Holy Mysteries
Encountering the Risen Jesus
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Savannah, Georgia 31401
First Week of Easter
We (the authors) enjoy mystery novels with the quirky, yet determined, detective doggedly pursuing clues to discover the truth. Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple is a fun twist on the gentleman detective. She is a careful observer of human behavior who knows the people of her village of St. Mary Mead so well that it gives insight into all people. She sees through the lies people tell to the character of the person beneath the surface as revealed in little inconsistencies. Across sixty-six novels and fourteen short-story collections, Christie offered every permutation on the twist ending for a murder mystery from every suspect as one of the killers to every suspect dying.
Movies, television, and novels are full of mystery. Just as the sun once never set on the British flag, the TV show Law and Order and its spin-offs are always playing in reruns on some channel 24/7/365. Within the hour, the truth is revealed and justice served. While acknowledging issues that can arise in the justice system, the viewer is consistently soothed that most everything is well as we are in the hands of the good guys who usually end up getting it right. For the two of us, this is not our favorite form of whodunit.
We love to read a sub-genre of novels usually called Nordic Noir. These morally complex books, set in the bleak landscapes of Scandinavia are not such a sharp departure for us as Victoria always enjoyed Ed McBain’s police procedurals. Many see McBain’s 87th Precinct stories as a source for these straightforward narratives about the monotonous, day-today work of police that results in uncovering a killer. The prose is as bare as the scenery in these dark mysteries that void metaphor in favor of a Joe Friday just-the-facts style. The bland surface covers the secret hatreds to contrast the Scandinavian ideals of social justice and liberalism with the reality of misogyny, racism, and xenophobia.
Authors like Iceland’s Arnaldur Indriðason and Norway’s Karin Fossum are less interested in whodunit than in revealing the why that comes from the inner life of the people populating an isolated village where the unspeakable has happened. The relatively low crime rate allows for a detective to push forward at a glacial speed not just to an arrest, but to an understanding that often still eludes the detective. Nordic Noir usually avoids tidy endings.
All of these types of stories inform our understanding of mystery, but they bear only the slightest resemblance to mystery as we mean it when we say “The Holy Trinity is a sacred mystery” or when we write of the Holy Mysteries of the sacraments. Here we hope that the contrast between Miss Marple and Law and Order as they contrast with Scandinavian crime fiction is instructive.
The goal in the examples of Agatha Christie and television procedurals is to explain the mystery. The dogged detective, or the team of police and attorneys, discover The Answer. The mystery is a riddle with a single, set solution. It was: Colonel Mustard in the library with the candlestick. The cold-hearted fiction from the north shows that there is always more to learn. Even if Miss Marple understands her village completely from her own perspective, she still does not conceive all that her butcher knows, or what the returned war veteran who can’t keep consistent work sees. We learn that it is beyond the powers of detection to fully appreciate how a murder transpired in this case, and in another instance an even more despicable person maintains a careful façade to be lionized on their death by natural causes. There is more present in the lives of even a tiny, isolated village than one can comprehend, much less in our actual circles of family, friends, and co-workers. This comes closer to the Holy Mysteries.
We work throughout our lives to learn more and more about ourselves only to find that we learned something a stranger knows about us within the first five minutes. We hardly know ourselves. Likewise, those close to us have parts we don’t fully see or appreciate. How much more is there to discover about the Triune God who made us and loves us and wants us to journey further into the very heart of the Divine!
The early Christian Church tradition of teaching mystagogy (initiating one into sacred mysteries) was not about a one-time revelation of something that had been hidden, but an ever-deepening understanding of something we know in part. Sitting with a teacher like Cyril of Jerusalem for five to seven classes in Easter Week was meant to open the path to a sacramental life. The sacraments have the potential to lead us to become more Christ-like over time. This is the work of a lifetime and beyond.
• Do you prefer set answers or there being ever more to discover?
• How has your understanding of God changed over time?
My heart raced as I was unable to catch my breath. With a rock-solid certainty that I was dying, I dashed up the stairs and into my parents’ bedroom, where they, once again, assured me that I would live to see the new day. For many years, I was a seemingly incurable hypochondriac trapped by the fear of my own mortality.
