Ah, Sweet Mystery. . .
First Congregational Church of Wauwatosa
Communion Meditation for Epiphany Sunday – January 3, 2010
Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.

Ah! sweet mystery of life, at last I've found thee;
Ah! I know at last the secret of it all;
All the longing, striving, seeking, waiting, yearning,
The burning hopes, the joys and idle tears that fall!

For 'tis love, and love alone, the world is seeking;
And 'tis love, and love alone, that can repay;
Tis the answer, 'tis the end and all of living,
For it is love alone that rules for aye!

Those words were written by Rida Johnson Young and set to music by the great Victor Herbert for the show – later the movie – “Naughty Marietta” and were later used in the show, “Thoroughly Modern Millie.” To be honest with you, through most of my life those words have been something of a joke – right up there with, “When I’m Calling You….” – poking fun at the somewhat schlocky musical genre that featured Nelson Eddy, Jeanette McDonald and others in over-the-top roles. Oddly enough, when I was casting around for a way to approach the celebration of the Epiphany this year those words popped into my head – and the tune wouldn’t leave!

Remember what a mystery is – something hidden. Most of the time we hear the word ‘mystery’ and think detective story or a “who-done-it,” or we may think of something difficult to explain in nature. It’s important for us to also realize that one of the earliest descriptions of the church’s worship is “the Divine Mystery” (also sometimes the plural is used, as in “the Sacred Mysteries”). Again, mystery simply means “something hidden.” We come to worship a God whom none of us have ever laid eyes upon. We come because there have been those in history, including some of our immediate relatives, who have experienced the revelation of this Hidden God in one way or another. Many of us, perhaps even most of us, do believe that this mysterious Divine One is really present to us and among us in the here-and-now. One of the reasons we come to worship – to ascribe worth – to God is precisely because we trust that one of the ways God continues to reveal God’s self is in the act of worship.

As Christian believers, we hold that God opens to us and identifies with us in the Sacred Mysteries – to be precise in the celebration of Word and of Sacrament. The Scripture is filled with stories of memorials, of opportunities to recall, remember and celebrate God’s self-disclosure. Again and again, God acts in ways that are mysterious, hidden to us, perhaps even unexpected by us, but yet does so to remind us that God is God and that we – well, we are not.

In making that sweet mystery plain, the Epiphany reminds us that there is a mystery opened to us, one that can bring us to a renewed understanding and appreciation of what it means to be human. To use the words of the prophet Isaiah: “Arise, shine for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will appear over you.” God reveals the darkness of humanity, the cloak of self-deception under which we have hidden and fooled ourselves. The Epiphany shines a light into the darkness of our numbness, of our complacency, of our sin (that self-centered, self-focus which keeps us from loving God and neighbor – and even ourselves as we should).

God shines the light of love into our midst and opens, restores, elevates humanity to the dignity we had and abandoned by self-centered sin. As the great teacher of the early Church, Cyril of Alexandria wrote, “Christ made our poverty his own, and we see in Christ the strange and rare paradox of lordship in servant’s form and divine glory in human abasement. That which was under the yoke in terms of the limitations of manhood was crowned with royal dignities, and that which was humble was raised to the most supreme excellence. The Only Begotten, however, did not become man only to remain in the limits of that emptying. The point was that he who was God by nature should, in the act of self-emptying, assume everything that went along with it. This was how he would be revealed as ennobling the nature of humanity in himself by making it participate in his own sacred and divine honors. . .” [On the Unity of Christ quoted in ACCS vol. XI, p. 27-8] The Christmas-Epiphany mystery reminds us that God has identified with us to know us, to redeem us, to restore us to our true dignity and relationship and, ultimately, to show God’s great love for creation – sweet mystery of life, indeed.

God, then, is revealed as among us, as the one who calls us to loving relationship and hope-filled living, even with darkness all around us. What both Christmas and Epiphany – its culmination – do is to bring the focus of redemption to the very beginning of Jesus’ life and, consequently, to our lives – from beginning to end. As the late Roman Catholic Biblical scholar Raymond Brown points out in his important work, The Birth of the Messiah, the coming of the Magi points us to a shift in understanding of when Jesus is revealed as the Messiah. The first Christians came to believe because they encountered the Risen Lord, which led them to tell the story, which was either accepted or rejected. In the story of the Magi we see that happening already; the Magi, representing us (i.e. Gentiles), get it. Herod doesn’t get it. As Brown says: “. . .the christological moment (i.e. the moment of revelation of who Jesus is – the Messiah – the Son of God in power through the Holy Spirit), which was once attached to the resurrection and then to baptism, has in the infancy narratives been moved to the conception; it is the virginal conception that serves now as the begetting of God’s Son.” [p. 181] The sweet mystery of God revealed is God desirous of being known by all and from the very beginning.

Another teacher of the early Church Gregory, called the Great) wrote: “All the elements bore witness that their Maker had come. In terms customary among men, we may say that the heavens acknowledged this man as God by sending the star; the sea acknowledged him by turning into a solid support beneath his feet; the earth acknowledged him by quaking as he died; the sun acknowledged him by hiding its rays; the rocks and walls acknowledged him by splitting at the moment of his death; hell acknowledged him by surrendering the dead it held.” [Quoted in Nocent The Liturgical Year vol. 1, p. 269-70]

Epiphany is truly our finding the sweet mystery of life: God manifested to the whole world. God continues to be revealed and we are to be the means by which God the sweet mystery of ‘Emmanuel’ – God with us -- continues to be exposed to the world. We are reminded that the manifestation of God isn’t about magic, about flash and show. Rather, God manifests, reveals, God’s self as one of us – taking on our life, and our death and transforming it. God continues to speak through the written Word, the Bible, through the simple signs of water, bread and cup, the sacraments and through the church – us. God, the true sweet mystery of life, revealed is God present in the every day and the ordinary. God present in us.

At core, the poet wasn’t off when she penned those words about the sweet mystery of life being love, though it is far more than romance. Behind the veil of mystery of creation, redemption and everything that matters, there is God’s love. Someone who helped me to find this sweet mystery of life – Julian of Norwich – wrote about it this way:

From the time these things were first revealed I had often wanted to know what was our Lord's meaning. It was more than fifteen years afterwards that I was answered in my spirit's understanding. 'You want to know our Lord's meaning in this thing? Know it well: love was His meaning. Who showed it to you? Love. What did He show you? Love. Why did He show it? For love. Hold onto this and you will know and understand love more and more. You will not know or learn anything else ­ ever!' So it was that I learned that Love was our Lord's meaning.
And I saw for certain, both here and elsewhere, that before God made us, God loved us; a love which never faltered, nor ever will. In this love all God's works have been done; in this love He has done everything for our benefit; in this love our life is everlasting. Our beginning was when we were made, but the love in which he made us never had a beginning.
All this we shall see in God forever. May Jesus grant this. Amen.

Ah! Sweet mystery of life, at last I’ve found thee . . . For it is love that rules alone, for aye!