GETTING AND NOT GETTING THE SECRET

What is life’s deep secret? Do we ever understand life? Do we ever get things right? What lies at the centre of life? These are deeper questions which gnaw away and we are never really sure how to answer them… do we really understand what our lives are all about? Yes and No! I suspect that most of us go through back and (forward) forth between knowing and not knowing, between having days when everything seems out of sorts.

We are living with secrets, we sometimes know, and then not know. I suspect we know what that feels like. Someday it seems we know the secret to living and feel we are inside of things, at their heart. This may be not necessarily, be something we are consciously aware of, but something sensed at a deeper level. There are times when our lives make sense. Steadiness lies not in the conviction that something will turn out well, but in certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

There are days when we know the truth of that. But they are days when we aren’t sure exactly what we know, when we feel outside of things, when the circle of life seems to exclude us, and we walk round the edges of love and meaning, unsure, unsteady, feeling some inexplicable guilt because we have the sense that somehow we are doing things wrongly and we are not where we should be. As so we live with a secret we sometimes we know, and then not. We feel steady and then unsure, strong and then unworthy; we sense that we know the secret to life and then suddenly we feel we don’t. Sometimes we stand inside of things and sometimes we stand we stand outside of them. I am always struck by the expression in the gospel of Mark, he says Peter betrayed Jesus at his trail, ultimately cursing him in order to save himself after the betrayal; Mark simply says “Peter went outside!, Out of what? Obviously he is referring to much more than Peter simply stepping outside of a door and leaving a room or courtyard. In betraying himself and betraying Jesus.” “Peter went outside” of something else, namely outside all that’s best inside of himself, outside of community of life, and outside the secret of life itself.

And what is the secret of life itself? What puts you inside and outside? The answers to these questions are clear: you are either “inside” or “outside” the true circle of understanding, not on the basis of being Jew, or gentile, of being man or woman, of going or not going to church. “getting” or “not getting” the secret.
And what is the secret? The secret of life is the cross of Christ or, as various scripture scholars and spiritual writers puts it, the brokenness of Jesus on the cross, the wisdom of the cross, the invitation that lies inside the cross and willingness to live out the demands of the cross.

It is not easy to summarize all that this means. To do this is a call to summarize all that is in the deepest challenges within revelation, theology and spirituality: God’s unconditional love and forgiveness, God’s loving presence inside of human crookedness, vulnerability as the excluded, the necessary connection between suffering and glory, the paradoxical nature of love and life.

The centrality of self-sacrifice as the key to love and fidelity and the importance of giving our lives over without resentment (of not sending the bill whenever we carry someone’s cross). There is a lot inside this secret! And when we are not at our best, when we let the demands of love, truth, and fidelity take us to where we would rather not go, we know it’s the truth and we live inside of it. In our days we may know about the kingdom of God but there are times like Peter’s when we betray Jesus, we “go outside” of the truth and what is best inside of us, and from that perspective life, love and truth, Jesus and the gospels; all look like an empty riddle.