This began with a long hospital stay that scarred my psyche. When I was eight, I contracted the mumps. I returned to school the next week only to be sent home on the first day back after throwing up. I went home and napped. I woke up in the emergency room at a hospital in Atlanta as they were giving me a spinal tap. I would be in and out of a coma before I learned I had encephalitis. Doctors could treat the symptoms, but there was no cure. I lived in Crawford Long Hospital for two months, before finally returning to school, still having grand mal seizures on occasion that sometimes terrified classmates when they happened while I was at school. Those would eventually stop, but the whole experience marked me. I was much more fearful than any of my family and friends, practically paralyzed at times by my fear of death.
I would have panic attacks from time to time into my teens, twenties, and early thirties with my heart beating rapidly and breathing getting shallow and rapid as I was confronted again with the certainty of my death. I tried finding refuge in the idea of The Rapture, placing my hopes in Jesus returning before I died as a kind of get-out-of mortality-free card.
Growing up at Mount Paran Church of God from the age of ten until I left for college at seventeen, an image of The Rapture I first encountered there captured my imagination. Quite commonly found in Christian bookstores in the late 1970s, the painting was a fixture of my early teen years. It showed Jesus hovering in the sky as people floated up to heaven to meet their Lord leaving behind car and airplane wrecks as well as empty graves. I tried to think happy thoughts of life in heaven, but year after year of worshiping sounded like it would get boring fast. I just didn’t want to die.
The Rapture was also a two-edged sword as it gave me the possibility of getting into heaven without death and yet it Holy Mysteries 16 came with the fear of being left behind. I couldn’t quite hold on to the vision of the joy of being united with Jesus. The God I knew then was a big meanie, hell-bent on punishing us for even accidentally putting a toe over the line of the commandments. Many years before the books and movies of the Left Behind series, I was obsessed with the terrifying thoughts of life on earth after Jesus’ return for those not taken into heaven.
My fear did not keep me from trying skydiving or hiking the length of the Appalachian Trail. I wasn’t exactly risk-averse. The true, very deep fear was that the mortality rate for humans is one-hundred percent. The inevitability of death was what oppressed me. The bondage to that paralyzing fear lifted for me during a youth group meeting at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Rome, Georgia. In the mid-1990s, Victoria and I led the high school youth group as parishioners of the congregation. A member of the group, 16-year-old Tannika, wanted to be baptized. As the youth group was her real community within the church, the baptism service was scheduled during our youth time with the youth group joining Tannika’s mom in presenting her for baptism. Everyone gathered for the liturgy served as presenters for Tannika. Victoria and I gladly accepted her request that we serve as her Godparents.
Just as Tannika was baptized, her head still dripping baptismal waters on the floor, the Rev. Al Daviou said a prayer and then made the sign of the cross on Tannika’s forehead with the oil of chrism saying, “Tannika, you are Encountering the risen Jesus 17 sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.”
There are moments in life when a holy mystery is made real as a veil is pulled back. You get a glimpse of something deeply true that is difficult to express in words. In this moment of being sealed by the Holy Spirit, I felt the connectedness of all time and space, all creation. That moment with those words was such a transcendent experience and I saw the truth that eternity is not in the future tense, but ever present. We talk about eternal life as if it were a distant possibility, something we hope to have in the future. Yet the promise of scripture is eternal life that starts right here, right now. In Tannika’s baptism, she made a public faith commitment with eternal consequences. Though I pray that Tannika outlives me, I know I will die and so will she. Yet the death that awaits her holds no power over Tannika, for she was unbound that day at St. Peter’s and so was I.
In the years since that transcendent baptism, I have been the one to say those words over more than 150 new Christians. I have also been at the bedside of many people as they faced death with a deep faith that inspires me. Barring an accident, massive heart attack, or some other way of being surprised by death, we are understudies for the role of the one whose health is failing and for whom death is an imminent threat. You and I will come to our own Gethsemane as we face our mortality through suffering. I don’t look forward to decline and death. But the knowledge that eternal life has already started set me free from those panic attacks. The time we experience exists within eternity. All of space and time is held in the heart of the Holy Trinity. This is a mystery whose depths I can not plumb, but it is grounded in the reality that the one in whom we live and move and have our being inhabits eternity.
• How do you conceive of eternity?
• Have you seen someone face their death in ways that inspire you?
