Looking Ahead into God’s Plans and Cosmic Designs

At times we all love to discount mystery. Or maybe I should say I do. It’s great to have an explanation for something in the midst of wide eyed onlookers. Often, or at least my family tells it, I provide explanations to questions no one, has asked.

You see it’s hard to control a mystery and why bother, when you can search Google or wolfram alpha and get a formula or better yet an answer? We depend upon Consumer surveys, check the bar code on our smart phones to see if it’s cheaper somewhere use. We all tend to look at our world through narrow eyelids. We love to discern from a distance and not get taken in, either by God, the bible, the church, half truth or cure alls; not if we can help it.

But today, in these overly analyzed times; we also need to hear that we are surrounded by mystery. Your partner your wife your husband is finally just a mystery. The church in spite of all who claim to know, in spite of all the statistics, is a mystery.

In today’s scripture, this surrounding mystery takes over in these verses from Ephesians 3.As hard or mysterious as these words are, walking with them takes us onto a path that has a discernable progression. In other words these words add up to something. This progression begins with the dark mystery of a plan” hidden for ages in God”

How many books have been peddled based on finding God’s plan for your life. The purpose driven life, the purpose driven church are popular. Soon someone’s going to write about the purpose driven SUV.

Paul begins with words that begin in darkness hidden within God, then the words move out and into view through a mysterious bright disclosure in the “unsearchable riches of Christ, and culminate in the continuing mystery here and now, of a God able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think, according to the power working in us in you in me. Although these words immerge from mystery toward mystery there thought is not hopelessly mysterious.

We start with the plan. In the movie “My name is harry Kellerman, and why are you saying those terrible things about me.” Dustin Hoffman dials in a prayer line. A voice says Relax, in the plan of God, God has a purpose for your life. Hoffman screams what’s the purpose, the answer is know that God has great plans for you. What’s the plan? Then he begins to run toward one of the high rise windows to jump off.

I remember being so shocked by this flick, that I made a promise to myself to find out what the plan was.

Paul says this plan which was hidden for the ages in God who made everything. Here in this darkness lies the murky outlines to all our unanswered questions. Here lies the mystery to all the why’s and wherefores of our existence.

What’s life all about? Why are we here? What the purpose behind me. What’s the purpose behind birth and life, behind joy and laughter, suffering and death. Prodded by these questions human culture has left monuments to the search for answers; from Socrates to Sartre. We all in some way, have been on the adventure, to find answers to the plan hidden for the ages in God who created everything.

For some people this seeking has resulted only in unrelieved darkness. For them there is no answer life is a joke and absurdity. And if there is a God who created all things then God is a monster, laughing at our efforts to control cancer.

This mystery this plan lays shrouded in unrelieved darkness. Some love to stop there, especially if life has stopped them, with unknowable or predicable tragedy.

For others the mystery the plan and its quest, takes form around a shadowy never never land. This response reads, that the ways of life and God are mysterious, and who can say that one religion is better than another. We hear were all going to the same place so it doesn’t matter which road we take. Some call it Nirvana Christians call it heaven what’s the difference?
Well it makes a difference if their self is dissolved into nothing or transformed to look more like Jesus.

But into this shadowy never-never land, into the unrelieved darkness, the light shines. For Paul it was a light that hit him in the darkness of Damascus Road, “the mystery was made know to me by revelation. For Paul in Acts chapter 9 he is hot on the trail of Christians in Damascus. He goes there with threats on his breath, hatred in his heart, with a desire to snuff out the flames of this early Christian Church.

Remember the story as how Jesus blinds him with a new awareness of his categories’. Causes him to loose sight or loose his way. His meet up with Jesus does not convert Saul to Paul. It just leaves him blind. We are told that Ananias the leader of the Christian Church, the object of Paul’s snuffing out; the one in Damascus most afraid of Saul is given some new walking orders from God. God tells Ananias to go to Saul and place his hands on his head and to call him brother. Call him what? Brother. It’s the same term that the older brother in the prodigal son story can’t use when talking about his younger brother to his father. He refers to him as this son of yours. Getting brother or sister on our lips is tough work for love to work through. When Ananias calls Saul brother then and only then, the scales fall away from his eyes and Saul now sees with his new name, his new identity, Christian, his new brothers and sisters in faith,

This is good news; some call it gospel, a breaking in from the eternal mystery beyond. The darkness is shattered by light. The never, never land, the shadowy world, where everything is equally ambiguous, is shattered by a resounding I am. I am the Lord the God, full to the top of truth and light.

