Sermon on March 2, 2025
“Embrace Mystery, Cultivate Love”
By: The Very Rev. Pamela Dolan
One of the films nominated for a Best Picture Oscar at tonight’s Academy Awards is Conclave, a fictional account of a papal election, with much to say about the role of the church in today’s world. Both times I’ve watched it. I’ve been struck by the words of a homily given by the protagonist, Cardinal Thomas Lawrence, preached to the College of Cardinals the night before they are to begin the process of electing a new pope. In what are supposed to be unscripted remarks, he says,
“In the course of a long life in the service of our Mother the Church, let me tell you that there is one sin I have come to fear above all others. Certainty. Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance. Even Christ was not certain at the end. Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand in hand with doubt. If there was only certainty, and if there was no doubt, there would be no mystery, and therefore no need for faith.”
These are wise words. Although I am not sure I would call it a sin, exactly, certainty is dangerous, in its way, especially for people who believe in God. Certainty is, you might say, easier than doubt, and or at least simpler. Doubt can complement faith, allow it some depth and complexity, give the believer room to seek to understand and respect other points of view. When we have certainty, as Cardinal Lawrence said, we have no need of faith and, sadly, we also have no room left to grow. Certainty, then, is a kind of death of the spirit.
We live in a world that is full of change and uncertainty, and unfortunately many people respond to the anxiety that creates by digging in and clinging to certainty at all costs. It’s almost ironic, the idea that uncertainty leads to certainty, but at a deeper level it makes sense. There’s a kind of comfortable equilibrium that most people are seeking, and certainty can be very reassuring. In previous eras like ours, marked by rapid change and instability, there were similar efforts to attain equilibrium, usually by retreating into simplistic understandings of reality and following the lead of strong and overly certain leaders. Far too often, this has been a recipe for disaster.
I think this desire for certainty is one way of understanding how Peter responds to the awe-inspiring vision that he and his friends had on the mountaintop that day with Jesus. He witnessed something inexplicable, paradigm-breaking, impossible even, and it shakes him to his core. Peter’s instinct is to find a way to capture and contain that enormity, to make it something he can return to at will, so he can tame and analyze it. In other words, he wants to quickly return to a reality he can understand and feel comfortable with.
God’s response to Peter is not the reassurance he seeks. Instead, God gets bigger and more terrifying, speaking to them from a cloud that overshadows them. In response to this manifestation of God’s power and glory, Peter and the other disciples have no words. Silence in the face of mystery, especially the mystery that is God, is often the only authentic response possible.
This final Sunday of the season of Epiphany reminds us that God is not ours to control. We can proclaim God’s greatness, or fall down before it in silent wonder, but we can’t manufacture it or summon it at will. God doesn’t fit in a box or a building. Nothing we can say about God is ever fully true or adequate. Much of the focus of the season of Epiphany has been about God manifesting in our everyday lives, in ordinary things like wine and fish and communities of people gathered to hear God’s word. But lest we get too comfortable, feel a little too much like we’ve got this God thing figured out, fall into that simple way of thinking about our faith, like “gee wasn’t Jesus a great guy, we’re all going to be so happy following him”—that’s the moment when the Transfiguration happens and boom, God shakes up all our certainties and says, “Not so fast.” All of that immanent, earthy, relatable stuff is completely true about God. And so is this other thing, this thing that is. bigger than we can imagine, beyond our wildest dreams, shining like a supernova—all of that, too, is completely true about God. We don’t get to choose one or the other. We are not in control.
Do you feel that tension, that paradox? Well, hang on, because t’s only going to get stronger during the days of Lent, when we are going to be reminded over and over again of our mortality and frailty and limitedness, and also of how profoundly, infinitely beloved we are.
At the heart of our desire for certainty is fear—fear of the unknown, of change, of power or control or status. Our ultimate fear is death, because it is the universal experience that denies all human efforts at control. It is the greatest unknown. Or is it?
The great nature writer Barry Lopez wrote something profound about fear that I found in his posthumous collection of essays called Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World. It was startling for me to learn that this man who explored many of the remotest regions of our planet, from the Artic to desert to the depths of the oceans, was often afraid, and afraid of many of the things that scare me: flying in small planes, sailing in stormy seas, and so on. He explained that confronting his fears and overcoming them, for a time, had little to do with courage and everything to do with commitment and love, especially love for what he called this “incredibly beautiful, confounding, mysterious, and elevating” world. He wrote:
“The commitment in these circumstances, I believe, is actually to something larger than the self. You get in the right frame of mind. You can’t do this every day, but once in a while you can enter that place inside yourself where you privately meet your fears and say, ‘Yes, I know. But please, come with me. What we’re about to see is greater than the thing you’re running from.’ Successfully locating the proper frame of mind is not, I think, about refusing to accommodate fear. It’s about the cultivation of love.”
Love: the mystery that is greater, and stronger, and more eternal even than death. When we are tempted to cling to certainty in the face of fear, to grasp at easy answers in response to discomfort and anxiety, let’s remember these words. Cultivate love. Embrace mystery. Our faith will grow, as well as our commitment, and compassion—and maybe even our courage. Amen.
