Prayers to an Unknown God

Scriptures: Acts 17:22-31, John 14:15-21

Friends, it is good to be here today. It was such an enjoyable experience last week to visit with other UCC folks from across the city last week. If you missed it, the food was great, and it was so enjoyable to talk about the challenges our churches face. But more than that, I found it really encouraging to find out that there are exciting things happening in – believe it or not – small UCC churches here in Baltimore. Am I remembering right that it was Rev. Desiree who said, “Small but mighty?” I agree and I think it’s good to remember Phillipians 4:13 – I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. May Christ strengthen us indeed as we seek to follow him in our lives, as individuals and as churches. So, before I begin, I’d like to pray a sung prayer. If you know it, feel free to sing along. Let us pray.

“Open our eyes, Lord”

In our story from Acts today, the apostle Paul is in the Greek city of Athens, preaching to the Greeks about Jesus’ death and resurrection. It might surprise you to know that in terms of religious practice, the Roman Empire was a time of a great deal of upheaval, fermenting, and general mixing up of people. In fact, at its largest expanse the Roman Empire connected under one political power people all the way from India to Spain and from North Africa to the British Isles.
So it became easier – not easy, but easier – to travel between nations that formerly would have known nothing about each other, and to trade ideas, philosophies, and religions with each other. In other words, there were more ways to run into a religion you’d never heard of before. And for the Athenians, their approach was to 1. be interested in all kinds of new stuff, and 2. if it was a god somewhere, build a shrine to it. Might as well, just to be on the safe side.

So Paul comes to this hotbed of religious activity and starts preaching in the middle of the town square. In a way, it’s funny that Paul would be the one preaching to non-Jew Gentiles, since not so very long ago he was a rigid, zealous, strictly observant Jew. He still is a Jew, but one who also sees himself as a follower of Jesus. And where before he used to watch people’s coats at the stoning of a martyr, now he preaches in public to Gentiles to tell them about the work God has done for them through Jesus.

And when Paul speaks to the Athenians about that work – that gift of forgiveness, resurrection, new life, that kingdom of God – he doesn’t start out by explaining the whole history of Jewish law. He starts where the people are. He starts out by pointing out what the people are already doing. “I’ve been through your city,” he says, “and I see that you’re very religious. You even have an altar to an unknown God. Well. I’m here to tell you that I know who this unknown God is. This unknown God is the God of everything. The God who made heavens and earth, who defies and lives beyond shrines, and who is all around us, surrounding us at every moment. This God is the God revealed through Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. So, turn from your ways and believe in the goodness of God and the assurance that your mistakes will be forgiven.”

I was out walking in the neighborhood around our church a few weeks ago. And it was a more intentional walk than usual. I was praying, as I walked, for the people I saw. It was a very interesting spiritual exercise. I recommend it, if you’re the type of person who likes to walk. I saw people of different races and ages – young kids, young mothers, kids playing in the park down the street, older folks relaxing on their porches, young people moving some things into a house around the corner. People of Morrell Park, I wanted to say, like Paul does, God loves you. And God welcomes you.

It seems to me that we are living in a time much like Paul’s. There are a wide variety of beliefs, philosophies, religions, and practices that people can choose from. And, like the people of Athens, modern Americans can set up a shrine to any god. And we might think of those other gods as other religions, but I think the shrines that get the most attention these days are the ones built to the gods of power, security and American invincibility, gods of money, consumption and waste, gods of entertainment and addiction. Many of these things, in and of themselves, are not bad things. But ultimately, they are not God. Our God of peace and justice, our still-speaking God, our God of grace and forgiveness, that God Jesus reveals in human form, our God is still an unknown God to many people.

I don’t want to give the impression that all the answers about God are here in this room, and that no-one outside this room has any idea about who this God is that we name. But I think we miss the point if we try to tell our stories as if we have the corner on truth, or that another person must be compelled to think the way that we do because we have somehow wrestled them into it. Perhaps you’ve met someone with this approach before. Paul, for one, strikes me as a particularly bold character, at least at first. But really, he is just starting where the Athenians are, and telling his story about God with their worries, their interests, their perspectives and their culture in mind.

Do you have a story that you’ve been meaning to tell? A time when God was present to you, in the midst of crisis, or at the height of joy? Do you have a story about healing, about forgiveness, about persistent, faithful love? Is it possible that you know God a little better than you might ordinarily admit in public? And if you don’t have your own story to tell, what about our gospel lesson from today? Jesus tells his disciples – tells us! – that “I will not leave you orphaned, I will be with you. I give you my peace, not as the world gives, but freely, generously. My Spirit of love will be with you to guide you, to strengthen you, to comfort you.” This Jesus reveals a God worth knowing. And his stories are ours to hear and to know, and they are also ours to share.

There are people outside these four walls who are afraid to come to church, whether because they believe God will judge them harshly, or because they believe we will judge them harshly. Or maybe both. The God who embodies love, forgiveness, joy, and peace in Jesus, is an unknown God. And yet, there are those outside our walls who call out in prayer to an unknown God. Healing, love, and peace are in short supply in this world, but God is generous. May the Spirit of Jesus use us to answer those prayers to an unknown God. Amen.

What if?

