Prayers
to the Unknown God
John
14:15-21 Acts 17:22-31
Sixth Sunday of
Easter/Memorial Weekend May 29, 2011
The Athenians were just like most of us in one important way; they had
questions about God, the universe, and the veracity of their particular
perspective on religion. Paul even noticed that they had created
a statue honoring “the unknown god,” just so they
wouldn’t leave anyone out of their pantheon. They wanted to
be certain that every base had been covered, religiously speaking, and
must have felt this god that they did not yet know held a key to some
secret aspect of their faith. Faith is one part of our lives that
by definition cannot be proven. Faith can be experienced and
felt, but it cannot be scientifically tested. God is like this as
well. God can also be experienced and felt, but no one has ever
managed to take a picture of God’s face or record the voice of
God. Despite this, there are still people who come along in most
every age who try to define things that even Jesus refused to pin
down. The recent excitement about Harold Camping’s May 21st
prophecy is a great example of someone trying to get specific about
something that Jesus himself said was none of our business. When
someone asked Jesus when the end of the world would come, he said that
only God knew the answer to that. Although we may not like that
we don’t and even can’t have all of the answers, there is a
sense of peace to be gained from recognizing that all of this is in
God’s hands and not ours. We simply have to live our lives
to the best of our abilities, leaning on faith for the things we
don’t understand, and leave the rest to God.
The details of faith are simply blurry in some areas and yet faith has
a core of absolute knowledge that provides a powerful foundation for
everything else around it. Faith enables us to move forward
“in spite of” everything, because it comes from a place
that is so different from the world of facts and solid proof in which
we spend so much of our time. If we can manage to lean into our
faith when we don’t know the answers, then we find ourselves
better equipped to respond to whatever comes to us, with courage and a
measure of assurance that we are on a good path. It can be
difficult knowing that other people have very different experiences of
faith and of God than we do. When we lean on our faith, it can
lead us in different directions than other folks’ faith might
lead them, which gets complicated if one or both of us thinks we have
all of the right answers. If you go back to the followers of
Jesus in the first century, they were each unique and very different
from the others. There were fishermen who were simple men of the
earth, and a tax collector who was wily with other people’s
money, there was a Zealot who hoped for revolution and a woman who
supported the ministry through her sales of royal purple goods.
Each of the disciples and the people who followed Jesus after them
brought something unique to the ministry. Each of them had their
own perspective on Jesus and on what his ministry was all about.
They discussed and even argued about the stories he told and what his
parables really meant. Jesus often had to intervene in order to
restore order among them. These people did not agree on much, and
so it would be simplistic for us to believe they agreed on exactly what
Jesus purpose was, and on what was essential to a faithful life.
But one thing they did agree on, is that Jesus was offering something
special, something worth learning about.
I find it intriguing that the people of Athens, although they had many
gods and goddesses, must have still felt that something was
missing. They must have felt that their faith was not expressed
in full, despite the fact that they had gods and goddesses representing
almost every aspect of life anyone could think of! It almost
seems that, instead of arguing about the authenticity or power of
certain gods or goddesses, the Athenians accepted every one of
them. Instead of deciding which ones were authentic, they put up
countless statues and temples, and worshipped all of them. They
had a god of war and a goddess of the hunt, a god of the harvest and a
goddess of love, a god of thunder and a goddess of springtime, just to
get started. Even so, the Athenians built a statue to honor the
unknown god, and ascribed to this god the creation of the world and
everything in it. They said that this god did not live in a
shrine made by human hands, and claimed that he did not require
sacrifices. The named gods and goddesses each had clearly defined
duties, but this god whom they could not name seemed to be responsible
for the whole world. This unknown god lived in such a way that
people did not have to take care of him - no shelter or temple was
needed, nor did he require sacrifices. This god took care of
them. This was quite different to the Athenian understanding;
usually a god or goddess had to be cajoled and courted in order to
ensure a good harvest, a win over the enemy or a good partner for
marriage.
Paul noted how similar the Athenian understandings about this unknown
god were to how the early Christians viewed their God, the God of
Jesus. He then used this entry point as a way of talking with the
Athenian people about the God he knew through Jesus Christ and about
Jesus himself. He also quoted one of their own poets in an
attempt to help them understand how they might relate to this God when
he described this God as the one in whom “we live and move and
have our being.” The reading from John’s gospel this
morning carries this theme of closeness with God into a connection with
Jesus himself, recording Jesus as saying that he would not leave his
followers orphaned, that they would be able to see him even after he
left them. According to Jesus, they would also receive the one
whom he called the Advocate or the Spirit of truth to be with them
forever.
There is an interesting juxtaposition between the scriptures and their
messages this morning. It is a balance between what we do know
and what we do not; between our faith and the reality of our
lives. We have faith which guides us along the paths we
walk. We know God and feel God’s presence within our hearts
and souls, and yet we cannot define either faith or God. On our
good days, this is just fine. The kind of knowing that we have
about these things is deeply rooted and real; it is unshakable.
On bad days, we might wish we could see or hear or taste something that
would assure us that we are on the right path. Those difficult
days are the ones in which we lean on our fellow pilgrims and ask them
to help us see the way; we listen to their experiences and depend on
their prayers to carry us through. Community is a necessary
aspect of our lives of faith. We take turns caring for and even
carrying one another as needed. On Memorial Day, we can’t
help but to think of and remember those who carried us on their
shoulders in terms of creating a country in which we have the freedom
to express our faith and worship God as we feel moved. We are
blessed by the saints in this community and all around us, and by the
gifts we receive from each of them this and every day.
Let’s give thanks.
God of all that we know, you hold every one of us in your hands and in
your heart. We thank you for all of those who have carried us
through the years. We thank you for our friends and family, for
our communities of faith and for all of those who have been with us
when we most needed them. We thank you especially today, for
those who gave up their lives to protect the freedoms we enjoy every
day, but barely acknowledge as we go about our lives. We ask your
blessing to rest on those who went off to war and never returned home,
and on those who returned home in body but were broken in spirit.
We pray also that you would be a strong presence in the lives of their
families, granting them courage and faith for the difficulties they
face and losses they grieve. We pray for a time when your peace
and justice will reign all over this wide earth, for all people in
every land, a time when no more soldiers will need to go off to war,
but will be able to stay home and watch their gardens and their
children grow. In the name of Jesus we pray, Amen.