Just as you do not know the path of the wind and how bones are formed in the womb of the pregnant woman, so you do not know the activity of God who makes all things. Eccles. 11

Where we you before you were born?

We spend a lot of time wondering and worrying about what happens to us after we die. Where do we go? What happened to our loved ones? We can be afraid. Are they ok? Will we be ok?

But do we wonder where we were before we were born? Clearly we were ok then. And then we arrived here, somehow, some mysterious way. And so won’t we be ok moving from here to what is after here, the next mystery? God knew us before we were born, before even we were formed in our mother’s womb. God will not suddenly forget about us. God knows us and God knows what is next. And we can rest in that mystery. If we let it be a mystery.

Mystery is healthy

It help us keep a sense of wonder

It allows room for us to be merely human and God to be God much larger than we can comprehend

It allows us the humility to say “I don’t know.”

Paul talks in today’s scripture about being the keeper of mysteries; this is one of our tasks as faith filled people. Keepers or stewards of mysteries. I like that. I like it because it gives rooms for mystery as a part of life I like that to be a keeper of mysteries is not to get everything to fit in one neat package, all the questions answered, all the i’s dotted.

In working on theology and mystery, the Methodists have a practice known as the Wesleyan Quadrilateral, a methodology for theological reflection that is credited to John Wesley, leader of the Methodist movement in the late 18th Century.

Wesley used four different sources in coming to theological conclusions. The four sources are:

• Scripture – the Holy Bible (Old and New Testaments)
• Tradition – the two millennia history of the Christian Church
• Reason – rational thinking and sensible interpretation
• Experience – a Christian's personal and communal journey in Christ

These are ways in which we too reach toward the mystery of our lives and our Creator.

William Phelps taught English literature at Yale for forty-one years until his retirement in 1933. Marking an examination paper shortly before Christmas one year, Phelps came across the note: "God only knows the answer to this question. Merry Christmas." Phelps returned the paper with this note: "God gets an A. You get an F. Happy New Year."  (Today in the Word, October, 1990, p. 10.)

Just as you do not know the path of the wind and how bones are formed in the womb of the pregnant woman, so you do not know the activity of God who makes all things. Eccles. 11

When does the soul inhabit the body?

Some say at the time of quickening, when a mother can feel the baby move in her womb. Others say at the time of conception or at the time of birth. We don’t know. But this uncertainty fuels the abortion debate.

Today’s Jeremiah passage is often used by religious right to life or anti choice people claiming that if God knew us before we were in our mother’s womb then clearly we are a person when we are in the womb.

But is that what our text says?

God indeed knows us before in mother’s womb. But that doesn’t mean we inhabit the embryo fetus at that time, or does it

God knows us but doesn’t say where exactly we are.
If we believe that God receives us when we die, when we no longer inhabit the body we walk around on this earth with, then so too we should understand that we are with God before we are born though we do not know when we begin to inhabit that the body we will inherit when we are born. Is it in the womb, is it the moment of birth? When?

And the more difficult question: where were we before we were even conceived. Where was the me before then? Did I as I know myself as an independent being exist? If we believe that the I exists after death in some form, that our soul is not lost, then why only after death. Why not before?  And if so, do we enter the realm of speculating on reincarnation? Which in many ways makes far more sense than one shot and human life and then eternal hanging around.

I struggle with abortion. I am passionately pro choice and believe in a woman’s right to choose for so many reasons. I believe we all need autonomy over our own bodies and the choice to make decisions about those bodies. I believe that abortion can save lives, not only in dire medically complicated ways, but the lives of women who are not ready to be parents, and the lives of children born to people not ready to be parents. At the same time I am the parent of an adopted child. Abortion is not an easy choice; it never is for those who choose it.

But this text speaks to more than just the abortion debate where it is used to bash folks over the head. It speaks instead to mystery. The awesome, unable-to-be-captured-by-human-imagination dimension of God.

We don’t know. It is a mystery and our discerning and experimenting can only take us so far.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Senior, was a doctor. As such he was very interested in the use of ether. In order to know how his patients felt under its influence, he once had a dose administered to himself.

As he was going under, in a dreamy state, a profound thought came to him. He believed that he had suddenly grasped the key to all the mysteries of the universe. When he regained consciousness, however, he was unable to remember what the insight was.

Because of the great importance this thought would be to mankind, Holmes arranged to have himself given either again. This time he had a stenographer present to take down the great thought. The either was administered, and sure enough, just before passing out the insight reappeared. He mumbled the words, the stenographer took them down, and he went to sleep confident in the knowledge that he had succeeded.

Upon awakening, he turned eagerly to the stenographer and asked her to read what he had uttered. This is what she read: "The entire universe is permeated with a strong odor of turpentine."  (Bits & Pieces, November 12, 1992, pp. 20-22.)

Perhaps not the most helpful description of mystery.

Some things are not for us to know now. I think this frees us to let go. To trust in the force of God which is so much larger and complicated and incomprehensible. 

Without mysteries, life would be very dull indeed. What would be left to strive for if everything were known?” Charles de Lint said. Or Einstein who said, “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.”

Our work as people of faith is not to unravel all the mysteries, nor is it to shy away from asking the hard and searching questions. But to hold in balance seeking to know and knowing when it is time to let mystery by mystery. To be keepers of the mysteries.

Where were we before we were born?

Where will we be when we die?

Where did the person next to you come from?

And how do we know that the presence of God surrounds us through all these transitions and more?

It is a mystery. And yet, through these mysteries and so many more, we affirm the God who knew us before, and will know us after this short life of ours is over, and will carry us in love.

Amen.