Ephesians 3:1-13
“Mystery Story”
January 5, 2020 – Epiphany
Let me tell you who did it. I’m violating the fundamental principle of most mystery stories, which is to hide until the end the answer to “Whodunit?” In the mystery story Paul unfolds in Ephesians 3, he tells us almost from the beginning who the perpetrator is. God revealed the mystery to him, and Paul revealed it to us. Jesus did it. You probably already knew that. So where’s the mystery?
The Bible might be dull reading for those who browse mysteries on Amazon. Bible authors tell who did it right at the outset. Genesis starts “In the beginning, God…” Mark’s first words are, “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” And Paul starts his letters by revealing he was sent as an apostle by Jesus Christ. No secrets, no guessing who’s behind it all—it’s told in the first few lines. Why then does Paul, well into his letter to the Ephesians, talk about a mystery in chapter 3, verses 3, 4, and 9?
The best way I can explain how Paul’s story is a mystery is to talk about television sleuth Lieutenant Columbo. Yes, I know that’s reaching back before some of us were born. Peter Falk first brought Columbo to living room screens in 1968. He appeared on and off until the last Columbo episode aired in 2003. But please bear with this old man’s television nostalgia as I tell you about Columbo.
The lieutenant is a likeable, shabby plain-clothes police officer who wears a long wrinkled putty-colored rain coat in sunny Los Angeles. He is absent-minded and seems slow on the uptake, always fumbling through his pockets for a pencil or a piece of evidence. He keeps forgetting where he was in a conversation with a suspect. He drives a beat-up old 1959 Peugeot and smokes cheap cigars that come six to a pack. One of his main ploys is to conclude an interview, leave, then snap his fingers and turn back at the door to ask “just one more thing.”
Columbo has a wife he’s always talking about and loves dearly, but we never get to see her or even know her name, other than “Mrs. Columbo.” In fact, in all the years of the series, we never learn the lieutenant’s own first name. He’s a little mysterious, but that’s not the big mystery of these shows. Nor is the identity of the murderer.
Watching Columbo, just like reading the Bible, you always know who did it from the beginning. In early years, it was always another celebrity playing the killer. Somebody like Dick Van Dyke, Eddie Albert, or William Shatner commits a murder in the first few minutes, while we all watch. For the rest of the show, we know who did it. We’re just waiting to see how Columbo will figure it out. It’s called an “inverse mystery.”
The “mystery of Christ,” as Paul tells it, is an inverse mystery. There are no guessing games, nothing hidden about what has happened. Like the writers for Columbo, Paul more or less tells it all right at the beginning. In verse 4 he calls it the “mystery of Jesus Christ,” and in verse 5 says it has been revealed to the apostles and prophets. Then in verse 6 he just tells us, “that is, the Gentiles have become fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Jesus Christ through the gospel.”
We celebrate that mystery today on Epiphany. The “commission of God’s grace,” as Paul calls it in verse 2, is for everyone, Gentiles as well as Jews. Our other texts all say the same. Isaiah 60:3 says “Nations will come to your light and kings to the brightness of your dawn.” Psalm 72:11 says, “may all kings bow down to him, and all nations serve him.” And in Matthew 2 we read the sweet, mysterious account of magi, Persian astrologers, very possibly from Iran, journeying across desert to kneel before the boy Jesus. We know the story, the mystery is told, revealed, shines forth on Epiphany. The grace of Jesus Christ is for the whole earth, for every last man, woman and child on this planet.
Verse 11 says this mystery was God’s eternal purpose. He always meant to include everyone. Talk about inverted mysteries. God knew it from the beginning and frequently mentioned it. In Genesis 12:3, talking to Abraham, God says, “all nations on earth will be blessed through you.” Paul says it was, “accomplished in Jesus Christ.” Jesus did it. We know the mystery. Jesus is both the victim and the perpetrator. He died on the Cross to accomplish forgiveness and grace and He rose from the dead to prove it was done.
It’s so plain, it’s so obvious, it’s so revealed. There’s hardly any mystery to it at all. Yet it remains mysterious. The Epiphany of God’s grace in Jesus Christ is an inverted mystery. We may know who did it, but like Columbo, we’re still fumbling along, trying to discover how it will all work out. And that, especially our part in the story, is still not clear.
Here we are on the brink of war with Iran, with crowds of Persian people chanting “Death to America,” while missionaries tell us that the Christian population in that country is the fastest growing in the world. How is that going to work out? How will the grace of Jesus Christ appear in this crisis?
Name your favorite world problem: the intransigence of North Korea, the fires burning across Australia, or the trade conflict with China. How will the mystery of Christ, the Good News of His grace and salvation, work out in those arenas? The mystery is already revealed. Verse 8 calls it “the boundless riches of Christ,” for any and everyone. Jesus did it. But how is the world going to learn that? How will they all, all the nations on earth, or even all your friends, discover the mystery you and I know so well?
The Epiphany mystery calls us to be like Columbo. In verse 3, Paul talks about the mystery being made known to him. In verse 4 he told the Ephesians that reading just a “few words” he had written would let them “perceive my understanding of the mystery of Christ.” We begin with just a little revelation, a few words about the mystery. For Columbo it’s just a few clues: a wine cork that doesn’t match its bottle or a tiny inconsistency in someone’s story or a name in a hotel register. The good lieutenant starts with a little flicker of light, a tiny bit of the truth. It pinpoints for him the key suspect at the outset.
