To an Unknown God
Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
May 1, 2005
Acts 17:22-31; 1 Peter 3:13-22; John 14:15-21
Acts 17 22 ¶ Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. 23 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. 24 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, 25 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. 26 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, 27 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. 28 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.’ 29 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. 30 While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31 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.”
1 Peter 3 13 ¶ Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good? 14 But even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated, 15 but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; 16 yet do it with gentleness and reverence. Keep your conscience clear, so that, when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame. 17 For it is better to suffer for doing good, if suffering should be God’s will, than to suffer for doing evil. 18 For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, 19 in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, 20 who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. 21 And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you — not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 22 who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him.
John 14 15 ¶ “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. 17 This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.
18 ¶ “I 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.”
I. INTRODUCTION
I don’t like not knowing things. I go nuts when a show is a cliffhanger—I want to know what happens. That last crossword puzzle clue will drive me crazy. It’s not enough for me to know that a thing works—I want to know how it works. And it bugs me when I can’t figure something out.
II. THE TEXT
The ancient Greeks, apparently were not like that. They gathered at places like the “Areopagus” or “Mars Hill” to debate philosophical and theological ideas. The Areopagus was a real marketplace of ideas and they loved to explore. They liked learning about things they did not know and admitted that they did not know about things. They apparently built monuments to their lack of knowledge.
In our lesson from Acts tonight we read of Paul addressing a group of Athenians regarding an altar that the have ‘to an unknown god.’ He marvels at their religiosity in that they have gone to the length of creating an altar to a god they do not know.
He uses the occasion to tell them about this God they do not know. How this God created the heavens and the earth. How this God is the author of all life and of all that is. How this God raised Jesus from the dead that we might know the victory of life over death.
III. THE MYSTERIES OF LIFE AND OF GOD
It’s a fascinating thing to think about. Building an altar to an unknown God. We usually make room only for the things we do know. We don’t usually describe or make the time to note the things we don’t know. Imagine going into a library to discover volume after volume of things we don’t know. Imagine the periodic table of elements with a few blanks in it where it said “to be discovered.” Imagine, building an altar to a God you didn’t know.
That’s the kind of thing only the Greeks would do, perhaps. The Greeks were big believers in wisdom and one of the main tenets of wisdom was in the acknowledgment of that which you did not know.
One of the most fascinating things about growing older is that we feel we know less and less, even though we learn more and more. Those of you who are graduating next week probably feel that you know less and are sure of less than you were when you came in as freshmen. All the things you thought you knew. All the things you were sure of—you’re a little less sure of them now.
It’s the beginning of wisdom, really. Socrates said that the wise person was the one who realizes that they know nothing. If anything, when you pass through four years of college, you have learned a great many things, but you feel like you know less.
Our experience of God can be like that, too. Often people come into college with a very fixed idea of faith. It is a faith shaped by Sunday school and youth fellowship and other such influences. It is not always a faith that has subjected itself to close examination. After four years of school, the faith we had upon arrival in college is not quite the same.
Nor should it be. Our faith should embrace more questions. It should mature and grapple with ambiguities and mystery. It should be a dynamic thing. Hopefully, in your four years at college, it moves in the direction of a dynamic faith, rather than a static faith. But, it is fair to say, that we will not wind up with a faith full of simple answers.
There are times that we feel like we are worshippers of that ‘unknown God’. We can feel that God’s ways are mysterious to us and that even after lifetimes of faith, we still struggle to know God. God has a way of surprising us, resisting being boxed in by our definitions or expectations.
IV. THE GOD WE KNOW
But there is something of God that we do know. What we know is encapsulated perfectly in the words of Paul that we heard earlier:
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, 25 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. 26 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, 27 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.
To that we can add: we know that God sent his Son Jesus that we might be reconciled to God. That Jesus went to the cross to demonstrate the depths of God’s love for us, and was raised from the dead that we might know that God reigns, that love and life reign, not fear and death.
We know that we as the body of Christ continue God’s work. We continue to incarnate God in our midst and help others to see God amongst us. It is something that Jesus describes for us in the lesson we heard from the Gospel of John earlier:
“I 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.”
Christ promises that he will make himself known to those who keep the commandment to love. As we make the love of God known to others, we come to know the love of God more fully ourselves.
V. GRADUATES
Those of you who are graduating have learned a great many things. You have gained knowledge and experience. You have taken basic ideas that you had when you came to school and fleshed them out into ways of thinking, philosophies, creeds. You have come to realize that you don’t know nearly as much about the world as perhaps you once thought you did. Particularly this class—whose entire college experience, but for a few weeks in September, was lived in the shadow of September 11th .You may also have come to realize that you don’t know nearly as much about God as you once thought you did. You have grown in wisdom.
Part of that wisdom as we have said before is in knowing what you do not know. But part of that wisdom is also knowing what you do know. Knowing that you are a child of God and beloved of God. Knowing that God is love and seeks to reconcile with all people. Knowing that you can make a difference in the world by sharing the love of God with others. Knowing that love is stronger than fear, hope is stronger than doubt.
VI. CONCLUSION
Ultimately, there are things we will never know. There are things that will appear more mysterious to us the older we get and the more we wrestle with them. That’s not a bad thing—we can use a little more mystery in our lives. God will always be something of a mystery to us and there will be things we will never fully understand. But in spite of what we do not know—there is so much that we do know. So much that we can share of our faith and of our selves. We go into the world so that all may know the God whom we struggle to comprehend.
