This particular story was about a cheesecake I was baking from scratch one Christmas.  It’s kind of involved and costly to bake a cheesecake from scratch.  If you’ve ever done that then you know it’s not only easier but also cheaper to just buy one ready made.  As I was nearing the end of mixing the ingredients something terrible happened.  One of the last steps in the process was to grate some fresh lemon rind into the mix.  I began grating the lemon rind over the batter as it was turning on the automatic mixer.  I was almost finished when I nicked my knuckle on the grater and, before I could stop it, a drop of blood dripped into the mix and swirled around a couple of times.  I turned off the mixer and stood there in disbelief, staring at about twenty dollars worth of fresh ingredients that had just become a strawberry swirl cheesecake.  I didn’t know what to do.  Should I throw it out?  It was too late and too expensive to start over.  So, I stood there for a minute and looked around.  No one was watching.  So, I turned the mixer back on until the blood disappeared into the yellow mix, slapped that puppy into the oven and served it up with no one the wiser. 

That really happened.  But, like I said, it’s also a parable.  No matter how hard I try, no matter how good my intentions, as the British might say, my bloody humanity keeps dripping into the mix of my very best efforts.  It’s even a parable of the gospel.  Into the raw mix of our humanity, God has spilled his mysterious presence and, by his blood, served up the Bread of Life for all to eat who wish to see his redemption. 

It’s not anything like what you and I would have scripted if the story of redemption had been ours to write.  Not in grandeur and raw, unbridled power that shoots first and asks questions later but in mystery and weakness, God has come to live with us, to die with us, to be raised among us and walk with us for just a while longer as we journey toward the Day when we will all see his final redemption.  If you need a timeline on that, we’re still in the mix, God present with us, in forms of power that come only through mystery and weakness, not yet ready for the final Meal we will celebrate together someday.

For some, that’s a hard meal to swallow.  It’s even harder to sell.  It’s nothing particularly new but it does seem that there’s never been a time when people more desperately wanted the hard currency of certainty with which to barter their way through life.  Clear, concise, fill-in-the-blank answers sell better than mystery these days.  If you want mystery, you’d do better to restrict your writing to entertainment.  To movies, perhaps, where people can suspend reality for a few moments of escape.  But, when they walk out of a dark theater and re-enter the world they really live in, people tend to want black and white clarity. 

Like the parents who tragically backed over and killed their infant in their own driveway and who are now suing the carmaker for not having installed a camera in the back of the vehicle that would have supposedly prevented that from happening (“Garland family sues carmaker over toddler's death,” WFAA.com, November 19, 2004).  If you don’t think people will do anything and everything to have the security of certainty, then try talking about a God who wrapped himself in human flesh and bled all over the world he loved enough to die for.  Try talking about the God who created this universe revealing himself in mystery and weakness.Paul did and knew how hard it could be to ask people to trust the God who had revealed himself in mystery and weakness.  “Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified . . . Christ the power of God and wisdom of God.  For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength” (1 Corinthians 1:22-25).

Try telling this story, about the Jesus who sat outside the tomb of his best friend, Lazarus, and wept in grief.  Jesus, the Son of the living God of all creation, weeping!  How do you explain that?  This is the way the gospel writers scripted the story.  “No one has ever seen God” (John 1:18a).  Mystery.  “It is the only Son who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known” (John 1:18b).   Weakness enough to feel hunger, loneliness, anxiety and even to weep and then even to bleed. 

Have you ever seen a person weep?  We’ve all seen people cry.  But, have you ever seen anyone weep, with their face in their hands, doubled over in deep anguish, even agony, loud sobs, gut-wrenching sobs almost to the point of nausea, too weak to stand.  Ever seen that?  That’s the image we’re given of Jesus, God in the flesh.  That’s the image we’re given of God, holy God weeping, God in mystery and weakness.  That’s the story of the gospel.  And, frankly, it is that gospel that does more for my faith than what sometimes poses as certainty and security. 

Just this week, I received an email from one of the young mothers in my Home Team.  She wrote, “More everyday, the problems caused by our expectations of a quick fix for everything seem to stare me in the face.  As if the life God gives us needs to be fixed.  As if we're entitled to something better than what God planned for us.  If we assume that things need to be fixed, our priority list gets out of whack.  It’s hard to let go of certainty and strength.  Seems like we should be ‘entitled’ to one or the other, at least.  Letting go of the illusion of certainty (i.e. security) is my by biggest block to abundant life.”  What is she saying?  Is she saying that God has not revealed himself to her as much in answers as in relationship based on faith that keeps walking even when there are no answers?  Is she saying that faith is found not in the security of knowing but in the trust to let go?  Is that what she’s saying?  Is she saying that faith can only happen when we trust what we cannot see and understand, not so much when we are strong and certain?  I think that’s what I heard.  What did you hear?