Scriptures: Psalm 23
John 10:1-10

Friends, it is good to be here with you today. In the past few weeks, with all the over-hyped and under-cooked negative media attention focused on Trinity UCC and their retired pastor, I have been feeling particularly strongly our connections to one another as members and congregations of the United Church of Christ. We are members of one body, and what affects one member affects us all. And at the same time, it is good to have a chance to visit another corner of the church and to see that, in fact, life goes on as well. We continue to gather in love and faithfulness to seek God’s face, and to listen for God’s word. So thank you for your witness, and for your hospitality. It is a pleasure to be here today. I’d like to open with a sung prayer. If you know the song, please feel free to sing with me.

“Spirit of the Living God”

Today I’d like to take some time to meditate on the twenty-third Psalm. I realize that this is a dangerous enterprise. In fact, it’s a little bit like trying to plant seeds in the ruts of a dry dirt road. After all, this is a favorite Scripture, not just in the church, but in the wider world, too. “The Lord is my shepherd…” Who here saw the movie Titanic? It’s okay, you can raise your hands. Do you remember the part where, as the ship is sinking, the pastor on the boat has a little crowd collected? What is he reading? The 23rd Psalm, of course! Hopefully, I didn’t just spoil the ending of the movie for those of you who haven’t seen it. But this is typical – Psalm 23 is usually the Scripture wafting gently, and ever-so-spiritually through the funeral scenes in movies. And it has a special place in many of our Christian hearts as well, being worn smooth and comfortable with use.
Which is all to the good. But it makes this a hard scripture to hear with new ears. It makes me want to try it out with other professions:

How about one in honor of being in a college town:

The Lord is my thesis advisor, I will get my degree
She makes me take the weekend off between drafts
She leads me to new primary sources
She restores my hope
And inspires me to do the important research
And do it the right way

Even though I hit writer’s block at three in the morning
I don’t fear failure
I can always call you
Your quick wit and your kind voice – they comfort me

You prepare a table before me
In the presence of my toughest graders
You keep me healthy and sane
My cup overflows
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life
And I shall write according to the Lord’s school of thought
My whole life long.

There might be other ways to rewrite the Psalm, too:

The Lord is my boss, I shall not want
He makes me take vacation when I’ve been putting it off
He leads me to new ideas that energize me
He reminds me why the work means so much to me.

Or:
The Lord is my day care provider, I have everything I need
She puts me down for naps when I am cranky
She gives me healthy snacks when I am hungry
Her hugs warm my heart.

It’s fun to explore, and at the same time the exercise makes me realize how hard it is to get at the power and beauty of the metaphor of shepherd and the sheep. After all, the shepherd cares for the sheep all the time – healing them, resting them, leading them to new food – and sheep, at least in cartoon and stuffed-animal form, have this very appealing vulnerable quality to them. In real life, of course, sheep are loud, dirty and dumb. This makes the kind patience of the shepherd all the more beautiful.

The question I am left with, though, after reading this Psalm, so well known and so often intoned is this: Why, if we have been reading this Psalm collectively, faithfully, memorizingly, repeatedly, why is it so hard to live accordingly? There’s a saying you may have heard once or twice: “Pray like everything depends on God; work like everything depends on you.” That quote might be the exact definition of what I’ve heard described as functional atheism. In other words, we say we believe in God, but our way of doing things assumes that God does not exist. At least not in a way that has practical implications. We keep working as if things really did depend on us, and not on our Good Shepherd. Why is it so hard to recognize God as our shepherd and ourselves as sheep? What if we could trust God like the author of Psalm 23 does?

What if we could say, “I trust God for my financial security, and I’m willing to practice stewardship accordingly?”

What if we could say, “I trust God to keep the world spinning, and I won’t do work of any kind for one day every week?”

What if we could say, “I trust God enough to make the right and ethical and good choice, even if sometimes it is also the most costly choice?

What if we could say, “I trust God even in the face of death?”

And what if we could live in gratitude like the Psalmist?

What if we gave thanks for the table of love, joy, and gratitude God sets for us?

What if we gave thanks for the healing God works on our hearts, our bodies, and our souls?

What if we gave thanks for God’s goodness and mercy?

What if we lived as a people dwelling in the house of God?

I realize those are a lot of what if’s. And I almost want to throw in a handful of caveats: don’t forget that you have a part in your healthiness; don’t forget that these things take thought and prayer and discipline, etc, etc. And those things would be true. But guess what? Today I think it’s enough to ask the question, what if? and to imagine what that might look like. Not as a list of shoulds for us to do. Because Psalm 23 isn’t about us and what we do, it is about God. As sheep, our job is pretty simple – to follow where God leads. Easier said than done, of course, but it gets easier the more we do it. The more we step out in faith, the more we will trust God. The more we listen for God’s voice, the more we will hear it. The more we speak our gratitude, the more we will find to be grateful for.

In our gospel lesson, Jesus, the Good Shepherd, explains why he has come to his disciples, and to us: I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. What if, we had that life of abundance? What if it is ours to receive even now?

May you be blessed today by the presence of The Good Shepherd. May your trust in God grow, may you hear Jesus’ voice and know it as his, and may your heart be filled with joyful gratitude of the Holy Spirit. Amen.