He spoke to them only in parables,
to fulfill what had been said through the prophet:
I will open my mouth in parables,
I will announce what has lain hidden from the foundation
of the world.
The Bible often speaks of mysteries, which are hidden since the foundation of the world. There is nothing obvious about God, or man, or woman for that matter. Too often we think we know why we’re doing something, only to turn around the next day, or a week later, or many years later and say, “What was I thinking?” When our human ways so often make no sense, do we really expect to know the ways of God?
The word mystery appears often in the Bible, and most often in the New Testament. But clearly Abraham was awestruck and terrified by his first encounters with God. In the Book of Genesis, soon after their friendship began, when the LORD told Sarah she would have a son, we are told about God's musing; that is, his inner conversation:
The LORD considered: Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, now that he is to become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth are to find blessing in him? Indeed, I have singled him out that he may direct his children and his household in the future to keep the way of the LORD by doing what is right and just, so that the LORD may put into effect for Abraham the promises he made about him. (Genesis 18:16ff)
The story of Abraham's dickering with God over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah follows:
"If there are only fifty, forty, thirty, twenty, ten good men, will you destroy the cities?"
Clearly, Abraham doesn't know with Whom he is dealing. But then he watched burning pitch fall from the sky, and a fiery, mushroom cloud rise over the Cities of the Plain, destroying livestock, homes, temples, marketplaces, men, women, and children.
The Patriarch had never asked to know God, and never expected to meet God. But for reasons God only knew he had chosen Abraham and would be known as the Friend of Abraham.
Several years later, as Abraham bowed before the Lord, he was told to sacrifice Isaac, his beloved Son. In obedience to the LORD's command, he proved himself a worthy friend of God; although God intervened again and the boy was spared. .
Almost two thousand years later, St Paul worried, fretted, and fumed throughout his Letter to the Romans over another great mystery: why the descendants of Abraham would not sacrifice their old conceptions about the Law of Moses and accept Jesus as their Messiah and Lord.
After his encounter with the Son of God on the road to Damascus, he saw it so clearly. The Gospel of the Lord’s crucifixion, death, and resurrection fit so perfectly into the entire history of the Bible as he read it. The Gospel satisfied every prescription of the Law, every verse of the psalms, and every proverb in Wisdom literature; how could Abraham’s people not see it?
…the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How inscrutable are his judgments and how unsearchable his ways!” (Romans 11:33)
In the nineteenth century many thoughtful people in Europe and America thought they knew, if not the ways of God, at least the ways of men. Europeans and white Americans were supposed to be rational creatures who knew up from down, right from left, and right from wrong pretty well. Not only had we figured those things out, but we were rapidly building faster railroads; bigger coal-powered steamboats, faster communications; and bigger governments with larger armies than the world had ever seen. In fact, the world didn’t need God or the Word of God anymore because we had the power of reason and could make sense of anything.
And then the First World War happened, and millions of civilized, educated, disciplined, and honest young men marched across Europe and slaughtered one another for no apparent reason. Historians are still trying to understand why the First World War happened. And if they ever do, then they might explain the Second, which exterminated even more defenseless men, women, and children, and incinerated far more cities than Sodom and Gomorrah.
Why did rationality fail? And why are we still investing billions of dollars and millions of lives in finding better ways to obliterate each other? Why do we still not study theology, the queen of the sciences? And philosophy, the mother of the sciences? Are we condemned to destroy one another because God hates the world He has made? But we thought there is no such thing as god!
Without the Church which still believes that God created us, loves us, and saves us from the hell we create for ourselves, many people live without hope, without purpose, without any expectation of satisfaction or eternal life. They occupy themselves in this world with work and play, making money and spending it. They idle themselves with billions of useless hours of entertainment. And when they suffer chronic illness, they legalize what they call MAiD – “medical assistance in dying.” That’s a euphemism for suicide, self-murder, the intentional rebuke of God and his purposes.
The Church calls us to ponder again the mysterious ways of God, especially as we find God in failure, disappointment, loneliness, chronic illness, disabilities, and the tedious process of dying. We must discover who we are in depending on one another, and not in the popular myth of the Lone Ranger.
If we want nothing but success, comfort, ease, and security; if we want a life with no challenges, no complexity, and everything suited to our middling standards, we aspire to godless, pointless futility. There is nothing blessed in that; nor is that what our Father intends for the descendants of Abraham, whose ransom he paid not in gold or silver, but with the precious blood of Jesus,
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth,so are my ways higher than your ways, my thoughts higher than your thoughts. Is 55:8-9
