Letting Mystery Be

Well, another Christmas has come and gone. Even though we’re a little bit past Christmas day, I thought we’d take a look at John 1:1-14 because it is traditionally read on Christmas day. It’s not a birth narrative in the same way Matthew and Luke have birth narratives for Jesus. But, it does attempt to explain the mystery that was Jesus in a definitively Jewish and mystical way.

Hear again the poetic beginning to the Gospel of John (Inclusive Bible translation):

In the beginning
there was the Word;
the Word was in God’s presence,
and the Word was God.
The Word was present to God from the beginning.
Through the Word
all things came into being,
and apart from the Word
nothing came into being that has come into being.
In the Word was life,
and that life was humanity’s light –
a Light that shines in the darkness,
a Light that the darkness has never overtaken.

Then came one named John, sent as an envoy from God, who came as a witness to testify about the Light, so that through his testimony everyone might believe. He himself wasn’t the Light; he only came to testify about the Light – the true Light that illumines all humankind.

The Word was coming into the world –
was in the world –
and though the world
was made through the Word,
the world didn’t recognize it.
Though the Word came to its own realm,
the Word’s own people didn’t accept it.
Yet any who did accept the Word,
who believed in that Name,
were empowered to become children of God –
children born not of natural descent,
nor urge of flesh
nor human will –
but born of God.
And the Word became flesh
and stayed for a little while among us;
we saw the Word’s glory –
the favor and position a parent gives an only child –
filled with grace,
filled with truth.

In this passage are echoes of Genesis 1 and Proverbs 8:22-31. The spoken word of God in Genesis from which all things are created, and Wisdom in Proverbs who was the skilled artisan standing next to God helping to create the world, influence and are interwoven into this poem, so much so that the Scholars Version of John translates it this way:

In the beginning there was the divine word and wisdom.
The divine word and wisdom was there with God,
and it was what God was.
It was there with God from the beginning.
Everything came to be by means of it;
nothing that exists came to be without its agency.

Joh – being deeply Jewish and deeply mystical - was overcome with mystery of the person of Jesus and did his best to explain it to a Jewish audience, poetically weaving a new story with overtones from two traditional Jewish creation stories. In his mind, the Spirit that was in Jesus had existed from the beginning of time. John Shelby Spong comments that, to say the “word was made flesh and dwelt among us” was to say that “in the life of Jesus people saw the will of God being lived out and they heard the word of God being spoken.” The author of John wasn’t trying to say that God was impersonating a human (like Superman masquerading as Clark Kent). Nor was the author of John wasn’t trying to say that Jesus was so awesome because a human coupled with a god (like Hercules), hence Jesus was human and divine. No, John was trying to explain the mystical unity that a human can have with the Divine and how that was seen and experienced in Jesus.

As Spong says, “It was [John’s] understanding of Jesus that in him dwelt both the presence of this “word of God” and the presence of the “Wisdom of God.” Both had been lived out by Jesus of Nazareth.

This is how John handled mystery. Now, here’s the challenge to us 21^st century people… what do we do with mystery and logic/rationality?

To be clear, mystery is something one can’t explain. It is ineffable, one can’t adequately put words to it. Mystery is something that can’t be known or something that has yet to be known.

I’m pretty comfortable with mystery, though these days people seem to prefer keeping “our eyes locked on what we can see, our hands reaching only for what can be touched, weighed, measured,” as Gretta Vosper writes. I also like logic and reasoning. I easily aced my logic class in college. I enjoy asking probing questions, looking for the flaw in an argument, nudging us to think deeper and further. I’m not threatened by being wrong and willingly fact-check myself to make sure that I’m not unwittingly sharing untruths.

Spirituality is challenging in light of mystery and reason.

First, the concept of mystery has been abused by the church and clergy throughout the ages. Many people have asked questions only to be told, Don’t question, just believe… it’s a mystery. Why does God let bad things happen? Well, it’s a mystery, who can know the mind of God? That’s a cop-out. A fear based response when there is no good answer.

And, yet, there is no way to have a connection to the Divine without believing in mystery because the Divine can’t be proven, can’t be measured. All we have to go on is our feelings, our experiences, our intuition and sixth sense. That doesn’t cut it for some folks… especially these days.

But I’ve always said that God doesn’t require us to check our brains at the door! It’s a tricky balance: to be open enough to allow for mystery and the spirit, and yet use our minds and reasoning to determine what makes sense when it comes to scripture, dogma, doctrine, religion, and tradition.

The experience of God, of the invisible web of energy that connects all things, didn’t end with Jesus’ death. We are all capable of experiencing mystery, wonder and awe. And it is ok, perhaps critical to our spiritual growth, to name and claim it. We need to learn to let mystery be mystery. This I continue to know and feel more deeply.

Jack Kornfield talks about mystery in his book No Time Like the Present and tells story after story of experiences of mystery.

His youngest brother’s wife was dying of cancer and Jack got up early to go see her, knowing her time was near. He sped down the highway and rushed through a brief errand at the drug store, but as he was standing in line to pay, his body softened and all the hurry disappeared. He knew she was gone. He called his brother from the car, who told him she’d died peacefully just a few minutes earlier. How did he know?

Lynne Twist describes visiting Senegalese women of a desperate and drought-stricken community who dreamed of exactly where to find water under the blazing Sahara Desert. It took a year of dusty digging surrounded by drums and songs until the water gushed free. How did they know?

Elizabeth Mayer, a Berkeley scientist, was pressed by her mother to call an Arkansas dowser to find a stolen and valuable harp, he pinpointed it to a single block in Oakland. She found the harp there.

We all have our own stories of mystery and connection. Maybe a sense of deep peace, an intuition about someone or something. A need to reach out and contact someone you haven’t talked to in a while. A sense of whether something with your physical health needs to be addressed. Maybe it was goosebumps or tears at a song, or story. Perhaps a synchronous event or meeting. It could be so many things.

The last few years I’ve chosen a word or phrase to be my focus word for the year. This year my word is mystery. To pay attention to intuition and nudgings. To be more aware of beauty, nature, awe and wonder. To recognize our interconnectedness with each other, all of creation and the divine. To rest the rational thinking occasionally and just let mystery be.

Love & Light!

Kaye