For Paul the content of this mysterious plan “hidden for all ages in God and now disclosed in Jesus is clear. How the Gentiles are fellow heirs of Christ members of the same body and partakers of the promise of Christ. It’s this all inclusiveness, it’s the braking down of hostile walls built up over time to protect us from having to welcome an unsettled part of ourselves., It’s the breaking down of walls that label some as person and others as non person. Neither slave nor free, neither Jew nor Greek, neither male nor female. We need to keep hearing, what walls is God asking us to break down, where do we need to see, whom do we need to call brother or sister? Neither Gay nor straight, documented or undocumented and we could go on.
You see the secret to these walls breaking down, is that this is the mysterious miracle of God. It’s the all inclusiveness of breaking these walls down walls of hostility inside each of us that makes room for us to be one with God and consequently one with each other. That’s the plan! Call it justification, atonement or reconciling sacrifice. For Paul this is the secret. The plan of God; why we are here.

Paul touches this mystery with awe.Notice the words the mystery of Christ unsearchable riches. He is almost afraid that we might touch it, or take it all for granted. Let’s catch the mystery, look at the wonder of God’ plan hidden for ages to enfold all people in his love. The riches of God’s plan is unsearchable we can’t get it. No one can take it all in. For God does not disclose himself in the unsearchable riches of Christ to explain Gods actions. God comes only to accomplish God’s plan to unite us in forgiving love with him, so that we might be united in forgiving and reconciling love to all.

But here’s the kicker this plan this mystery, hidden in God this wisdom of God or plan is now being made known to the principalities and powers through the church. Do you see how incredible this is? The clue to the meaning of life is in the hands of the church you and me!

Paul says what we do in manifesting relationships of reconciliation, building bridges of understanding, that this work is the main event. As the world gets ready for it’s fall TV schedule as the world adjusts to gyrations in the stock values, as the world tries to start with many different keys, its various economic engines, God is reveling this plan through you and me.
And here’s another kicker at least it kicked me, even the principalities and powers in heavenly places peek over the battlements of heaven, to look down. To know not see how were making out but to learn of this plan.

Do you catch a glimpse of the cosmic dimensions of even the people in heaven don’t know there looking at you and me… That’s why we are a reconciling church that’s why we want to welcome all. Because as we welcome the otherness of the other into our being in our carriage we welcome more of whom we are. We become a bigger home to ourselves. We become more whole the more we welcome the wholeness of the world out side of us.

That’s the healing behind loving your enemy, because often our enemy is our enemy because they excite certain parts of our own personality that we have not accepted, that we have yet to deal with. You see in primitive religion everything happens in heaven and earthlings simply mimic as best we can heaven so we can catch the plan. Here in the bible it’s reversed. It made known through the church. Can we catch the grace to put our hands over our mouths and catch the wonder of it all?

That on the lips and thorough the lives of ordinary people like you and me, in the taste of bread and wine. Through the actions of including outsiders and showing they are fellow heirs of Christ we the church make know to heavenly places the secret plan of God. The risk God took in revealing this plan this way is that we take it all too ordinary. You see it ends up getting expressed into stewardship campaigns and educational programs, and ministry offerings. And we do take it all for granted. O that again are they asking fro money again, or teacher why are they always asking for teachers or help with Pads. My point is that we need to be surprised that this mystery is working through us here in Downers Grove right here and now. If we loose the wonder in our seeing, we will loose the surprise and mystery in our response.

Paul this morning prays in wonder I bow my knees before God that God strengthen you with might through his Spirit. That rooted and grounded in Love you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Paul says don’t loose sight of the ongoing mystery at work in you. For the mystery of a child’s cry in a stable, the mystery of an empty tomb, the mystery of the spirit and tongues as of fire –the mystery of this same God is present this morning,

Allowing you to say yes, Can you hear your yes. See your yes on the tables in the tower room, live your yes when the phone rings or the email comes asking for you help. God is always seeking an entrance and once having entered into us, he is able to do far more abundantly, than all we ask or think or imagine.