You and I also begin with a tiny bit of the Gospel mystery. Like the magi, we may not know quite where we are going, but we see the star guiding us. The key suspect is Jesus. In Christ, God gives us the central clue to figure out all the rest, how the mystery of grace will work in us and in the world. Like Columbo keeps coming back to his suspect, we keep coming back to Jesus, bowing down with the kings of Persia, and with all the Christians there now, in wondering adoration and worship of His mystery. It’s why we’re here today.
But we can be also like Columbo in his persistence. He keeps at it, studies evidence from every angle, leaves no one unquestioned. He learns from anyone who has seen or heard something. He keeps trying to piece the whole story together. Let us study as hard as Columbo does. Let’s sit down day after day, year after year, studying this same Book, learning as much as we can, seeking the whole story. We will read and listen to teachers, and we will find new clues into what Christ has done and what He is still doing.
Columbo wants to know who the murder is, but of course his big purpose is to catch the person and turn him or her over to others. Paul’s purpose is the same. In verse 8 he says that “this grace was given to me to bring to the Gentiles the boundless riches of Christ.” Then in verse 9 he explains, “and to make everyone see what is the plan of the mystery…” Like Columbo investigates so that others will know, Paul looks into the mystery of Christ in order to share it. In the same way, you and I investigate Jesus so we can turn Him over to friends, neighbors, and our children. We know a mystery everyone needs to know, both in Eugene and in Asia, next door to our house and next door to our nation in Mexico. Jesus is a great mystery given to us to share.
Let’s also be like Columbo in his humility. We have a mystery the world needs to know, but they need to hear it spoken humbly. In verse 8, Paul says “Although I am the very least of the saints, this grace was given to me…” Paul and Columbo are self-effacing, always admitting their faults. Neither the apostle nor the lieutenant is stupid or incompetent. They are brilliant practitioners of their mysteries, but they put themselves in second place, caring more for truth than for their own glory. They are servants of justice and truth. Let us be such humble servants of our Lord’s mystery.
Yet Columbo is also confident. Despite humble, shabby clothes, dumpy car, and forgetfulness, Columbo is supremely confident the truth will come out, the case will be solved, justice will be done. You and I too may be confident in the mystery of Jesus. In verse 12 Paul tells us that in Christ Jesus, “we have access to God in boldness and confidence.” Just past our text in in verse 13, Paul personalizes that by praying for the Ephesians, “that you may not lose heart over my sufferings for you; they are your glory.” In our exploration of the mystery of Christ, let’s not let suffering make us lose heart, lose our confidence. Suffering for and with Jesus is our glory.
It’s not just Columbo, of course, who is confident. From Sherlock Holmes to Hercule Perot, from Sam Spade to Nancy Drew, from Father Brown to Miss Marple, nearly the whole genre of mystery stories expresses a kind of holy confidence and faith that you and I should imitate. As Stanley Hauerwas finds in G. K. Chesterton and Dorothy Sayers, “detective fiction involves an extraordinary metaphysical draft on the way things are… justice is deeper than injustice… evil is bounded by a greater good.”[1]
We have this mystery, this revealed mystery, this inverted mystery of the grace of God poured out on the whole world through His Son. Jesus did it. Living in the mystery of Jesus, you and I may be confident, absolutely confident, that in His time, in His kingdom, God’s justice will be done. It may not be done tomorrow, it may not be done this year, it may not be done before we leave this world for a while, but we know Jesus did it. He will do it again.
From the descriptions I’ve read, I can’t recommend and won’t be watching the HBO series True Detective. It sounds like a good story, but with too much bad language, sex and violence for me. But I found a transcript of a conversation at the end of the first season of that show which says exactly what I want to say to us on Epiphany this year.
Evidently two Louisiana detectives, Rust and Marty, have solved an ugly, disturbing 17-year-old mystery. One of them, Rust, has nearly died, and is lying in the hospital. Now at the end of it all they talk it over. Rust is sobbing, but his partner pushes him:
Marty: “Didn’t you tell me one time, dinner once, maybe, about how you used to… you used to make up stories about the stars?”
Rust: “Yeah, that was in Alaska, under the night skies.”
Marty: “Yeah, you used to lay there and look up, at the stars?”
Rust: “Yeah, I think you remember how I never watched the TV until I was 17, so there wasn’t much to do up there but walk around, explore, and…”
Marty: “And look up at the stars and make up stories. Like what?”
Rust: “I tell you Marty I been up in that room looking out those windows every night here just thinking, it’s just one story. The oldest.”
Marty: “What’s that?”
Rust: “Light versus dark.”
Marty: “Well, I know we ain’t in Alaska, but it appears to me that the dark has a lot more territory.”
Rust: “Yeah, you’re right about that.”
But then Rust gets Marty to help him out of bed and leave the hospital. As they go out into the night, Rust looks up and, like Columbo, has just one more thing to say:
Rust: “You’re looking at it wrong, the sky thing.”
Marty: “How’s that?”
Rust: “Well, once there was only dark. You ask me, the light’s winning.”
That’s the “one more thing” we absolutely must share with those around us. The mystery of Christ is that no matter how dark the world seems, the light’s winning. People on the streets around us need to hear it. Our families need to hear it. Those who try to make us fear and hate others need to hear it along with those who are feared and hated. There’s just one story. His name is Jesus. He is the light and He is winning. That’s the mystery we are waiting to see work out here on earth.
Now I invite you to share in the mystery of Jesus by joining together in the mystery of His Table. We see it revealed plainly before us. Everyone who turns to the light of Jesus is welcome here. You are welcome. Let’s celebrate that mystery.
Amen.
Valley Covenant Church
Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
Copyright © 2020 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj
[1] A Better Hope (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2000), p. 207