Too often we’re dependent on something God never promised: simplicity, black and white certainty.  Some people apparently need it in very simple terms.  George Will writes that this is the result of living in “the culture of victimhood” which has led to “the presumed incompetence of individuals” which is “both a cause and a consequence of a society sprinkled with warning labels written for imbeciles.  Such as?  On an iron, DO NOT IRON CLOTHES ON BODY.  On a fold-up child’s stroller: REMOVE CHILD BEFORE FOLDING” (George F. Will, “Validation By Defeat,” Newsweek, November 22, 2004, p. 86). 

It’s gone beyond irons and strollers all the way to the pew as well.  As evidenced in the words found on a church sign that a friend sent to me this week, “Stop, drop and roll does not work in hell.”  Some people need it spelled out letter by letter, I suppose.  As evidenced in the story about a priest and a pastor standing beside a road and pounding a sign into the ground that read, “The End Is Near!  Turn Yourself Around Now Before It’s Too Late!”  As a car sped past them, the driver yelled, “Leave us alone, you religious nuts!”  From the curve they heard screeching tires and a big splash.  The pastor turned to the priest and asked, “Do you think the sign should just say, ‘Bridge out’?”

Jesus could be pretty blunt, too.  He once said, “‘Unless you repent, you . . . will all perish’” (Luke 13:5).  But, when he spoke of that repentance, he also said, “‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near’” (Matthew 3:2)!  When God wanted us to repent, to turn away from sin, to change our minds about walking this road of life without him in our lives, this road that leads to nowhere that anywhere without him could lead but to a hopeless death, he didn’t yell at a heavenly distance down to us, “Either get your act together or I’ll come show you how stop drop and roll doesn’t work in hell!”  No! 

As we are about to celebrate over these next several weeks in the season of Advent, when God wanted us to repent, he didn’t scream it from heaven.  He drew near and whispered it to us in the whimper of a baby in a manger.  He has salted the sinful ground we walk on with his own tears.  This God of all creation, this Master sculptor and painter and dreamer sent his only son, not to fill in all our blanks, not to answer all of our questions, but to walk with us, to sit and cry with us when there are no answers and even to die with us so that we could live forever with him.

I don’t know many people who can relate to a Jesus who walks on water or turns water into wine or five loaves and two fish into a feast for thousands.  I believe Jesus did all those things.  Not because I can prove it but because I’ve seen the other things God has done, like the moon and stars and mountains and oceans and even a smile on a baby’s face.  And, I believe that if God can make those things he can take a stroll anywhere he wants anytime he wants and come out on the other side dry.  And, he can turn as much dough into as much bread as he wants and transform common tap water into enough world class Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon to satisfy all the Episcopalians at once if he wants and he can make a common gold fish fly like an eagle, if that’s what he wants.  But, that’s not what he really wants. 

All he really wants is for us to know this.  That though we may not be able to personally comprehend a God who can do all of those miracles, we can relate to a God who was also personal enough to sit outside the tomb of a friend and weep at thought of it all.  That this mysterious God whom we have never seen, is not watching us at a distance but has come close to us in human weakness, blood in our cheesecake, close enough to sit with us outside the tomb that holds our the corpse of greatest and hopes and dreams and cry with us for a while.  Then, in a moment we can neither predict nor control, he wants to stand with us outside that smelly tomb that we once called our lives and say to the death that we thought stole away all of our hope and say, just as he did to Lazarus, “‘Come out!  Unbind him, and let him go’” (John 11:43-44).  Then, he wants to turn to us, just as he did to those standing there weeping with him over hopeless death, “‘I am the resurrection and the life.  Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.  Do you believe this’” (John 11:25-26)?

Not, “can you prove it?”  But, “Will you believe it?”  Will you believe it for yourself and for those you love most and for this church?  Even for this world?  Will you believe it?  That death wasn’t God’s idea.  That he still has a dream for you and for me?  And, that all he’s waiting on us to do is not figure it out, one-two-three, but to just take one step toward him, with him, in faith? 

What if God is still at work?  What if he is still dreaming and creating?  What if?  That’s what I’m celebrating today.  Not so much what I’ve figured out but what I’m believing.

I just absolutely love the way Twila Paris sings it.  “This is the faith, patience to wait, when there is nothing clear.  Nothing to see, still, we believe, Jesus is very near.  I cannot imagine what will come.  But I’ve already made my choice.  And this is where I stand until he moves me on.  And I will listen to his voice.  Could it be that he is only waiting there to see, if I will learn to love the dreams that he has dreamed for me?  Can’t imagine what the future holds.  But I’ve already made my choice.  And this is where I stand until he moves me on.  And, I will listen to his voice” (Twila Paris, “I Will Listen,” Where I Stand, Chordant Music, 1996). 

Will you join me in listening to his voice?  Will we really listen to the voice of God in the whimper of a child and the cry of a dying savior? 

Will we listen to the voice of the one who said, “‘I am the resurrection and the life.  Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.  Do you believe this?’”

There’s nothing less than all of our eternity riding on it.