Get with the Mystery!

9 Pentecost, Cp11, July 21, 2013   

Gen. 18:1-14    Ps.15  

Col. 1:21-29  Luke 10:38-42 

Lectionary Link

  The word mystery has various meanings for us today.  When we think of literature and cinema, Mystery is a genre which sometimes is synonymous with detective stories; the mystery is "Who dunnit?"  And the detective is the one who, if successful, solves the crime.  Of course there are many other varieties of the genre of Mystery in literature and cinema and television.

  In the study of religion, there is a classification of the Greco-Hellenistic religions as "Mystery Religions."  In various Temple based communities, initiates were initiated into the particular "mysteries" or secrets about the life of the gods and goddesses.

  Christianity was born within the crucible of the various expressions of Judaism at the time of Jesus and the many kinds of Mystery Religions which was part of the Roman Occupation of Palestine and the cities of Asia Minor. 

  Mystery religious were regarded to be false religions or competitors to the message of Christ since they centered upon the gods and goddess of the Greco-Roman religions and the Roman army also integrated Mithraism from Persian into the pantheon of Greco-Roman gods and goddesses.

  In Greco-Roman society, a person could have three religious perspectives; one was the civil religion in the cult of the Emperor, the other was a more philosophical religion and the third a more secretive Mystery Religion participation.  There were secrets and secret rites involved in the practice of a Mystery Religion.  We know about Mystery Religions from Christian writers who wrote against their practice and how they had come to influence those Christians who were regarded as heretics.  The success of Christianity meant that many of the writings of the Mystery Religions were destroyed.  One of the sad facts of human history is that doctrinal and ideological winners usually destroyed the writings of the losers.

  Tarsus where St. Paul was born was a prominent center for Mystery Religion.  The early Christian Movement could have a mystery and secretive status within the Roman societies, though the Christians were often persecuted because they refused to participate in the Roman civil religion, the cult of the Emperor.

  The Christian movement shared common language use with the people in the places where it grew and blossomed.  It is not surprising that things which are common to Mystery Religions are also found in the Christian movement.  All of the Mystery religions had sacred meals,  ritual baths as part of initiation and Divine human beings who had died and had rebirths, and who had goddess consorts or mothers.

  St. Paul had come into an experience of a mystery; he had been knocked to the ground by a mystical experience.  In this experience, he found that the physical Jesus of Nazareth could now be experienced the Risen Christ as a new and particular personal presence of God in his life.  After this experience, he coupled his study of Judaism with the religious vocabulary of his learning context and he gave birth to Gentile Christianity.

  St. Paul received a mystery that could compete with the mysteries of the Mystery Religions of his time.  The experience of St. Paul could be replicated by others who Paul found could also have an experience of the Risen Christ.  The entire Christian Movement became constituted by people who had this experience and shared it and were fascinated to see that they had the ability to transmit this experience in a communal way.  What the church did was to encode this Risen Christ Mystery experience within secretive writings which were shared only with the initiated members of the body of Christ.  Those who were in the body of Christ, understood themselves to be under the directed guidance of Christ as their head.  They were excited to witness the replication of the experience of the Risen Christ through what they called the receiving of the Holy Spirit.

  The writings of the church initially were secretive and they were coded.  How did a person have the life of Christ born within oneself?  They had this experience of being inundated, surrounded, cleansed and bathed by the Holy Spirit.  They were over-shadowed by the Holy Spirit.  So one can easily see how the early Christians coded this experience in the life of the Virgin Mary.  The Virgin Mary was every Christian whose life had been miraculously over-shadowed by the Holy Spirit and the life of Christ was born within a person who was initiated and began the life process of spiritual transformation.

  So, in the Epistle that we have read today, one finds that Paul is touting to fellow initiates this secret Mystery.  What is the mystery?  Christ in you, the hope of glory.  If one lived in Roman Society, one would be tempted to want the benefits of participating in their civil religion, the cult of the Emperor.  One could come to public recognition through participation in the Roman Civil religion.  But Paul said, to know the birth of Christ in oneself was to know such a particular presence of God in such a personal way that one had the fame and glory of being known and recognized by Christ.  One did not need the civil religion of Roman society because of the experience of being profoundly known and loved by Christ.

  The early Christian community also practiced the continual event of the reception of the Risen Christ into one's life.  This was the communal meal of the Holy Eucharist.  This is a mystery tradition of believing that the words Jesus used to associate the essence of his life with bread and wine, recited again and again could renew each recipient into the knowledge of the closeness of Christ to one's life.  In the Eucharistic meal, the church encoded in a liturgy the Mystery of how the Risen Christ was a real presence within the bread and wine.  Not surprisingly, the Latin word for the Greek "mysterion" is sacramentum.  A sacrament is the ritual way of perceiving the grace of the presence of Christ.

Why did the church practice rituals?  Why did the church publish the mysteries within the Epistles and Gospels which became the New Testament?  Paul and others knew that if the Mystery of the Risen Christ was not preached, practiced and renewed, it could be neglected and forgotten.  In fact, Paul wrote about people who had experienced the joys of the Risen Christ but lost the reality through non-observance and by refusing to share the experience so it could be replicated in the lives of others.

  The mystery of Christ in us can become neglected and forgotten, when our active and busy lives express the priority of earning a living and taking care of the ordinary issues of the life.

  The Mary and Martha story in the Gospel is not about Martha the worrywart worker who is troubled by her navel gazing space cadet sister who gets approved by Jesus for being able to neglect the practical work of hospitality by being on a perpetual religious retreat.

  Some would like to reduce this story to: Martha bad.  Mary good.

  This is not the purpose of the Gospel story at all.  The purpose of the Gospel story is to reveal that the Risen Christ is known and attended to by taking the time to spend in devoted contemplation of the Mystery of the personal presence of Christ to us.  The mistake of Martha is the human mistake to think that all of the other tasks of our lives are incompatible with and competing with the vocation that we have to contemplate the Risen Christ in our lives.

  It is not an either/or matter; it is both/and.  Yes the practical work needs to be done and should be done, but each person needs to know how and when to attend to moments of contemplation when the personal presence of the Risen Christ is being known in some telling way.

  The message of Mary choosing the better part is this:  Don't neglect contemplation of the Risen Christ in life.  Don't miss the continual replication of Christ in you, the hope of Glory.

  Today, we are invited to complement our active lives of work with the intentional practice of contemplation.  It was not difficult for Mary to tune into Christ.  In contemplation one learns to retreat into one's interior life as a retreat of being constituted and refreshed to go forth into the work and busyness of one's life.

  The Gospel Today:  Christ in you, the hope of glory.  Don't miss the glory.  Don't miss the experience of being personally recognized by God.  And don't neglect contemplation of the Risen Christ.  Amen.