“After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, ‘Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.” This is my message for you.’ So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples.” (Matthew 28:1-8)
It is telling that neither of the Marys seemed to be overly frightened by either the earthquake or the angel of the Lord nor did they balk at doing the angel’s bidding. I (Victoria) have had the experience of being awakened by an earthquake and I found it completely disorienting not to mention a bit terrifying. My mother and I were visiting my older sister and her husband in Walnut Creek, California, and after staying up late and playing board games, we had all finally settled down to sleep for the night.
I had just drifted off to sleep when suddenly I was awakened by the motion of the bed—it felt like I was lying
on a float in the ocean rolling over the waves. It took me a second to realize what had happened and excited voices roused me further. I rushed to the living room where everyone was gathering to hash over what they had experienced. My brother-in-law was still holding his toothbrush as we had all had to share their one bathroom. Fortunately, there were no aftershocks, and we were soon back in bed and sleeping soundly until morning.While none of us experienced any major revelations or were confronted by an angel that night, it doesn’t diminish the fact that God often uses nature to get our attention about something.
Pine Log United Methodist Church near Rydal, Georgia, is a case in point. Both the church and camp are the product of an earthquake that took place in 1866. As we relate in our book, Touring the Backroads of North and South Georgia: “It was August, and the congregation had endured a sweltering week-long series of meetings. The pastor, Reverend J.N. Sullivan was preaching fervently, but the congregation was just not responding. Finally, Sullivan fell to his knees and prayed, ‘Lord, if it takes it to move the hearts of these people, shake the ground on which this old building stands.’
“The words were barely out of Sullivan’s mouth before the building shook perceptibly. Even Sullivan’s water glass and pitcher, which stood upon the pulpit, shook. The reaction was immediate. People rushed toward the altar to pray. Others heard of the event and rushed from their homes to the church. The worshippers continued to pray that night.”
Even after it was learned that what they had experienced were the shock waves from a major earthquake that had occurred in Charleston, South Carolina, the fact that he prayed right before the quake was significant. Sullivan’s prayer worked miracles. The congregation was filled with a new religious fervor and Pine Log UMC, and the church continues to prosper.
But revelations from God aren’t always so obvious. Like Elijah, we might just hear a “still, small voice” in the form
of a flower or a tree. Or, in my case, a dove. I had returned from a visit to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, feeling hopeless and depressed—the age-old question of how a loving God could allow something like that to happen weighing down my heart.I put my purse down and went into the kitchen to prepare dinner when I noticed a movement out of the corner
of my eye. I turned to face the window and there on the ledge outside sat a dove, its round black eye regarding me. It was as if the Holy Spirit was saying: I am with you always. And I realized that was true—God is always there. In the midst of horror, tragedy, grief, celebration, everything. God is always with us.Coincidence? Maybe. But I felt in my heart it was a sign of God’s love and presence and it was enough to lift me from my depression and experience hope, once again. As Howard Thurman said, “In any wilderness the unsuspecting traveler may come upon the burning bush and discover that the ground upon which he stands is holy ground.”
• When has nature turned your eyes or heart to God?
Holy Sonnet 10
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swellst thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
-John Donne (1572–1631), Holy SonnetsJohn Donne composed the nineteen poems known as the Holy Sonnets in 1609-1610 during a time of great
financial and emotional stress. In his preaching as well as his poetry, Donne often returned to death and resurrection as one burdened by past sins who was concerned for the state of his soul. Here he moves from calling personified Death “mighty and dreadful,” to noting that Death does not act by his own will, but is driven by the whims of fate and chance as well as people both noble and common. He ends by proclaiming the coming death of Death.Donne had been born into a Roman Catholic family and saw his brother Henry arrested in 1593 for hiding the
Catholic priest William Harrington, who would be martyred the next year. Henry died of bubonic plague while in prison. By the time he wrote the sonnets, Donne was struggling with the idea of converting to the Anglican Church as well as whether to consent to be ordained at King James’ urging, which happened in 1615. Donne would rise to become one of the most well-known Anglican priests of the 17th century as the Dean of London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral from 1621-1631. While he is now lauded as one of the great metaphysical poets, his poems circulated in hand-written manuscripts shared among friends and benefactors. The Holy Sonnets, like much of his work, were not published in his lifetime. We will return to Donne who meditated often on holy mysteries and wrote memorably about death and resurrection.• What surprises or comforts you in John Donne’s sonnet?
“Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went towards the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes.” (John 20:3-10)
Outpacing Peter in the dash to discover what happened to Jesus, John sees the linen wrappings without pushing into the tomb itself. Peter goes inside and discovers the head cloth rolled up and set in a place by itself. Jesus’ resurrection is so different from the scene just over a week earlier when Lazarus came out of the tomb when Jesus ordered the same disciples to unbind Lazarus.
Lazarus’ ankles would have been tied together and his wrists bound in front of him. He would have also had a strap around his chin. Then rather than being wrapped mummy-style, there would have been a large burial sheet under the length of his body that in one piece went up his back over his head and down the front. This shroud would have been further strapped around in place with wrappings. Lazarus was quite literally bound up in his burial clothes.
In contrast, the disciples who raced to the tomb saw the linen wrappings neatly stacked showing that Jesus is no longer bound by death. This clarity comes to John, yet he still does not fully understand what has happened for we are told both that John also went into the tomb, saw, and believed. John adds, “for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.” Perhaps he thinks Jesus has been resuscitated to die again like Lazarus. Or perhaps, he imagines Jesus has returned to his Father.
John’s Gospel shows how the light of the glory of what God had done in raising Jesus was slow to dawn on his followers. It takes time for the eyes of their hearts to adjust to the light. With the certainty that he is no longer in his grave, but still lacking clarity of what did occur, Peter and John return home. This is common in John’s Gospel as the light does not come to us in its fullness all at once, but there are stages of belief as our faith deepens with new experiences of Jesus. With teaching on the mysteries of the faith in Eastertide, Christian communities made room for further enlightenment.
• What questions of faith do you have where you long for great clarity or confirmation?
• Pray for the Holy Spirit to deepen your faith with new experiences and insight as you continue the journey of Easter.
“The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.”
-Anaïs NinMy fascination with the mystery of the Shroud of Turin began in December of 1982. My sister and I had accompanied our grandmother to a doctor’s appointment in Atlanta, and while she was doing her thing, my sister and I did some Christmas shopping and then met Frank at a Shroud of Turin exhibit located in the Peachtree Center in Atlanta and hosted by Episcopal priest Kim Dreisbach.
At that point I was not at all familiar with The Shroud of Turin. The relic is referred to as being ‘of Turin’ because the Italian city is the repository for the shroud. The Shroud was, allegedly, the cloth which wrapped Jesus’s dead body, the linen wrappings referenced in yesterday’s scripture reading in this devotional. What makes the Shroud so special, though, is its central mystery–the body image that is imprinted on it.
In the subtlest tones of yellow sepia one can see on the 14’3″ x 3’7″ cloth both the back and front of a man as if he had been placed upon it, feet at the bottom, and the top end draped over the front of his body. The top half shows a bearded face, a pronounced chest, hands crossed over the groin, and legs side by side. The bottom bears the imprint of the back of the head with a long rope of hair, taut shoulders and buttocks, and soles of the feet. In addition, on the herringbone-woven linen, one can see blood–on the crown of the head, on the chest, the wrists, the ankles as well as what looks like blood stains from someone being whipped. Even more astounding to me was the fact that when a photograph was taken of the Shroud it was as if the Shroud itself was a negative and an even clearer image appeared to the unaided eye.
There are so many more things one can write about the Shroud; in fact, entire books have been written about it. Suffice to say, its origin has posed a mystery for centuries as it has, ostensibly, been around for nearly 2,000 years. While there is evidence of it being in Turkey–Edessa and Constantinople–for centuries, the Shroud’s appearance in Europe, probably appearing first in France, isn’t verified until the 14th century.
The Shroud of Turin was so incredibly intriguing to me when I saw the images for the first time in Atlanta: the lifesize image of the Shroud and the three-dimensional sculpture made a huge impact. Was this really an image of Jesus? My heart said yes.
Sixteen years later, Frank was finishing up his first year in Seminary and we were visiting my grandmother and mother in Statesboro. It would have been after April 20, 1998, because that is when Time Magazine published its cover story on the Shroud of Turin, in which it focused on the 1988 carbon dating proving that the Shroud was a medieval forgery. I saw the magazine at my grandmother’s house, read the article, and was deeply disappointed because I had felt so strongly that it was real. Later, I needed a pencil, and I went to my grandfather’s room (he died in 1988) to check his desk. In the drawer of his desk, in the hollow area made to hold pens and paper clips, I found two pencils—one, a small red pencil that had Time Magazine printed on it; the other, a white pencil with the names of the books of the New Testament printed on it.
