Easter 6A - Sermon Manuscript

Here's the manuscript for today's sermon.

Grace and Peace,

PastorJon

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Let me begin today by thanking you for your prayers for us as we went on vacation last week. We had a great time in Washington DC and Baltimore, and then stopped to visit Jim & Becky and worshipped with their Portuguese congregation in Rhode Island last week.

We spent Tuesday and Wednesday in DC, visiting some of the monuments and memorials, the International SPY Museum, Ford’s Theater, the National Archives, the National Zoo, and the National Cathedral. On Thursday we went to Baltimore and toured Oriole Park at Camden Yards, visited the Babe Ruth birthplace and museum, enjoyed the National Aquarium, and cheered the Red Sox on to victory against the Baltimore Orioles.

Somewhere on Thursday, Melody asked me what my favorite part of vacation was. The kids at the Middle School are always asking me what my favorite color or song is, and I tell them that I don’t really get into favorites very much. And, I’m not sure that I ever came up with one part of vacation that was my favorite…It might have been the ball game, or the pandas, or the dolphin show. It might have been the self-guided tour of the National Cathedral. It was all fun and very relaxing.

That is, all except Friday. While I can’t tell you what my favorite part was, I can guarantee that both Melody and I can come to fast agreement as to our least favorite part of vacation. On Friday we were scheduled to travel from Laurel, Maryland to Rumford, Rhode Island. It was supposed to be a six to seven hour trip. We determined that if we left around eleven in the morning we would be through New York City by three o’clock in the afternoon—just in advance of rush hour.

What we didn’t count on was the three tractor-trailer pile-up and explosion that occurred on the New Jersey turnpike at about one in the morning. We didn’t count on a fire that was so hot that the pavement melted and the road had to be resurfaced. We didn’t count on the southern half of the New Jersey Turnpike being shut down for fifteen hours with traffic rerouted. We certainly didn’t count on a two hour drive through New Jersey taking nearly six hours, putting us in New York City right at rush hour. And we most definitely didn’t plan on spending an hour in stop-and-go traffic for the last six miles leading up to the George Washington Bridge.

As you can imagine, all of the traffic for miles around the New Jersey Turnpike was jammed up, creating traffic flow problems which affected all of New York City. Instead of arriving at Jim and Becky’s house by six o’clock that evening, we got there just an hour before midnight.

Had I been a citizen of Athens nearly 2000 years ago with this experience, this is what might have happened when I returned home. I might have called everyone in the city together and told them about my experiences with the “god of the New Jersey Turnpike.” I would have told them how this new god was not happy with me because we had never offered a sacrifice to him. I would have gathered all of my friends together and we would have built a new altar in town and dedicated it to the god of the New Jersey Turnpike. And then we would have told everyone about this new god and encouraged them to start offering sacrifices to this god…especially those who had any plans of traveling through New Jersey in the near future.

This would all be done in hopes to appease the god of New Jersey. By offering sacrifices we would hope that the next time we traveled through New Jersey this new god would smile upon us and let us pass through quickly, instead of making us spend four extra hours within his realm. And why stop at an altar to the New Jersey god? How about New York? Massachusetts? Maine?

And then, why stop there? Who knows what states I might travel through in the future? Who knows what other foreign deities I might accidentally offend by not worshipping? Far better to build more altars then to spend four hours in stop-and-go traffic. In fact, after building altars to all the different gods of all the different states, I might still want some insurance…and so I might build an altar to the generic unknown god…just in case I missed one. Then I would be assured safe travels wherever I might go.

Apparently this sort of a scenario is not that far off the mark from what was happening in Athens during the first century. Our lesson today comes from the book of Acts, chapter 17, verses 22-34:

²²Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: "Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. ²³For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.
²⁴"The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. ²⁵And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. ²⁶From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. ²⁷God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. ²⁸'For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.'
²⁹"Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by man's design and skill. ³⁰In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. ³¹For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead."
³²When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, "We want to hear you again on this subject." ³³At that, Paul left the Council. ³⁴A few men became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others.

There are a few possibilities about this “altar to an unknown god.” Sometimes shrines and altars would fall into such disrepair that people would forget who the shrine was for, and so when they rebuilt it they would just inscribe “to an unknown god” on it. Some scholars believe that Socrates had some knowledge of the God of Abraham and made a shrine to Him. There is some historic evidence of an altar that was inscribed “to the foreign gods.” But Paul simply makes reference to an altar that was inscribed “To an unknown God,” and leaves us to draw our own conclusions. It’s a pretty reasonable assumption, given the number of religious artifacts, shrines, and altars in the city, that the Athenians simply didn’t want to miss anyone. They wanted an insurance clause to guarantee that they hadn’t somehow offended an unknown deity that might cause trouble for them later in life. And so, they erected an altar to an unknown god.

But there’s a great irony here that must be pointed out. The reality is that every one of their idols and altars were dedicated to unknown gods. Not a single one of the gods of stone was known personally by the citizens of Athens. There were no personal relationships with Zeus or Apollo. These were merely statues of legends. While they may have known something about one of these personalities, they didn’t know them. The Titans and the Olympians were not about personal relationships with the Athenians. They were merely statues and shrines to be worshipped. Zeus was as unknown to them as the God of the Israelites.

