens, through the most beautiful thing I've read in a long time. These are the tremendous words of Ruth Walsh:
I was naked and you questioned the lack of modesty in my appearance.
I was imprisoned and you debated the legal aspects of interference.
I was penniless and you discussed tax-deductible donations from your wealth.
I was sick and you thanked the Lord for the blessings of your own health.
I was hungry and you formed a club to study malnutrition.
I was homeless and you said, 'God's love was shelter under any condition.'
I was lonely and you left me by myself while you and your friends prayed.
You seemed so holy and close to God yet I'm still sick and alone and afraid.
My friends, Jesus of Nazareth, in His life and ministry and in His death and resurrection came to say some very simple things: When someone is naked, clothe them. When they are hungry, feed them. When they are in prison, visit them. When they're sick, heal them. Because this is the mystery that we find in Christ revealed to the world. It is a mystery that is not to be kept hidden, but something that is to be proclaimed because there are ordinary people living ordinary lives who need to know just this: That in looking at Christ they see God and in seeing God their lives are transformed.
That is the mystery that has been revealed. Never, ever forget that it's an open invitation for everyone. Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.