The disciples come to Jesus and ask, “Why do you teach them in parables?” In a sense, they are asking, “Why do you tell confusing stories? Why not just say what you mean?”

As we discussed last Sunday, the kingdom of God is a state of mind. You cannot guilt or threaten people into the kingdom of God. Grace is the good news. Jesus tells story after story about the grace of God extending to everyone, knocking over fences and crossing property lines.

But grace is a hard sell. The kingdom is even more so. Episcopal priest Robert Farrar Capon once wrote, “Grace doesn’t sell; you can hardly even give it away, because it works only for losers and no one wants to stand in their line.”[1]

Jesus came to the losers to build his kingdom. I think that is why so many choose hell, or why their good news becomes all about hell. Not the grace of God. Not the kingdom of God. Not our deep need for God. No one wants to be a loser, so power and control are substituted and called religion. I’d rather be a loser for Christ than throw my hat in that ring of power and control. The cross is the symbol of loss becoming a victory after all.

What I am going to try to do today is sell you on grace and a theology of mystery.

I went to seminary at Lancaster Theological Seminary. It comes from the German branch of our theological family tree. The seminary chapel was built with a theology of mystery in mind. Light and shadow played across the wood and stone. Stained glass windows of Protestant reformers helped set the mood.

One of my jobs in seminary was closing up the buildings at night. Sometimes I would go into that chapel and the lights would be turned way down. These lights were on dimmers, so to shut them off you had to push the switch in. Most people would just slide the dimmer all the way down. During the day it looked like the lights were off. But at night, you could see the lights were just dimmed all the way down. These lights cast this reddish, eerie glow. I called it “Vampire Mass.” It was unnerving at first. I was scared. I am not superstitious, but I am a little-stitious. Thoughts of ghosts and ghouls would drift through my head. I was thankful I had my dog with me on those nights because whenever Vampire Mass happened, part of me wanted to sprint right out of the building.

And yet this was a chapel. A place where Christians gathered for decades to sing praise, raise prayers to God, and seek to imitate Jesus. How could this be a bad place? Why was I afraid? If this place was haunted, then it was haunted by the Holy Spirit.

To this day, when someone asks whether our church is haunted, the answer is yes. There ain’t no ghost but the Holy Ghost. That phrase came from seminary. Mostly to calm my own nerves. The dog was fine.

Sometimes I would pray there in the chapel at night. The lights being dimmed became an invitation to stay. Who else among my classmates had that kind of privilege? Though there was the one time my dog barked and scared me half to death. Apparently, he had limits on how long my private worship service should last.

Mercersburg, the theology of Lancaster Seminary, was a theology rooted in mystery. God’s ways are beyond our ways, as Isaiah 55:8-9 tells us. We can never fully comprehend God, so we must approach theology, doctrine, and church with humility, always seeking the mind of Christ in prayer and supplication. That deeply shaped me.

Mercersburg was reacting to two things at once: revivalist Protestantism that reduced Christianity to emotional conversion experiences, and hyper-rational Protestantism that treated faith almost like a system of propositions to master.

Mercersburg argued that Christianity is not merely right feelings or right ideas. It is participation in the living Christ through the Church, sacraments, worship, and the ongoing life of the Christian community.

I feel like we are heirs to this debate. You might often feel caught between two groups. The hyper-rationalist would be the first group.

I once had a well-meaning man say with complete confidence that science will one day answer every question. That is going to be difficult since science itself is built upon questions. It is not as though we will ever run out of them. Every answer science gives us opens the door to ten more mysteries.

How did life happen? A big bang, then change over time.
Could you be more specific? We are still learning. We will get back to you on that.

There is humility baked into science. Our models are approximations of how things work, not reality in its fullness. Reality itself is far stranger, more beautiful, and more mysterious than our explanations. So we keep learning. Curiosity and humility drive us deeper into understanding.

To say science will someday answer everything misunderstands the purpose of science entirely. Science is a method for asking questions, learning, sharing with peers, and then asking better questions.

