Let’s play word association.

What comes to mind when I say the word, “mystery”? [ASK]

If I go to a bookstore, and ask about “mystery”, chances are there will be a whole section of books called mysteries. They’re books that have characteristics, formulas, patterns. There are ways that mysteries are all alike.

Take Agatha Christie mysteries, for examples. Who here has read an Agatha Christie mystery? [ASK] She had two main detectives she wrote about…Anybody remember? [ASK] (Jane Marple and Hercule Poirot)

I read the ones with Hercule Poirot as the detective. He, like most of the great detectives after Sherlock Holmes, was brilliantly observant, always able to quickly figure out the most convoluted mystery.

I actually prefer Dorothy Sayers mysteries, myself. This is “Gaudy Night”, one of her most famous mysteries. Anyone remember her hero detective? [ASK, Lord Peter Wimsey] Always polite, always observant, a little bumbling, not quite suave, Lord Peter was still able to make sense of everything.

In these classic mysteries, what are some of the things that ALWAYS happen? [ASK]

The detective always figures it out! A good mystery writer is someone who can tell a good story, invent complex, contradictory clues, give you hints that it might be one person, but then have the hero detective explain everything clearly by the end, with nothing left out of place.

The idea of a mystery that was illogical, that didn’t add up, that didn’t come to a proper conclusion, seems ridiculous. In fact, one of the things I would hate when I read mysteries is if the author had a solution that was ridiculous, that there was no possible way to have figured out.

In our world, we like to figure things out.

We want to quantify and objectify and solve things. We like to have things sorted out into nice easy boxes.

We’ve even taken the mystery out of the word, “mystery”!

At least in the book sense, it’s come to mean something that is carefully and logically figured out and solved, analyzed and put into place.

Imagine a mystery that left it all up in the air at the end, where the detective didn’t figure it out. If the author ended a mystery by saying, “The killer is still at large and a complete mystery to us”…I don’t think there would be many satisfied readers!

The classic mystery or detective story is based on the idea that as complex and confusing as the world may seem, someone out there can use logic to figure it all out and make sense of it. Our modern world has had that as one of our assumptions for a long time.

But the myth of a world without mystery is beginning to crumble. In many areas of life, it’s been completely destroyed.

It used to be that people were fairly optimistic that as human beings lived life, we would improve the world. We’d keep sorting out the mysteries with logic and get everything labeled and put in its proper place. We thought we could solve all the mysteries of life and make it safe and secure and a better place.

In the outside world, the 20^th century pretty much destroyed people’s hope that utopia would come. Auschwitz and Hiroshima ended any thought of humanity solving our problems. Mystery has returned. Uncertainty and fear are back.

It took longer in America than in the rest of the world, but I think 9/11 just about did us in. There will be randomness and mystery that we cannot comprehend or solve, even with a director of homeland security.

One of the last places that certainty is being destroyed, one of the last places where “mystery” is returning, is in the church.

Maybe one of the reasons the church is behind the rest of the world is that we want God to bring security in our lives. For a long time, we’ve believed that God will bring us security through logic and reason, through formulas that will make all the chaos around us make sense.

If we just pray enough and read our bibles, good things will happen to us. If we give enough of our money to the church, God will take care of us.

The common wisdom is to treat the bible like a sort of answer book. Just look in the right place, find the right answer, and everything in your life will be ok.

We want God to bring security. God does that…but God does it without removing mystery. God can’t be reduced to formulas or completely figured out. Part of what we need in our lives is to re-capture the mystery of God.

Most of what I’m saying today is just stealing from what Bertie Roberts said last week.

I loved the way she asked many of the questions we all ask when we face unimaginably difficult things. Why? Why didn’t God prevent it?

And time and again, Bertie answered, “We don’t know.”

Mystery. It’s the mystery of God and God’s actions in our world. But, as Bertie said Wayne has reminded her, “Would we want a God that we could completely figure out?”

If all problems in life, if even God himself could be figured out by logic and reason, well, that would mean that God isn’t really God. Reason and logic would be the king, and we might as well just spend our time learning, studying and trusting scientists and philosophers.

No… while God created logic and reason, while God is the one who brought order and natural laws to creation, God himself is a mystery. Where can we find safety and security, if God and God’s actions are a mystery, are beyond completely figuring out?

Last fall, when I was outlining this series on the book of Acts, chapter 12 reminded me of the mystery of God.

This is what I noticed when reading Acts 12. James, one of the original disciples and a close friend of Jesus, is killed. But then, God miraculously frees Peter in answer to prayer a few verses later.

