Sixth Sunday of Easter Year A 2008

06 Easter A 08

The Unknown God

April 27, 2008

Acts 17:22-31

What you therefore worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.

Who, or what, do we worship really? In the ancient world, worship almost always involved sacrifice. So maybe that is the real question. To what do I make sacrifice?

This story from Acts is an excellent introduction to a very central New Testament figure, Paul of Tarsus. Paul showed up in last week’s lesson under his formal moniker, Saul. Between that story and this one, there’s a famous story of Saul’s encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus. This led to his belief in Jesus.

As he began his ministry, he found that many who were not Jewish (in fact, more who were not than who were) received the message. He may have remembered, along with some of the other early Jewish Christian leaders, that the purpose of Israel was ultimately to reveal God to a world who had forgotten and rejected him. The story of Jesus apparently worked in a surprising way to achieve this end.

The issue that stirred Paul to action in Athens was idolatry. For a Jew of the first century, idols were actually almost disgusting. The foundation of Judaism is the concept of one transcendent God, that is, a god who is not made up by people.

A false god is a god that demands your sacrifice and gives you nothing in return. The living God gives you life and demands nothing in return.

If you think the world has changed all that much, think again. Americans are just as religious as the Athenians and in just the same way. Our world is filled with gods of our own making that demand our sacrifices and finally give us nothing in return.

The most powerful deity in the western world today is not the God of Abraham or Jesus or Mohammed. The most powerful deity in the western world is the self. The cult of individualism, bolstered by the deification of money, is the god that rules the world. We say we separate politics from religion in this country, but we don’t really.

As Homer Simpson once said, "I've always wondered if there was a god. And now I know there is—and it's me."

We have thrown out the religion of our forbears in exchange for the cult of the Me God.

The Me God religion is based on the sovereignty of the self in all matters moral and religious. Ultimately, even if I believe in the God of Israel or in Jesus or in Mohammed, it is because the Me God has judged the god in question and satisfactory for my needs. In our time, all spiritual paths, all deities, are subject to the Me God. My experiences, my ideas, my preferences, my lifestyle, my spirituality and my social group all comprise together my God, which finally and truthfully and really is me.

The Me God is as multiply variable as there are people who believe in it. The Me God approves of everything I do. The Me God shares all my political beliefs. The Me God wants me to have whatever I want. The Me God cares more about me than anyone else.

I remember one of Homer Simpson’s prayers:

"I put out these milk and cookies as a sacrifice. If Thou wishest me to eat them, please give me asign by doing absolutely nothing… Thy will be done."

And so it is that I live in a post-modern Athens, making endless sacrifices to a god of my own making, and I find myself puzzled and vaguely disturbed by the idea that God has raised a man from the dead in order to identify him as the one who will judge the world in righteousness. This is a God who is clearly not me, since I can certainly not raise anyone from the dead.

And Paul says this God who is not me, and is not made by me, and needs nothing from me, this God is not only not me, but I exist only because of him.

You know, it’s entirely possible to make up our own god and call him Jesus Christ. Rousseau saw this as long ago as the eighteenth century when he said, “God created man in his own image, and man, being a gentleman, returned the favor.”

I am not different from the people of Athens. I am in just the same bondage. There are so many things I do with my time and my talents and my money that really yield me nothing at all. And yet I am trapped in my loyalty to these things to such a degree I can’t even see it. My motives are all twisted up with my self-serving desires. I sense God’s presence, and I long to serve him, but by the time that desire works its way through the twisted logic the world has imposed on me, I find I end up on my knees to something else.

Paul is speaking to me. Jesus is risen from the dead and he stands as judge over me, and I am found badly wanting. Not because I commit sins, though I suppose I commit my share, but because I continue to try to make God in my image, rather than to be made by him in his.

We live in a time of globalization, and a lot of the struggles that have been going on really over the last century or more have had to do with our shrinking planet. Is the world to be run by one particular nation, one particular race, one particular religion, one particular economic or political system? As human beings have grown to be a greater and greater presence in the world, the struggles between different beliefs and ideas and cultures has grown more and more significant.

World War I, World War II, the Cold War, and now what might be a religious struggle involving the top world religions, together with an economic behemoth that is the global economy and all the surprises it might hold for us, all tell the story of the nations and races and ideologies struggling for dominance in the world.

Paul seems to suggest that Christ is to dominate finally. But could this really be what he means? I remember a dialogue from Annie Dillard’s book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek:

An Eskimo asked a priest: "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?"

The priest answered, "No, not if you did not know."

To which the Eskimo replied: "Then why did you tell me?"

But perhaps Paul is not talking about dominance. Perhaps he is talking about judgment.

What does this mean?

I wonder. I wonder if our presence as the church throughout the world is meant not to dominate but to season? I wonder if our purpose as the church is to agitate the world and its self-interested masses to a greater vision, one that keeps hope before us all? I wonder if our job is not so much to force anyone to do or believe anything, but rather by our example stir up the hearts of the world’s people to curiosity and the openness to an unknown God?

But how do we distinguish between a god we make up with our self-serving rationalizations and the God in whom we live and move and have our being? How do we stop sacrificing to Gods of our own making and rejoice in the sacrifice God has made for us?

My friend Vic McLawhorn used to argue with me about the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was very important to him and he felt strongly that our denomination and indeed our congregation made far too little of third person of the Trinity. I was very skeptical of the Spirit as I see it described and taught in various Spirit-based movements going on these days. But Vic wouldn’t let me off the hook. He kept insisting that we really can’t be the church unless we are led by the Spirit.

These last two weeks have been a bit of a trial for me, but you know, I thank God for trials, because I’ve learned they are always given to me to transform me.

It occurred to me this morning in prayer that Vic’s word to me is a word from God. The Holy Spirit is the means by which we determine the true and living God from the gods of our own invention. And it will be the Holy Spirit that will give us the words to speak to the world of unbelievers.

The question remains as to how we are to receive that Spirit. But that is a sermon for another Sunday.

Amen.