The Christian faith is mysterious to the core. It is about the things and beings that ultimately can’t be put into
words. Language fails. And if we do definitively put God into words, we have at that very moment made God
somthing God is not.
Most of us are conditioned to think of mystery in terms of a television show or a novel or a film in which the
mystery is solved at the end. Often right before the credits roll we find out who did it, or who is actually the
long-lost son of whom, or that she is actually a he. Or that Bruce Willis was dead for most of the movie and we
just now found out.
Mystery is created when key facts are hidden from the viewer. What the writer/directer/creator does at the end is
pull back the curtain and show us the things that had previously been hidden.
So the mystery gets solved and our questions get answered.
But the Bible has an entirely different understanding of mystery. True mystery, the kind of mystery rooted in the
infinite nature of God, gives us answers that actually plunge us into even more…questions.
Take this for example from John 3:16. The first part of the verse reads: “For God so loved the world that he gave
his one and only Son.”
So why did God give his son?
“Because God loves the world.”
But what does it mean for God to love the world?
Does God love evil people? Mean people? People who don’t think that God exists? People who think that God loves
them only? If you do enough evil, can you exhaust God’s love?
Because God loves the world is an answer to the question, why did God give his son? It’s a real answer; it’s an
answer that you can trust; it’s an answer you can base your life on. It’s an answer you can know. But it also
raises a new set of questions.
Why does God love the world?
What motivates God to love like this? What does God get out of it?
The writiers of the Bible, especially one named John, would answer this way: “Because God is love.”
Which is an answer, of course, but as you probably have figured out by now, it raises even deeper questions: How
can God be love? Is every experience of love and experience of God? Is every experience of God and experience
of love?
So God is love is an answer to the question, why does God love the world? But as ana answer, it raises even more
questions. And we could go on and on and on.
Truth always leands to more…truth. Because truth is insight into God and God is infinite and Gad has no
boundaries or edges. So truth always has layers and depth and texture.
It’s like a pool that you dive into, and start swimming toward the bottom, and soon you discover that no matter
how hard and fast you swim downward, the pool keeps getting…deeper. The bottom will always be out of reach.
One of the great “theologians” or our time, Sean Penn, put it this way: “When everything gets answered, it’s fake.
The mystery is the truth.”
The mystery is the truth.
Or take the Trinity, for example. Even the best definitions end up sounding like a small child trying to play
Mozart on pots and pans in the middle of the kitchen floor. The more you study the Trinity and what hass been said
about it over the years, the more you are left in wonder and awe about the nature of God.
Think about this: If you study the Bible and it doesn’t lead you to wonder and awe, then you haven’t studied the
Bible.
The very nature of the orthodox Christian faith is that we never come to the end. It begs for more. More
discussion, more inquiry, more debate, more questions.
It’s not so much that the Christian faith has a lot of paradoxes. It’s that it is a lot of paradoxes. And we
cannot resolve a paradox. We have to let it be what it is.
Being a Christian then is more about celebrating mystery than conquering it.
The Eastern church father Gregory of Nyssa talked about Moses’ journey up Mount Sinaiin Exodus 19. When Moses
enters the darkness toward the top of the mountain, he has moved beyond knowledge to awe and to love and to
the mystery of God. Gregory insists that MOses has not arrived when he enters the darknessof the mountaintop.
His journey and exploration has only really begun.
Which leads to a really obvious observation: A trampoline only works if you take your feet off the firm, stable
ground and jump into the air and let the trampoline propel you upward. Talking about trampolines isn’t jumping;
it’s talking. Two vastly different things. And so we jump and we invite others to jump with us, to live the
way of Jesus and see what happens. You don’t have to know anything about the springs to pursue living “the way”.
In brickworld, the focus often becomes getting people to believe the right things so they can be “in”. There is
often a list of however meny doctrines, and the goal is to get people to intellectually assent to these things
being true. Once we believe the right things, then we’re in. And once we’re in, the goal often becomes learning
how to get others in with is. I know this is harsh, but in many settings it is true. It is possible in these
settings to be in, and to believe all of the correct things, and even to be effective at getting others in, and
yet our hearts can remain unaffected. It’s possible to believe all the right things and be miserable. It’s
possible to believe all the right doctrines and not live as Jesus teaches us to live. This is why I am so
passionate about the trampoline. I want to invite people to actually live this way so the life Jesus offers
gradually becomes their life. It becomes less and less about talking, and more and more about the expereince
we are actually having.
And what is the point, while we are at it, of the trampoline?
The point is out joy. That is when God is most pleased. They aren’t two different things: God’s joy over here
and our joy over there. They are the same. God takes great pleasure in us living as we were made to live. He
even commands it in the Psalms: “Take delight in the Lord.” It’s such an odd command, isn’t it? You will be
happy or else…But God is serious about this. Now this joy doesn’t rule out suffering, difficulty, and struggle.
In fact, taking Jesus seriously almost guarantees that out lives will be difficult. History proves it. And very
few actually set out to live sucha focused, beautiful life. Narrow is the way, and only a few find it. But the
kind of joy God speaks of transcends these struggles and difficulties. I love how one writier put it: “The peace
of God, which transcends all understand.”
We are jumping and are short of breath and sweating and are having a great time. When we were too exhausted to jump
anymore, we would lie on the mat and stare up at the vast blue sky above us and watch the clouds go by and listen
to the breeze as it moves the leaves overhead. I’ll be there on my back, and I’ll say a short prayer: “God, I can’t
believe I get to live this life.”
