There is a peculiar ache in sermons like these, the ache of truth that refuses to be systematized, like light filtering through broken stained glass, catching the dust in the air and making it sing. You have reminded us, not only of the majesty of God’s unknowable infinity, but of the scandal of His proximity… the wound of His nearness. This is the unbearable tension of the Christian life: that the One whose voice split mountains now speaks in the silt of our ordinary hours.
Evelyn Underhill’s phrase “a certain capacity for Eternity” feels less like a theological proposition than a buried memory, as though we carry in our bones the echo of a Voice we’ve never heard with our ears, but which has been naming us since before our birth. This thirst for the Unchanging, this soul-hunger that no bread on earth can satisfy, is not an escape from the world but a descent more deeply into it. For the mystery is not “out there”. It is here, in skin and sacrament, in bread that bleeds and wine that sings.
In an age that is impatient with mystery, that wants to package God in algorithms or cast Him out as myth, your sermon dares to linger in the unresolvable. It doesn’t flinch before the dark cloud of unknowing, but names it as holy ground. And this is what incarnational mysticism knows well: that God does not merely transcend the world, He infiltrates it. The sling-stone in David’s hand, the sweat on Gethsemane’s brow, the still-warm bread of Emmaus… these are not metaphors. They are thorns and thunder, real as blood. The Infinite folded into the finite.
And so, yes, mystery is pervasive… not as riddle, but as Presence. It is the mystery of the God Who bleeds and yet holds the stars. The mystery of a Church that limps and yet is filled with His fire. The mystery that holiness smells of woodsmoke and stale incense and sometimes even hospital disinfectant. The mystery that the tomb is empty and the world, therefore, is full.
You write, “Christ saves not by Himself wielding sword and spear, but by receiving them.” It is the most devastating paradox in history. And it is the blueprint for our own salvation: not in power, but in surrender. Not by conquering the mystery, but by consenting to it.
And perhaps this is the most daring claim of Christianity: that the mystery we thirst for doesn’t reside in the heavens only, but walks beside us on the road. That the one we cannot see is hidden in the face of the one we cannot love. That eternity is not just something we long toward, but something that, in Christ, has already begun.
There is a peculiar ache in sermons like these, the ache of truth that refuses to be systematized, like light filtering through broken stained glass, catching the dust in the air and making it sing. You have reminded us, not only of the majesty of God’s unknowable infinity, but of the scandal of His proximity… the wound of His nearness. This is the unbearable tension of the Christian life: that the One whose voice split mountains now speaks in the silt of our ordinary hours.
Evelyn Underhill’s phrase “a certain capacity for Eternity” feels less like a theological proposition than a buried memory, as though we carry in our bones the echo of a Voice we’ve never heard with our ears, but which has been naming us since before our birth. This thirst for the Unchanging, this soul-hunger that no bread on earth can satisfy, is not an escape from the world but a descent more deeply into it. For the mystery is not “out there”. It is here, in skin and sacrament, in bread that bleeds and wine that sings.
In an age that is impatient with mystery, that wants to package God in algorithms or cast Him out as myth, your sermon dares to linger in the unresolvable. It doesn’t flinch before the dark cloud of unknowing, but names it as holy ground. And this is what incarnational mysticism knows well: that God does not merely transcend the world, He infiltrates it. The sling-stone in David’s hand, the sweat on Gethsemane’s brow, the still-warm bread of Emmaus… these are not metaphors. They are thorns and thunder, real as blood. The Infinite folded into the finite.
And so, yes, mystery is pervasive… not as riddle, but as Presence. It is the mystery of the God Who bleeds and yet holds the stars. The mystery of a Church that limps and yet is filled with His fire. The mystery that holiness smells of woodsmoke and stale incense and sometimes even hospital disinfectant. The mystery that the tomb is empty and the world, therefore, is full.
You write, “Christ saves not by Himself wielding sword and spear, but by receiving them.” It is the most devastating paradox in history. And it is the blueprint for our own salvation: not in power, but in surrender. Not by conquering the mystery, but by consenting to it.
And perhaps this is the most daring claim of Christianity: that the mystery we thirst for doesn’t reside in the heavens only, but walks beside us on the road. That the one we cannot see is hidden in the face of the one we cannot love. That eternity is not just something we long toward, but something that, in Christ, has already begun.