MinistryofWords - Presbyterian Church at Franklin Lakes

Dabar: Mystery

Ephesians 3; 6:18-20

May 5, 2008, by Barbara Kellam-Scott,

Writer in Residence, Presbytery of the Palisades*

Especially since Paul (or his successor) is explicitly addressing a primarily Gentile community of Christians in Ephesus, his use of this Greek word, the direct ancestor of our English one, may be simply evidence of marketing genius. As Vine’s Dictionary points out, it’s more about what is revealed than what is concealed, and the revelation divides those included from those left clueless. That would make Christianity more appealing in the “marketplace of ideas” of the Hellenized world, the Ephesian Christians’ social context. Mystery doesn’t appear at all in the Hebrew Bible of the KJV, and only in the Book of Daniel in the NRSV. There are, however, a number of words translated secret. And mystery/secret comes up only once in the Gospels (parallel passages in the 3 synoptics), where Jesus explains that he teaches in parables specifically to keep outsiders clueless (an idea, btw, that the Jesus Seminar fellows found so alien as to make the explanation highly unlikely to have originated with Jesus).
Though we in our science-dominated era aren’t as strongly attracted to an explicitly mysterious or magical religion, we do keep coming back to God’s unfathomability as an explanation for our perplexities. ‘God has a plan,’ we say, or ‘Who can know God’s will? It’s a mystery.’ But this isn’t how the word is used in the letter to the Ephesians. I’m not at all sure whether I prefer the exclusionary revelation or the inscrutable, and perhaps whimsical, God. Instead of either, I think I’ll take my religious mystery in the idea of a 16th-century Maya woman, as written by Laura Esquivel in her novel Malinche. Working as a translator (and then mistress) for her people’s conqueror, Cortez, this deeply spiritual woman calls Spanish “a language you cannot understand, but can imagine.” That fits my faith pretty well.

For a freewheeling discussion of this and past Dabar columns, join my Yahoo group at yahoo.com/group/irrev-dabar

* I was recognized as the Presbytery's Writer in Residence at the Sept. 18, 2007, stated meeting, and have relinquished the similar designation by the session of PCFL that got me there.

Daily Lectionary

May 6–10

To go straight to today's lections, click on this link.

May 5
Morning: Psalm 145:1-21
Joshua 1:1-9
Ephesians 3:1-13
Matthew 8:5-17
Evening: Psalm 115:1-18

May 6
Morning: Psalm 146:1-10
1 Samuel 16:1-13a
Ephesians 3:14-21
Matthew 8:18-27
Evening: Psalm 116:1-19

May 7
Morning: Psalm 147:1-11
Isaiah 4:2-6
Ephesians 4:1-16
Matthew 8:28-34
Evening: Psalm 118:1-29

May 8
Morning: Psalm 147:12-20
Zechariah 4:1-14
Ephesians 4:17-32
Matthew 9:1-8
Evening: Psalm 113:1-9

May 9
Morning: Psalm 148:1-14
Jeremiah 31:27-34
Ephesians 5:1-32
Matthew 9:9-17
Evening: Psalm 138:1-8

May 10
Morning: Psalm 149:1-9
Ezekiel 36:22-27
Ephesians 6:1-24
Matthew 9:18-26
Evening: Psalm 114:1-8