Except for one big difference. While Zeus was unknown and would remain unknowable, the God of the Israelites was about to be made known to the Athenians. Not as a new shrine or altar, but as a living God who doesn’t dwell in temples built by human hands. This God was not just the God of one nation or area, but the Creator of the entire world. He is not an image of gold or silver crafted by human hands, but instead we are the living Image which was patterned after Him. We can know God because we are His offspring—His children. We can have relationship with Him because He is not far from us…He walks with us. Indeed, even the ancient Greek philosophers said it best when they said, “in Him we live and move and have our being.” Paul had come to Athens to make known that which was unknown, so that the Athenians could be in relationship with God. Paul presents something completely new--a deity which is both infinite and personal, the God of people, like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This God desires to be in relationship with His creation, so much that He took on human form. This is a God that is knowable.

As I ponder this scenario, I’m forced to think about our own religious practices. Paul points out that the Athenians are very religious, but that they do not know God. They have cluttered their space with meaningless idols to gods that are unknowable. Idolatry has become a cheap substitute for true worship. Religion has become a replacement for relationship. Statues of dead legends distracted them from the possibilities of knowing a living God who could transform their lives.

Perhaps those first century Athenians aren’t all that different from twenty-first century Christians. I think that we must consider that we have often replaced the possibility of being in authentic relationship with Almighty God with idols of our own making.

Matthew Henry writes these words in his commentary:

After multiplying their idols to the utmost, some at Athens thought there was another god of whom they had no knowledge. And are there not many now called Christians, who are zealous in their devotions, yet the great object of their worship is to them an unknown God?

As I contemplate his quote, I realize that if we gather on Sunday morning to worship a God that we don’t know, then we are no better off than the Athenians with their multiple idols. If the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is unknown to us, then our worship is in vain. God does not desire acts of worship offered outside the context of a personal relationship with Him. He prefers the intimate relationship which was made possible through the death of His Son and the coming of the Holy Spirit.
I'm forced to wonder how many self-identified Christians really know God. How many of us have simply constructed altars which we worship, instead of actually getting to know God? We know a church building, but that's not God. We know a radio preacher, but that's not God. We know a liturgy, but that's not God. We know a musical group, but they're not God. We know a program or a group of people, but that's not a substitute for knowing God. And, we even know our Bibles, but that should not be mistaken for knowing the infinite, personal God who is revealed in its pages. All of those, while right and beneficial, are merely altars to an unknown god…if we don’t actually know Him.

In the twentieth century church, this phenomenon often plays out as follows. People choose a local church based, not upon where God is leading them, but upon the programs offered. People argue about styles of music in worship—not based upon how those styles help us express ourselves to God, but based upon our personal tastes. We mistake the preacher behind the pulpit for God Himself—and when the preacher’s away we decide not to go to church. We get comfortable with a particular liturgy or style of worship, and allow that to become the object of our worship. We become addicted to a particular building or location—forgetting that God is not bound to a church building in a particular town. We become dependant upon the programs, teachers, preachers, music, liturgy, and location—until we have constructed altars to everything except the Known God who was revealed in the person and work of Jesus the Christ. And when we do this, we are worshipping altars of our own making, instead of getting into the real work of worship—an intimate relationship with an infinite personal God who desires to know and be known.

But, we tend to prefer the predictability of our altars. The altars are safe. They don’t do anything. They are predictable, providing the sort of stability that I need in my life. I can count on the altars to make me warm and fuzzy and unchanged.
Theologian Annie Dillard provides this picture of what a real encounter with God ought to look like:

Why do we people in churches seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute? On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does not one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping God may wake some day and take offense, or the waking God may draw us out to where we can never return.

At some point in our life, we have all been guilty of exchanging the power and presence of an Almighty God for an altar of stone. We’ve allowed the rituals of religion to replace the hazards of authentic relationship. We’d rather wear straw hats than crash helmets, and are much happier with a necktie than with a life preserver.

But we’re not really satisfied with that, are we? We don’t really want another predictable experience where we worship altars of our own making. We don’t really want to simply have an emotional experience with a favorite song. We don’t really want to just hear the same preacher babble on and on. We aren’t really interested in just punching a time card so we can say that we went to that special church building for an hour each week. We want to get past each of these tools so we can know the God that they point us to. We want to have an all-holds barred, intimate encounter with the Almighty God. We want to suit up in crash helmets and life preservers. We want to jump on the raft and get caught in the flood of God’s mercy and grace. We really do want to know Him…and not just the trappings of religion.
We want to have the sort of relationship that Jesus spoke of in John 14:

¹⁸I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. ¹⁹ In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. ²⁰ On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. ²¹ They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them."

“On that day, you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” That’s the sort of intimate knowledge of Almighty God which Paul offers the Athenians. It’s that sort of knowledge that is offered to us. Not simply a way to spend an hour each week, but an entire life of communion with God. Being found in Him.

And so, while we are about to do something that we do regularly in this church, I’m not interested in offering you another ritual. This is not just about coming forward at prayer time and singing a song and feeling better. It’s not just about tasting some bread and juice and being reminded of Christ’s death. No…what God offers you today is relationship with Him. He invites you to come to these altars to meet with Him and talk with Him and hear His voice. He invites you to this table so that you can not only remember what Christ did for you, but so that you can meet Him here and experience His presence.

May we put aside any false idols which have distracted us from God and get to know Him more. Everything else is just a cheap substitution…for there is nothing better than Knowing God.

As we sing this prayer chorus, I invite you to come to these altars, to pray and to prepare ourselves for the celebration of Holy Communion. As we conclude our prayer time, you will be invited to come and receive the elements and to return to your seats as we partake together. All who, by faith, are in relationship with God are invited to share at His table. Come, that you might know God fully.