Spirits and Unknown Gods

Before I get started, I just wanted to know if any of you caught the connection between the passage from John that Joanne read and the anthem the choir just got done singing?  You need to know that those sorts of connections don’t just happen by accident.  If you believe, as I do, that when our liturgical music is relevant to the rest of the worship service, it helps in making that worship experience more meaningful, then we should ensure that we make note of that in any profiles and communications that will be used in our search for our next settled minister… worship works best when everyone is on the same page.

You may have noticed that there was no Old Testament reading this morning.  The reason for that was that I really liked BOTH the reading from Acts AND the reading from John in the UCC Lectionary.  I couldn’t decide which one to preach on so I just decided to do both of them.

First, to the passage from Acts.  Let me set the stage a bit:  Paul has been shipped off south down the Aegean Sea to Athens to avoid the vengeful agitations from a horde of angry Jews from Thessalonica who he previously stirred up and who had followed him to Berea.  True to form, as soon as Paul gets to Athens, he begins telling everyone who will listen about the good news of the Risen Jesus…and he attracts the attention of the epicurean and stoic philosophers of the city, and they ”took hold of him” and brought him to the Areopagus… which was a hill with shrines to Aries, the Greek God of War.  In the Roman era, the hill was known as Mars Hill because Mars is the Roman God of War… and the town of Mars Hill in northern Maine, by the way, is named after that very spot.  The Areopagus had been the site of the Athenian council of elders in the Greek era and served as sort of a court house in the Roman era. 

As a brief aside, I can vividly remember visiting Athens as a port of call while in the Navy and on a crisp and sunny fall day taking a guided tour of the Parthenon on the Acropolis, which dominates the skyline of Athens.  I recall looking down from the Acropolis and seeing this large flat topped white stone hill a bit to the north and our guide telling us it was the place where Paul had preached.   Walking in the very footsteps of the characters from the Bible is a moving experience and I highly recommend it whether it is in Athens or Rome or Egypt or Israel. – end of the brief aside. 

The Areopagus was always a place where philosophers came to philosophize, and the Athenians, therefore, wanted to hear what Paul had to say in that venue… and preach he did.  Perhaps it was because of the non-Jewish audience, or because Paul was far away from home, but whatever the reason, Paul struck a much more conciliatory tone with the Athenians than he had with the Jews from Thessalonica.  He actually tried to schmooze the Athenians a bit, don’t you think?  Listen again to how he addressed them: “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.”

The Book of Acts goes on to say that after hearing Paul speak, some of the Athenians scoffed, while others said, “We shall hear you again about this.”  And thus Paul began to convert believers in Athens just as he would wherever he went across the region.  It is a powerful story… one we all believe…or do we, really?

What would Paul find if he walked around OUR homes and yards?  How many altars are their in OUR homes or in OUR yards or in OUR lives to that “unknown god”?  How many altars are there to Jesus?  Or would Paul find all those “other altars” like he did in Athens?  Would Paul find the altar to the new SUV with all the bells and whistles? Or would he find the altar to the weed-free manicured lawn?  How about the altar to the perfect complexion or the perfect hair style or the perfect tan?  How about the altar equipped with the brand new High Definition wide screen television where we can worship the Red Sox or the Bruins or the Celtics or Tiger Woods or the Next American Idol or the Next Top Chef?  My guess is we ALL have a lot of altars in our lives where we worship a lot of other gods.   Somewhere, however, in your home or in your heart, you DO have an altar to that unknown god of whom Paul spoke… or chances are, you wouldn’t be here.  And please, don’t think for a minute that I am trying to be sanctimonious or preach at you about this.  I have all sorts of altars to all sorts of other gods in my life that I visit more often than I should and I know I spend a lot less time reading my bible and praying than I should…I spend a lot less time doing God’s work here on earth than I know I should…and I believe that probably goes for most if not all of us.

But we have help available to us.  The passage from John that we heard this morning is but a small segment of the lengthy discourse between Jesus and his disciples held in the Upper Room during the Last Supper.  It is written after Easter, after Pentecost, about an incredibly important night that happened before both events.  The author of the Gospel of John does a great job in portraying the bewilderment, and fear that the disciples were feeling that night.  Most of us have heard the stories of Jesus and holy week and the Last Supper all our lives and even we have a hard time comprehending it.  These twelve uneducated farmers and fisherman were REALLY clueless about what was about to happen to Jesus, and to them… and to the world.  Throughout the meal, they seem to almost compete with one another to see who can ask Jesus the most stupid question.  After accompanying Jesus on three years of ministry, listening to three years of Him speaking in all sorts of unconventional venues across the region, you would think they would have an inkling of what he was talking about… but they don’t.  And Jesus wisely and gently and PATIENTLY answers every one of their clueless questions.  Jesus tries to calm them and assuage their fears of impending abandonment.  He tells them He will not leave them alone.  They will not be orphans.  The way he tells it, he is heading off to a family reunion with his father that no one else is invited to, and he is leaving them in charge while he is gone… but that he’ll only be gone for a little while.   Remember that Paul told the Athenians that God had “fixed a day on which he will have the world judged”.  Clearly, from the mortal perspective of the disciples and the apostles, they didn’t think that they’d be orphans for very long.  

And even with Easter, and Pentecost, and centuries of faith between that Upper Room and us, from where WE sit it has been so long that some of us might sometimes wonder if we have not been orphaned after all.  We need to listen again to what he tells the disciples and what he tells us. He tells them that He has asked the Father to send them a helper… an advocate.  That helper is the Holy Spirit.  That helper will burst onto the scene with tongues of fire a few weeks hence at Pentecost, but at the Last Supper is where the Holy Spirit is introduced to the disciples and in this passage from John is where that helper, that advocate, is first introduced to us.  We do not have to wait for Jesus to return and revoke our status as orphans. That advocate is not waiting for us in Heaven…that advocate is here on earth, in this place, at this time in our lives to intercede for us and advocate for us and strengthen us and comfort us and  inspire us and HELP us to do God’s will.   What does he ask in return?    To keep his commandments.  What is his greatest commandment:
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

If you love Jesus, keep his commandments…and his most important commandment is to love him…and love your neighbor as yourself.

We can all think that we are loving ourselves by building altars to all those other gods that give us temporary pleasure… but I doubt that many of us love our neighbors as much as all that. 

We have a world full of neighbors that need our love.  There are sick ones, old ones, young ones, hungry ones, cold ones, naked ones, homeless ones, ones who are different colors, ones who are attracted to folks differently than we are, ones who have different political beliefs than we do, ones who have different FAITHS than we do.  That doesn’t matter to Jesus.  He didn’t say we got to pick and chose our neighbors and only love the ones that we feel are like us or are somehow worthy of our kindness or our attention or our largesse.

Everybody has altars to other gods…to material things, to beauty, to security, to fame, to acceptance, to diversions.  We all need to clear off that altar to that “unknown god”, don’t we?  We all need to remember that Jesus said, If you love me, keep MY commandments.  And we all need to just close our eyes, and pray and ask that Holy Spirit, that comforter, that advocate to strengthen us, and  guide us and help us do the good work of God and spread the good news of Jesus Christ.

Amen