Kryptos
On November 3, 1990, a sculpture was dedicated at the CIA headquarters in Langley Virginia. This sculpture named Kryptos, has been for the past 34 years giving cryptanalyst and off duty intelligence agents fits. This sculpture is curved metal with stamped out English letters and a few question marks. In addition to Kryptos, nearby there are other elements that contain morse code and a compass. The artist responsible is Jim Sanborn. He consulted a CIA employee, but the final form of the encrypted message seems to belong to Sanborn himself. As I’ve delved into this rabbit hole, I found it truly amazing that an artist was able to encrypt a message that has eluded some of the brightest minds on the planet who work with encryptions daily. Not all the encrypted messages have remained hidden. In 1992 the NSA solved the first three passages. Just two years after it was dedicated the NSA solved 75% of the encryption and there it has stayed since. Sanborn has given contradictory statements about the nature of the riddle and even the nature of his statements. He seems impatient for a solver and yet happy to continue the game. In recent years he has given four clues to help people unlock the fourth passage. And yet still four years after the last clue the fourth passage remains unsolved.
Why have I dragged you down this rabbit hole with me? Well, I think for some of us Kyptos is how we imagine deciphering the will of God is or feels. How could I possibly be so deluded or bold to understand the will of God. Truly, it seems locked away either in the spiritual ether or behind the ancient text of the Bible. What are you or I to do? How are we to know the will of God for our lives or our corporate lives? Add in the shifting sands of culture, politics, and family. Oh, and the small matter of our Senior Pastor having resigned this past summer. What is next for our church? What are we to do? What does God have for us? Do we get to work code cribbing or doing frequency analysis or brute forcing the cipher? Do we simply give up under the weight of uncertainty and the overwhelming vastness of God? Do we panic? I don’t think these are good options. I can feel the uncertainty in our church. I sense capacity being overwhelmed. I can hear the panic.
And yet God’s will for us as individuals and as a Church has not been encrypted and filled with contradictory disinformation like Kyptos. No, God’s will has been made clear. On the first page of our Next Steps Membership book you will find Ephesians broken out into its component parts. In verse nine we get this…
“making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ 10 as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” [1]
Paul makes it clear what God’s will is here in Ephesians. The will of God was set forth in Christ to unite all things in Christ. That is our message from the Lord. It doesn’t require super computers to crack the mystery it just requires a little Bible reading. This doesn’t require a lot of handwringing it just requires faithfulness. The mystery of God’s will is the Gospel, that is his will for us as individuals and as a church.
[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Eph 1:9–10.
The funny thing about the Kyptos code is that although the first three messages have been solved, they are still vague. We still don’t know exactly what they mean or if they mean anything at all. The artist is an infuriating person to listen to because again he brings clarity and confusion and it’s not always clear which is which.
As Christians we not only know the will of God for us as individuals and as a church, but for all of creation. Not only do we know that God’s will is the Gospel, but we also know how to live it out. We love one another, we seek unity, we care for the least in society, we disciple, and we baptize.
The questions still linger. What will the next six months to a year look like? Will we make our budget? Who will be Pastor Next? These are legitimate questions that I don’t know the answers to. But, what is the will of God for our Church? I know this answer and so do you. God’s will for Steamboat Rock Baptist Church is that we be about the Gospel. So, no matter what the answers are to the questions above, let us be about the Gospel in the uncertainty.