The Mystery of the Universe, the Mystery of Christ- Ephesians 3: 1 – 12

During Epiphany we consider the magi and the worship they brought to the newborn Jesus.  And like the Magi, I begin today with the stars.

The universe is a great big place.
It’s really huge.  And then some…

Light, we have discovered, travels at the stupefying speed of 186,282 miles per second.  Let me say that again: 186,282 miles every second.  Travelling at that speed it takes light a full eight minutes to travel from the sun to the earth.  If you’re quick with the math you could multiply that out the sun is 89.3 million miles from the earth.

Distances across the universe are so vast that they are measured in light years – the distance light travels in a year - approximately 5.9 trillion miles. 

Our own Milky Way galaxy is approximately 100,000 light years in diameter (100,000 times 6 trillion miles…) And the closest galaxy to ours is the Andromeda galaxy at 2.2 million light years away (2.2 million times 6 trillion miles…)

And that’s just a step into the incomprehensible distances of the universe.  It’s difficult to look out into the stars without feeling small, dwarfed into insignificance.

I look up at your heavens, shaped by your fingers,
at the moon and the stars you set firm,
what are human beings that you spare a thought for them
or the child of Adam that you care for him?
Psalm 8: 3 – 4

And yet…
It’s the mystery of the universe…
Why is there something instead of nothing?  And why is it such a stupefyingly enormous something?

The universe seems to be tailored to fit us; everything about the universe seems designed for life – intelligent life – to exist.   For example:  there is just the right amount of the chemical elements necessary for life and these chemicals posses the right properties for life to exist.  Physicist Richard Morris writes, “How is it that common elements such as carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen happened to have just the right kind of atomic structure that they needed to combine to make the molecules on which life depends?  It is almost as though the universe had been consciously designed…”

And again:

The strength of the four fundamental forces  - the forces that hold and bind the universe together – gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear (not pronounced "nuc-u-ler") are set for the existence of life.  If the strength of any one of these forces were adjusted stronger or weaker, the universe as we know it could not exist.  The universe (if it existed at all) would be all hydrogen or all helium, or the stars would be unable to burn, or there would be no atoms at all.

And this is a very incomplete list.  There are many specific parameters in the universe set just right for us to be here marveling about the specific nature of these parameters.  The name given to this is the “Anthropic Principle.” 

The Anthropic Principle makes man the measure of the universe.  It measures everything in terms of us… and is probably very incomplete. What could we know of God’s mind in creation?   And yet… it seems that he has revealed himself to be a concerned deity – who provides for his creation, and not as a disinterested divinity who spun creation off to take care of itself.

And even more I wonder with the Psalmist…
I look up at your heavens, shaped by your fingers,
at the moon and the stars you set firm,
what are human beings that you spare a thought for them
or the child of Adam that you care for him?

It’s the mystery of the universe. Why does God take an interest in me?

All that we know or can know about God comes to us by revelation.  The Stars and the moon and the galaxies that we observe as we stare out into the sky without our increasingly powerful telescopes, all of this is Natural Revelation.  God has revealed himself to us in the marvels of his creation. He has revealed his concern for us in the many detailed specifics that exist in the universe that allow us to exist.

Yet there is more to God’s revelation than the natural. There is a supernatural revelation in the scriptures.  The books of the old and new testaments are not just another set of books… not just another bestseller.  How ever they were written, and edited and compiled, however they have come to us, we believe that the reveal something more than other books.  We believe that God has revealed himself to us through the words of scripture.

In this book we read about how humans were created to exist in community with God.  That our first parents were created innocent and pure and in that they lived in communion with God.  Man lived in and with God. 

But something happened.  Something broke that community.  Something broke the fellowship.  Something brought death.  It was sin; the willing violation of God’s standard, and it brought death and separation from God.

But this book also reveals that God wasn’t willing to allow that separation and death to keep us from him, and so he put into effect a plan that he had made even before creation.

Over thousands of years this plan unfolded, beginning slowly with one man, Abraham, who set out in faith for something he didn’t know and couldn’t understand… it grew and grew until it was a nation embracing a covenant with God.  This nation accepted the law of God’s character and promised to obey. They were to be a light to a dark world, drawing all nations close so that they might also know God.

They were marked and set apart from the other races and tribes and nations in order to reveal God’s character and God’s love.

But the plan wasn’t done.  The plan wasn’t just to create a nation.  The plan wasn’t to create a people of God that excluded anyone who couldn’t trace their heritage back to Abraham.

And so God went further and revealed himself through the incarnation.  Not a deity content to watch his creation spin out into chaos and death, he abandoned the glory of heaven to be born in that squalid cow stall.  He became one of us so that death and separation could be destroyed and the living fellowship and communion with God could be restored.  He became as we are so that we might become as he is.

And it was this that the magi saw when they knelt in that home in Bethlehem. And they were welcomed by God. 

Now, the thing is, by the time of Jesus the idea had settled among the Jews, that God’s plan included only them; that they were THE CHOSEN PEOPLE.  They were God’s specially selected people, and that as such they enjoyed special promises from God and a special relationship with God.   And it’s true; they did. 

But it wasn’t for them alone.

The magi who came to worship Christ in Bethlehem would not have been welcomed.  They were foreigners.  They were gentiles.  They were unclean. They were dogs.  They would have been sent away.  The magi who came to worship Christ in..Bethlehem.. would have been excluded from worship in the Temple in Jerusalem.

Paul wrote the letter to the Ephesians during his imprisonment in Rome on charges stemming from the allegation that he had brought gentiles into the Temple.

It was a big deal, this division between Jew and Gentile. 
But Christ undid it.  And Paul preached it.

Paul unapologetically preached it everywhere he went – that in Christ all are welcome.  This is the mystery of Christ.

…the mystery of Christ, which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit; to be specific, that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel, of which I was made a minister, according to the gift of God's grace which was given to me according to the working of His power.

And that’s good news for us here, for the way to God that has been opened to us through the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is not restricted to one race.  The good news for us is that we have a share in the promises made to Abraham and his descendents.  Though I hate to sing it, the children’s chorus “Father Abraham” gets it right. Father Abraham had many sons and I am one of them, so let’s just praise the Lord.

This is the mystery of Christ; that all are welcome.  His Kingdom, his Church is universal.  Membership in the Israel of God is not a matter of national identity or genetic descent.  All are welcome.

This is the mystery of Christ, unknown in ages past, that we, that everyone can have boldness and confidence to approach God through Jesus, that we are restored and reunited to the fellowship and communion that was broken, that we can be resurrected from our state of death into the eternal life of God. 

Boldness to approach the throne?  I felt small looking out into the immensity of the universe, now I am undone.  That God would plan – in the darkness and stillness before creation – to make a way for me to come to him, come to him with boldness and confidence… what could I do to deserve this?

Nothing.
Nothing at all.
I am undone.

Paul considered himself the least of the apostles, the chief of sinners… PAUL the APOSTLE… who wrote the bulk of the New Testament… and I am, well I am, as I said

undone.

And yet…

The mystery of Christ is that I am welcome.  In spite of all I was before.  In spite of my sin. My death has been swallowed up, and I am emboldened. I am given grace to be bold before God. 

This is too much for me to understand.  But understanding isn’t necessary.  This is mystery, after all. The mystery of Christ.