Yes, some might say coincidence but as Dale C. Allison, Jr. writes in his book Encountering Mystery: Religious Experience in a Secular Age:
“James Leuba, the influential psychologist of religion, spoke for a multitude when he ascribed mystical experiences to misapprehension and psychopathology. Skepticism is not confined to the academy. It is also at home in certain religious circles. In many churches and among many seminary-educated pastors there is a far-flung prejudice against metanormal experiences, a predisposition not to take them seriously.”
He continues later, “… without a congenial framework for reception, a framework that Catholic theology had supplied, and Protestantism deleted, people stopped recounting their experiences.”
I could dismiss the two pencils catching my eye at that time when I wondered about the shroud. Yet the coincidence was so astounding that I took it to be a sign that the science had not gotten it right. I still held that the Shroud of Turin was really the linen wrappings that had covered Jesus. While my faith does not depend on that cloth relic alone, I do see it as a sign of the power of God.
• Have you experienced a coincidence as a Godincident, God using something to get your attention?
• How do you separate these incidents from the genuine coincidences that naturally occur as well?
On the Sunday evening following Jesus’ death by crucifixion, the disciples are locked in the upper room in Jerusalem where they celebrated the Last Supper (John 20:19-31). They are gathered in fear that the same fate endured by the Rabbi awaits them. Jesus appears among them and says, “Peace be with you.” He says, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” and then breathes on them, literally inspiring them with the gift of the Holy Spirit. On this first Easter, we see God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit present with Jesus’ fearful followers.
We would not conceive of God as a Trinity of persons if this had not been revealed, but having been shown to us we can see how this image of the divine does fit a cosmos where the interconnections among all creation are deeply true. In this sense, the Holy Trinity is not a mystery in any way like a whodunit, where we search for The Answer. God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are a mystery in the sense that the more we come to know the more we see there is to be known. There is a truth present in this way of envisioning the Holy One that reveals why humans long for connection–we were created out of love for love. God who was in communion with God’s own self before the creation, made us for that type of connection.
The New Testament Greek for this is koinonia, which is often translated as “community” or “fellowship.” Koinonia is a close connection. To have koinonia with something or someone is to participate with it and in it. A better translation for koinonia is communion and our communion service is called just that because in communion we have and celebrate koinonia with God and with each other.
In the Eucharist, we participate in the very life of God. The Holy Mystery of the sacrament Jesus instituted on the night before he died has depths we cannot fully fathom.
Physicists emphasize “spacetime” as unified rather than there being “space” that we experience over “time.” The math reveals space and time as one, all of space and time are interconnected. The distinction between my participating in the Eucharist celebrated for diocesan staff in our office chapel with seven of us present and my participating in the Archbishop of Canterbury celebrating the Eucharist for the more than 650 bishops of the Anglican Communion is less important than the connection between them. Each time you participate in the Eucharist you are connected to all the other people receiving communion around the world on that same day. You are also connected to all the times in which the Eucharist has been celebrated, from those preparing for martyrdom in a Roman Coliseum to your beloved greatgrandmother receiving the sacrament hours before her death. Time is held within eternity. The ineffable connection that was present in the Holy Trinity before creation, inhabits all of spacetime, and is with us always. This is not a mystery to solve and while we can experience it, we can ever fully explain it.
Like the Nordic Noir detective moving at a glacial pace to learn more, we too can continue past the set answers to find more questions to pursue, more mystery to sit with as we see the truth in this way of conceiving of life, the universe, and everything even as we know there is more to discover. The heart of God is not unknown and unknowable, so much as something we see through a glass darkly, knowing that there will continue to be hidden depths in which we discover more throughout our lives. All of the mysteries of the faith the early church taught in the season between Easter and Pentecost fall into this category of being well-known and never fully comprehended.
• Have you ever felt a strong connection to someone who was far away, such as suddenly feeling the need to pray for someone for no identifiable reason?
• How has your experience and understanding of participating in the Holy Eucharist changed over time?