What’s wrong, our brains ask? Did people not pray as hard for James as they did for Peter? Was Peter more important? Did God like Peter better? Was James guilty of some doubt or sin that God had to punish?

We’re uncomfortable with God’s actions being a mystery. We immediately want to have a reason, a logical explanation for why James was martyred and Peter wasn’t. We want Hercule Poirot or Lord Peter Wimsey, or even MORE ridiculous, some pastor to come along and tie all the pieces together for us and give us the answer.

But we don’t know why James was killed and Peter wasn’t. We won’t know. We can’t know. It’s an unanswerable question, lost in the mystery of God’s actions in our world.

The question for us becomes, what do we do with the mystery of a God we can’t fully explain, comprehend, or predict?

When have you had an amazing answer to prayer? When has God acted in a way that clearly showed his protection, like with Peter’s release? [ASK]

There’s a story we read on our pastor’s e-mail list about 400 Christians who were all miraculously saved from the devastation of the tsunami in the Aceh province of Sumatra. God is using that action to demonstrate to Muslims there that Christianity is powerful.

But God doesn’t always work miracles. God doesn’t always answer prayer as we would like.

When have you been disappointed, felt a prayer was unanswered?

Caryl Menkhus, one of the pastors in our yearly meeting, responded to the posting of this story on our e-mail list. What she did was to remind us of the mystery of God. God is still God, even if our lives have suffering. More importantly, if we forget that we can’t always figure out God, if we think life will always be perfect, we can face some hard trials to our faith. Let me read some of what she wrote:

[This story] raises hard questions.  I have not experienced life or God to have such neat and clean distinctions.

My husband was a committed Christian and loved God and died young when our five children were very small.  My father was a missionary and gave his life in service of the Gospel and got cancer and died from it.  Should we expect to be immune from life because we are Christians?

But even more than that is what does this say about what kind of God we have? I hope we are able to hold the tension of these questions while not diminishing the real goodness of so much of life.

I’m back to Bertie’s words last week.

Could God protect us from all hard things and suffering in the world? Yes! Why doesn’t God do that? We don’t know.

There is the mystery of God. Do we trust God and seek him out? Yes! Is God faithful to walk with us through suffering? Yes!

The early church, in Acts chapter 12, must have been crushed by the death of James. Herod was strong enough to kill James, who became the first of the 12 apostles to be martyred. How could God let that happen?

Then Peter was arrested. The church could have given up hope. They could have turned back to Judaism, or to other gods, or given up all together.

Instead, the church joined together to earnestly pray to God for Peter.

The fact that the early church couldn’t figure God out didn’t stop them from trusting that God was the one to go to in times of fear and distress.

In fact, it seems to have increased the earnestness of their prayers!

It is funny to me that when God actually did something in answer to their prayers, everybody’s surprised. Peter thinks he’s having a dream-a good dream, mind you, but he’s as surprised as anyone to realize he was really and truly standing outside the prison on the street.

He goes and knocks on the door where everyone’s praying, and the servant girl is so excited, she leaves him outside! She runs into tell everyone God has answered the very prayers they were praying, and no one believes her! Peter has to keep pounding before they finally let him in.

See, there’s really no way to find a logical reason here for Peter’s escape. The prayers don’t seem to have some great faith that God will free Peter. They’re surprised as can be when God acts! But they know to go to God when they are afraid, and they know to celebrate when God does something big.

We, as followers of Jesus Christ, can’t let bad circumstances keep us from going to God for help.

BECAUSE the world is a mystery and uncertain, we need God.

He won’t solve all our problems, or mechanically respond to just the right prayer. But he promises his presence. He promises purpose and direction for our lives when we join him in what he is doing.

For us, we can learn from the early church and so many other places in the bible.

Our trust in God is NOT based on having some formula figured out where God will do whatever we want. Our call is to trust and obey in the face of unanswered questions before God.

Daniel 3:16 gives another amazing example of three men who trust God no matter what.

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.”

Or there’s the example of Peter himself, in John’s gospel, at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. All kinds of people are leaving Jesus, because his teaching to the people is so challenging to follow. Jesus asks the disciples if they’re going to leave, too.

Peter’s reply in John 6: 68 shows trust in the face of the mystery of God: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

Our security doesn’t come from figuring God out and predicting when and how God will act.

God is a mystery. God is truly GOD, which means God is more than reason, more than logic, more than a Santa Claus in heaven who gives us what we want. Our security comes in following the example of the early church, of biblical examples like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, like Peter.

And it comes from the people around us, like Bertie and Wayne Roberts, who have found God faithful in the most difficult times.