Sixth Sunday in Easter
Year A, RCL
April 27, 2008
All Saints’, Bentonville
Acts 17:22-31
Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, "Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, `To an unknown god.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him-- though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For `In him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your own poets have said,
`For we too are his offspring.'
Since we are God's offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead."
Last Sunday morning, it was with great joy that I worshiped at St. James’ Episcopal Church in Austin, Texas. Prior to receiving my seminary assignment to work at St. James’, I often visited there. For many years I attended another church, but as I often told people, I worshiped at St. James. Last Sunday I sat in the center row of pews there, my mother Lillian at my left, my wife Cindee to my right, and surrounding us were row upon row of pews filled with old friends, fellow parishioners, and the spirit infused aura of the St. James’ community.
As we moved through the Liturgy of the Word and onto the Liturgy of the Table, I found myself periodically nodding, smiling, and occasionally winking at the folks who caught my eye during the service. My connection to these people was instantly renewed. I knew them as a congregation who had loved me, taught me and formed me for the priesthood.
The next morning, this past Monday, I found myself sitting in the center row of pews in just about the only place where you can find pews outside of a church – the county courthouse.
A courtroom is a place that is constructed in a way to grant the proceedings a sense of moral authority. Surrounding me, and in the row of pews to my left, sat the family and friends of defendants in the proceedings. To my right, in a row of pews that could have just as easily been reserved for the choir, sat a congregation of 25 anxious souls, farcically attired in red and white striped uniforms. Each prisoner’s hands and feet were shackled and their hands pressed together as a child’s in bedtime prayer.
The prisoners fidgeted, and despite orders from the guards that monitored them not to make eye contact or signal to others in the courtroom, the temptation to connect with those they loved led many to covertly turn their heads and cast their eyes toward the witnesses of the proceedings. Several of the striped suited defendants managed a wink, stole a surreptitious smile, or risked a silent nod in the direction of someone they loved. Apparently jailhouse rules can’t prevent the human heart from seeking love. Even in a proceeding designed to suppress the human spirit, dressing the accused in the humiliating prison garb of another era, herding them in and out of buses converted to rolling cages, like so many circus animals. With hands and feet bound together they shuffled like shackled slaves, but still the human heart emerged, resisting repression, seeking connection. Even in a system where evidence of humanity is purged. That which is most human, and most divine, rises relentlessly to the surface.
It’s what we do as human beings. Even in the direst circumstances, maybe especially in life’s most troubling situations, we reach out for connection. We hunger for the smallest assurance, the slightest indication that we are loved.
Religious people, people who follow God, even those of us who only admit to having a certain spiritual bent, recognize that hunger as a desire for God.
St. Paul, in his sermon to the Athenians, the one we heard this morning, recognized the universality of this need to connect with something outside of ourselves. Seeking common ground with the Greek audience he was addressing, he acknowledged their religious nature. But he pointed out to them, and we might take note, that God does not live in shrines made by human hands, but that life and breath and all things come from God. And that in God, “we live and move and have our being.”
It is that unquenchable longing that characterizes the human condition. A longing that remains unfulfilled. Paul describes how we search for God and “perhaps grope for him” and “indeed he is not far from each of us”.
God was evident in that courtroom last Monday, not because of the physical trappings of the judicial system that are designed to invoke a sense God’s judgment. Not because the place was filled with pews, not because the blue suited lawyers milling about the judge’s bench gathered like cardinals round the Pope. God exists in courtrooms and in churches not simply because God can be conjured up by the theatricality and beauty of those settings. God exists in these places because we swim in “Godness”. We are surrounded by manifestations of the Divine. It is in God that we live and move and have our being.
We ask God to be with us, not because our words cause God to appear, but because our requests, our supplications, allow us to recognize what has already happened – that the spirit of Truth abides with us.
Evidence of that abiding spirit rises to the surface, becomes apparent to us, in as many places as we are willing to open our eyes to it. Jesus knew that one of those places where Godness bubbles to the surface is in the presence of the poor, the needy, and the marginalized. Why else would he have spent so much time with people that proper society found to be unfit company?
If we want to know God, one of the best ways we can do it is spend some time with those who need God the most. God responds to their need and if we want to encounter God, we can find that experience among the needy. If we only associate with those whose inherent desire for God has been placated by an abundance of the blessings that the world has to offer, we may find that the abundant life leaves little room for longing, little reason to plead for God’s merciful presence. And we might fail to notice that God is there at all.
Jesus promised his disciples that he would not leave them orphaned. We have the same assurance that we are not left alone. In his message to the Athenians, Paul makes reference to a Greek altar with the inscription, “to an unknown God.” Our god need not remain unknown. God makes Godself known to us – in the most splendid sunset, in the most cautious furtive glance between those who love, and in the presence of the poor.
Our natural desire to connect with something outside of ourselves is unquenchable. And, conveniently, God’s desire to demonstrate the love that God has in store for us knows no bounds. That vague longing we all feel - that sense of nostalgia we possess – not just for times past but for a future we haven’t yet met, it’s a hunger for God. But it is an insatiable hunger and it is in that hunger that we know God. God is the hunger. We can choose to distract ourselves from the task of becoming who we truly are, distract ourselves from finding the God within us. Or we can remain alert for those glimpses of Godness that surround us and transform the “the unknown God” into a God that is revealed, and who reveals to us who we really are.