OUR INVITATION INTO HOLY MYSTERY
Author: Fr. Michael Byron
May 17, 2020
I was always a fairly lousy math student when I was in school
and I got some of my worst grades in those classes. I didn’t like it. I don’t
know if I wasn’t good at because I disliked it, or that was the other way
around. I guess that’s a matter of interpretation. But I do know that one of
the things I found difficult in math was exactly that: the matter of
interpretation. Specifically, at least the level that I was studying it, there
wasn’t any room for interpretation in doing math. There was always exactly one
correct answer to the problem being solved, and you either found it correctly
or you didn’t.
Unlike history or literature or philosophy, where a variety
of interpretations of things could be considered, in math it never mattered
what I thought the answer should be to a question, or what was my opinion about
it.
Two plus two equals four. To answer with the number three or
five isn’t just close enough. It’s wrong. And in algebra, 2x + 5y = 38 has a
single answer. Thankfully I majored in economics, which I learned is one of
those disciplines in which you can make a fair amount of interpretive mistakes
and still be considered relatively competent…kind of like forecasting the
weather.
And very thankfully I went on to study Theology, which has to
be one of the most highly interpretive enterprises in the world.
It’s not that it’s all personal speculation or subjective
opinion. And it’s not that we can’t know quite a bit with certainty. We can. We
do.
But the fact is that it’s impossible to put forward the
singular correct answer to the question, “Who is God?” or “What is the church?”
or “What does this bible passage have to mean?” Because God’s very nature is
Holy Mystery, always deeper and more elusive than the Theological statements
that we make about Him—even when those statements are entirely correct. In Theology,
to call something “mysterious” is not to throw up one’s hands at the end of a
study and to say, “I don’t know.” No, to say, “I’ve got hold of something here
that is right, but it’s the tip of the iceberg.” This study is never going to
end, because it can’t. Well I know that most of you tuned in today to
experience the Eucharist, not to attend a Theology lecture. So where is this
going? Just here: We are in the midst of
a frightful world-wide virus pandemic, and it has plunged us all into the
experience of profound, unsettling mystery, one which none of us would have
wished. It raises questions about medicine, about economics, about politics,
about human nature… And it can’t help but confront us with the God question,
the Theology question. We all want the right answer to all this.
The disease researchers want to know just what this thing is
and how it got here and how to stop it. The economics want to know what’s the
right fix to save the markets and jobs. The politicians want to know when and
how to allow for public interactions. The anthropologists want to know why
people can behave so irrationally at a moment like this. To all of those
questions there may one day be discovered a correct answer.
But the Theologians—and that category includes anybody who
ever wonders about God—they (we) want to know where and how God is in the midst
of it all.
For people like us who take faith and religion and church
seriously, we have a powerful source of strength and assurance right now that
many other people don’t. We know enough about God through Jesus Christ to be
confident that He is faithful and present to us in every moment of danger and
doubt. But that leaves a whole lot of questions unanswered. It’s mysterious.
The potential danger to people is that we can become so familiar in our
relationship with God that we forget how mysterious God can be. Until we are
forced to remember. Like right now. And so we will be hearing a hundred
different interpretations from people about what God is up to—everything from
the idea that God isn’t here at all, to the idea that God is punishing us on
purpose for one reason or another, to the idea that God uses suffering in order
to teach us lessons. Some of those interpretations are based in nothing
Christian, and some in ignorance. Which is why we now more than ever we need to
be together here at Eucharist, at communal prayer, to remember what we do know,
and upon what we can rely to be true. It doesn’t take away all the mystery, but
it prevents us from falling into interpretations of God that are simply
baseless or false. Eucharist can be, in a manner of speaking, a weekly
refresher Theology class.
On the night before he died, Jesus gathered for supper and
prayer with his closest friends, all of whom were confused and upset and
afraid, just as many of us are now. And we heard his farewell message in the
gospel today:
“I will always be with you, to protect and console you. For a time you will not
see it, but it will always be so. And any other interpretation of events is bad
Theology.
I will live in you, and you in me.”
This we know.
And he said one more thing:
“If you love me too, then do as I have shown. That includes care for the weak
and poor; it includes suffering for what sometimes seems to be no good reason,
and it includes trusting in a time of sorrow.”
Perhaps it’s that last part that is being most tested now,
which is why we need to hear it yet again, to hold each other up thru a time of
true mystery, and to offer our worship.
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