SECRETS AND MYSTERIES
Scripture
The Big
Secret. Some people like to keep
secrets. Have you ever noticed how
secretive doctors are with their notes?
I was thinking of that recently when I read these Top Ten Actual
Doctor’s Notes written down by actual doctors:
10. The patient has been depressed since she
began seeing me in 1993.
9.
Discharge status:
Alive but without my permission.
8.
The patient refused autopsy.
7.
She is numb from her toes down.
6.
While in ER, she was examined, x-rated and sent
home.
5.
She stated that she had been constipated for most
of her life, until she got a divorce.
4.
She has no rigors or shaking chills, but her
husband states she was very hot in bed last night.
3. Patient was alert and unresponsive.
2.
Patient has two teenage children, but no other
abnormalities.
1.
Rectal examination revealed a normal size thyroid.
I guess some
things are better kept secret, aren’t they?
The Big Secret has
been the theme of our pledge campaign, the secret being that the more you give the
more you are blessed in return. And with
this theme it occurs to me that we need to be careful here that our religion
doesn’t give way to superstition.
Let me tell you
what I mean: so many religious groups
gather for worship to enact a quid pro quo with God – I’ll give you my praise,
Lord, if you make me successful. This
“pray for success” faith is really no faith at all. Rather than gathering to worship to be
empowered to do God’s service, some of these folks come to church to put God in
THEIR service.
Some of you may
have read The Secret, a book recently
written by Rhonda Byrne, which promises that “your thoughts control the
universe.” The secret, according to
Byrne, is that thinking about your desires “is exactly like placing an order
from a catalogue.... You must know that what you want is yours the moment you
ask.” So I guess you can forget about
education, effort, planning, performance.
Everything you want – money, power, fancy new car, a really good haircut
– is yours simply by wanting it enough.
Of course there’s
a dark side to all this. It means that
if you don’t get what you want, then you’re to blame. If you aren’t successful, if you become ill,
if your family is struck by tragedy, well, then it’s all your fault! You just weren’t thinking hard enough, I
guess. You understand why I would call
this superstition rather than religion.
True religion,
real faith, it seems to me, doesn’t so much deal in secrets as in mystery. That’s what I think Jesus is telling us in our
Gospel Reading this morning, in telling us the Parable of the Seed.
We’ve got plenty
of master gardeners in this congregation.
You could tell us the secrets of to make a seed grow, the understanding
of which would enable us to have a “green” thumb. But Jesus isn’t giving us the secrets of a
green thumb in our Gospel Reading this morning.
No, he’s dealing in mystery, not in secrets.
“The
“The
This is a mystery
that Jesus is asking us to experience and embrace, the very mystery of life,
the mystery of grace, the mystery of the blessings that come our way that we don’t
earn, we don’t anticipate, we don’t even ask for. Not secrets, but mystery. That’s what’s at the heart of our faith.
The Danish physicist
Niels Bohr began to unlock the secrets of quantum physics but viewed his own
stock-in-trade as more mystery than secrets.
In explaining his work, he liked to tell the story about the young
rabbinical student who went to hear three lectures by a famous rabbi. Afterward the student told his friends, “The first talk was brilliant, clear and
simple. I understood every word. The second was even better, deep and
subtle. I didn’t understand much, but
the rabbi understood all of it. The
third was by far the finest, a great and unforgettable experience. I understood nothing and rabbi didn’t
understand much either.”
Maybe that’s the
way you experience my preaching, and I hope you understand that I understand
that I don’t understand, not fully. “We see through a glass darkly,” “We see in
a mirror dimly,” Paul tells us, reminding us that our faith is ultimately a
mystery and a gift, not a secret to be learned or a skill to be acquired. A mystery.
“So now what?” you might ask. If it’s all such a mystery, what possible difference
could this mystery make in our lives?
In Zen Buddhism,
monks remain in monasteries until they achieve enlightenment. But once they achieve enlightenment, then
they must leave. Well, there was one
monk who had been in the monastery for many, many years. He had seen friends, fellow monks who had
come to the monastery at the same time he had, achieve enlightenment and
leave. But he was still there.
And, to tell the
truth, he was content to remain there in his studies, his days of
contemplation, months of meditation. And
he wasn't certain what he would do with his life once he had achieved enlightenment. But there came a time, perhaps it was even a
specific moment, when he had achieved enlightenment. And now it was time for him to leave.