The second group is the certain fundamentalists, with their absolute doctrines and their infallible, inerrant Bible. They seem passionate for Jesus at first, as are we; but we are very different. There is not a whole lot of mystery in their emotional drive certainty.

Yet Jesus answers questions with more questions. And when not with questions, with parables. Why? Not so everyone would understand, but so that those with eyes to see would see, and those with ears to hear would hear.

Yet Jesus’ way of teaching demands humility. Parables have multiple interpretations. That does not mean they mean nothing. Not in the least. Robert Farrar Capon puts it this way:

“The parables are told only because they are true, not because the actions of the characters in them can be recommended for imitation.

Good Samaritans are regularly sued. Fathers who give parties for wayward sons are rightly rebuked. Employers who pay equal wages for unequal work have labor-relations problems. And any shepherd who makes a practice of leaving ninety-nine sheep to chase after one lost sheep quickly goes out of the sheep-ranching business.

The parables are true only because they are like what God is like, not because they are models for us to copy. It is simply a fact that the one thing we dare not under any circumstances imitate is the only thing that can save us.

The parables are, one and all, about the foolishness by which grace raises the dead. They apply to no sensible process at all, only to the divine insanity that brings everything out of nothing.”[2]

Jesus tells parables not so a light suddenly turns on in our heads, but almost the opposite. The lights go out. And there, in the darkness, beyond what we think we know about religion, God, and neighbor: we begin to listen to Jesus. We hear and understand. New lights come on.

I had an experience like that in the seminary chapel. I was about to become a father. Eve’s birth was just around the corner. I had just returned from Egypt. I was struggling through difficult classes. Around midnight, when someone had left the spooky lights on: I sat in that chapel and prayed. I surrendered what I thought I knew. I remembered who Jesus was to me, and how he had guided me through harder moments in my life. I trusted that he would guide me through this too, into fatherhood and hopefully into passing those classes.

And Jesus did. And more than that. We added Sam to the family. We have had more than a few dogs. (If I have one complaint about this life, it is that dogs do not live long enough.) We served a wonderful church in Sylvania. Then we found you, and we have been walking together now for nine years.

Our eyes are fixed on Jesus. Yet the more I learn about Jesus, the less I know, and strangely, the less I need to know. I trust more. I ask better questions. Questions generate conversations. Too many answers, and we become the sort of people others cannot bear to be around. Nobody wants to sit at the table with a know-it-all.

That’s what drives me nuts about our brothers and sisters in faith. They are know-it-alls. All the divine mysteries reduced to rules. The amazing witness of scripture weaponized. There is no hate like their Christian love. There is no bigger ego trip than the humility of a believer.

Those with too much certainty often miss the whole point. That is not what Jesus asks of us anyway. Later in the 13 chapter of Matthew, Jesus says the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field. Like a pearl of great price. The finders sell everything and buy the items. The kingdom is like a net filled with all kinds of fish, good and bad together. We must discern what is good and what is not. And we do not do this alone. We have the Holy Spirit, the teachings and example of Jesus, the wisdom of the church, and the grace of God when we get it wrong.

A theology of mystery compels us into community. If one person claims to know everything, there is no need for neighbors, no need for the church, no need for listening, no need for grace. But mystery humbles us. Mystery reminds us that none of us sees the whole picture. We must lean on one another. We borrow one another’s wisdom. We carry one another’s burdens. We ask questions together in the dark only to find the dawn of Christ’s kingdom breaking upon us in our curiosity and humility.

We do not have to know everything. But somewhere in this room is someone who knows something you need to learn. Somewhere in this room is someone carrying a grace you have not yet received. God has given us the gifts of scripture, prayer, song, and sacrament. And God has given us one another.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Works Cited

[1] Robert Farrar Capon, Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2002.

[2] Robert Farrar Capon, Between Noon and Three: Romance, Law, and the Outrage of Grace (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997).