Sixth Sunday of Easter
April 27, 2008
Text: Acts 17:22-31
During the seven Sundays of Easter, we have been using our First Reading as the text of the sermon. On three of the past five Sundays, we have heard sermons preached by Peter, the apostle, and Stephen the deacon. As we noted last Sunday, when Peter’s listeners heard his message, they were cut to the heart; they repented and were baptized. When Stephen’s listeners heard his message, their hearts were filled with rage. Seizing Stephen, they took him out of Jerusalem and stoned him to death.
Today from our First Reading, the seventeenth chapter of Acts, we heard a third sermon. This one was preached by Paul, the apostle. He is the former Saul who approved of and witnessed the stoning of Stephen. Since converting to Christianity, Paul has left behind his days of persecuting Christians. He is now the chief spokesman to the non-Jewish world of Jesus, proclaiming that God raised Jesus from the dead.
Paul preaches his sermon in Athens, Greece, which is the philosophical and cultural center of the ancient world. Therefore, Paul’s listeners are quite different from those of Peter and Stephen. Paul’s listeners do not believe in the one God of the Jews. They do not even have any knowledge of such a god.
The Greeks believed in many gods. They had a panoply of gods and goddesses meddling in people’s lives. All over Athens there were shrines built to keep the gods happy and benevolent toward the people. To ensure that none of the gods were neglected, one wise artisan created a shrine with the inscription, “to an unknown god.”
Into this scenario Paul places himself in the hustle and bustle of the marketplace in Athens. Here philosophers and others would daily gather to hear something new. The message of Paul’s sermon was that “gods do not live in shrines made by human hands” and the “unknown God,” He is Lord of heaven and earth, who raised Jesus from the dead.
The story of Paul’s preaching presents us with a picture that could almost be a portrayal of our society. What characterizes our modern American society is the search for something new. The consensus seems to be that if it is new, it must be better. Advertisers meddle into our lives daily with its mantra, “new is better.” From new cars to new food menus, the marketing people are giving us that for which we are searching.
Our religious practice is not immune from this meddling. Believers and non-believers alike are searching for that which is new. The old is being passed up; the new is what is sought after. The result is that people’s interest is aroused by religious marketing that poses the question: “Flip-flops, a band, and coffee, this is church?”
Even outside the church we search for new religions. We find worship in the Mother Goddess, in a Primal Matrix, or in nature. We turn to forms of meditation, yoga and astrology. We grope for gods that fit our lifestyle, our spirituality, and our sentimental notions about the divine.
If we can’t find the god we want, we create our own out of our imaginations, thoughts and wills. Our modern society at the present times presents us with a panoply of idols.
What are your “unknown gods,” those things you pay homage to maybe without even realizing it? What are the things you have deified?
If Paul were preaching to us, I think he would begin at the same point he began with the Athenians, that God created humans. God sustains our mortal lives. All human beings live and move and have their being in God. Therefore, God is more than human. God cannot be created or served by human means. He cannot and should not be reduced to human proportions. God cannot be enshrined in marble or in our minds.
More than that, Paul says God is no longer unknown. Rather, He has revealed Himself. He does not have to be imagined or created by the thoughts and hands of mortals. He has made Himself known. Because of that, He now calls all people to repent of their idolatry. For a while in human history, God overlooked human ignorance. But now that He has given the revelation of himself in Jesus Christ, everyone must put away their imagined gods.
We know that Jesus Christ is the revelation of God, because God has raised Him from the dead. Paul says that the Risen Christ is coming in the future to judge the world rightly and in truth. Then all will be held accountable for their worship and their faith. The implication, of course, is that since we Christians are “Easter people,” who have so recently celebrated the resurrection of Our Lord, the time is now to put away all our false gods and goddesses – to repent and to turn our hearts and lives to Jesus Christ alone. No more worship of the forces of nature. No more following the stars our various gurus. No more giving of our attention to the latest religious fad. Indeed, no more giving our devotion to the material things of this world or to own self-fulfillment, or to our own ways and thoughts.
No, God has made himself known in Jesus Christ. It is in Him that we live and move and have our being. He alone is the revelation of the true God, the Creator of heaven and earth, the one who raised Jesus from the dead. God is not unknown. The God of Jesus Christ is the one who gives us life, abundant now and blessed to all eternity.