Anticipating his
leave-taking, the monk had mixed feelings:
sad to leave the beauty and security of that place, uncertain about his
future, but excited about the gift that was traditionally given to each monk
upon leaving. You see the monastery was
a treasure-house of rare scrolls, beautiful works of art, and precious
jewels. As he waited in line before the
master, he saw many others receive beautiful and very valuable gifts. But as the monk stepped up to the Zen master,
he tried to hide his own anticipation.
The master
congratulated him on his enlightenment and told him what he already knew, that
now it was time for him to leave. Then
the master asked him what he planned to do now.
The monk replied that he really didn't know, but planned to return to
his ancestral home. The master nodded
and then handed him his gift – it was a box.
It was black, about as large as a loaf of bread, and beautifully carved
with mother-of-pearl in-laid. The monk
was pleased by the kind of simple grace and austere beauty of the gift. But he was most excited by what could be
inside of it. Could it be jewels? Or some valuable scroll of ancient
wisdom? Anxiously, he opened the box,
and inside of it was – nothing. It was
empty. Hiding his disappointment from
his master, he tried to summon a gracious thank-you. Then he left the master and the monastery, and
not knowing where else to go, he returned to his ancestral home.
It was a humble
place, simply constructed. But with the
death of his parents years before, it had still awaited him when he returned
from the monastery. Despite his
disappointment with the gift he had been given, the monk put it in a place of
honor in his home, on the mantle in the living room. Stepping back to look at it there, suddenly
the mantle didn't seem quite right to the monk.
So he began rearranging the other things that were on the mantle and
actually spent almost two hours before it finally looked right to him.
Stepping back in
satisfaction from the mantle, the monk turned to step out when suddenly the
living room didn't seem quite right to him.
With the mantle the way it was now arranged, the living room seemed
wrong somehow. And so he began to rearrange
again, this time moving the few screens, small tables, and pillows until he was
finally satisfied with the arrangement.
Finding himself
hungry, the monk went into his eating and cooking room, but found himself with
the same feeling of wrongness. With the
mantle the way it was, and the living room the way it was, his eating room
looked wrong. So the monk repeated his
rearranging. After a labor of four hours
and after finally eating, he went into his sleeping room to rest, but again,
with the mantle just so and the living room rearranged and the eating room the
way it was, the sleeping room needed to be arranged. So he set to his labors once again and spent
almost twelve hours rearranging the mats, pillows, and screens of his sleeping
room until finally the room seemed right.
By this time the monk was exhausted so he threw himself down and slept
for many hours.
When he awoke, he
decided to take a nice stroll in the garden.
But when he looked out on his garden, it happened again – with the
mantle just so, the living room just right, the eating room like it was, and
his sleeping room rearranged, the garden had to be redone. But, of course, this was a longer labor for
him. Ultimately, it took him months and
months till the proper plants could be in a proper arrangement so that his
feeling of wrongness went away. Finally,
his home seemed complete.
But then one
morning he left his garden and he turned to face the world. Now the feeling was stronger than ever. Deeply disturbed by the events that he had
gone through as a result of the master's gift of the box, he wrote his master a
note, relating to him what had happened after he had left the monastery and
returned home. He explained that when he
put the box on the mantle, the mantle no longer seemed right. And when that was done, the living room
didn't seem right. After he worked on
that, the eating room, the sleeping room, and then the garden had to be
rearranged because of the box. And then
he had looked at the world ... What did the master expect? For him to rearrange the whole world?
A few weeks later,
the monk received a reply from his Zen master.
The reply had only one word on it – "Yes." And
the monk left his home and went into the world.
The Big Secret is really no secret at all, at least not the kind of
secret some people hope to discover so that they can use it to get what they
want. No, the Big Secret is a mystery,
the mystery that God is alive and active in this world; that God has hopes for
the future; that God has chosen you and I as partners in this project of making
those hopes come to fruition.
The seed has been scattered, planted by God in you and me. And while we were sleeping, while we were
working, while we were doing one of a thousand other things, it has sprouted
and grown. And now the harvest has come,
a harvest of higher hopes, renewed commitment, transformed life. That’s the Big Secret. Something that is no secret at all. It’s a mystery, the marvelous mystery on
which our faith is founded. Amen.
Sermon preached by Reverend Stephen P. Savides at First Congregational
United Church of Christ,