Dr. Roger Ray, pastor
May 29, 2011 Easter 6
Acts 17:22-31
22 Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, 'Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. 23For 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. 24The 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, 25nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. 26From 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, 27so 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. 28For "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." 29Since 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. 30While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31because 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.'
30 NRSV Bibles arrived at our church this week from the American Bible Society, compliments of our own member of the American Bible Society board, Dr. David Trobisch. David grew up in a missionary family of rather biblically focused Lutherans and has spent most of the past two decades teaching in a seminary.
And so, when he comes here to teach a Bible study and discovers that not a one of you brought a Bible and several of you are under suspicion of not owning one, or at least not one bearing the signs of translation since the invention of such things as the English dictionary.... It has nearly caused a cranial explosion in the mind of our resident Biblical scholar.
The American Bible Society came into existence nearly 200 years ago for the express purpose of printing and distributing Bibles to everyone, everywhere and in every imaginable language. They are now grappling with the fact that it absolutely cannot be argued that there is a Bible shortage anywhere in the world. There is, however, a growing shortage of people who want one and an even more alarming crisis of people who already have one being uninterested in reading it.
I can honestly say that I was one of those uncommon young people who, when ceremoniously presented with a Bible following my baptism on Easter morning, of my 12th year which was 1968, that I actually read it.
In 1968 there were no computers, no video games and there was only one black and white TV in the house and it only got 2 channels and the choice between those two channels was made by my father who, if you could made a dull choice between two channels, managed to do it every time.
But when the minister at 1st Christian Church in Glasgow, KY gave each of us our first whole Bible, he told us that it was God's word and that we should study it diligently. Now, I suppose that is the kind of thing you say to children in church assuming that no one will do it but, for lack of a better option, I read it. I memorized portions of it. I wrote in the margins.
I made comments, put question marks by the parts that didn't make sense to me and drew underlines and stars around the passages which excited me. I read from my Bible every day, at least a chapter but usually a good deal more. I began to notice, however, that no one wanted to talk about it. My parents asked me to go to my room to read it because it made them uncomfortable when I would read a passage out loud or ask questions about what I was reading.
Before long, I realized that my Sunday School teacher had never read it and that our pastor seemed to fumble with it at best.
The disconnect was maddening to me. They told me that it was a book virtually written by the God who created the universe and would one day send us all either to heaven or hell and yet hardly anyone had anymore than a passing interest in it.
I grew up in a family that never missed church and when I say "never" I mean "never." We went in bad weather. We went when we were sick. We went when we were on vacation. I went in my prom clothes one Sunday as I was coming home from my Senior Prom at 9 a.m. after being out all night and my dad said, "Don't take off your tie son, if you are man enough to stay out all night, you are man enough to sit up straight in church for an hour."
We never missed, but the other part of that was the strange part.... Even though we never missed a service, we never discussed it at any other time. No meal time prayers were said unless I said them. Clearly, while the ritual of going to church could not be ignored, it was my family's intent to otherwise live lives as free of religious language and influence as possible.
I discovered that every other family I knew of was essentially the same. Everyone was willing to parrot the claims that the Bible was the holy word of God and that God had several rather far reaching expectations of each of us lest He be forced to fry us up like a piece of bacon for all eternity but absolutely no one lived like they believed that it was true..... they were, in all honestly, a little bit afraid that it might be true and so they were willing to go through the motions of some kind of spiritual assent but just barely.
Most people, it seems, are basically atheists.... Skeptics at least, but they are hedging their bet with some religion in case it is all true.
It wasn't until I was in college studying philosophy that I had a name for this phenomenon based on the personal musings of the 17th century French philosopher and scientist, Blaise Pascal. It is called, "Pascal's Wager," based on an entry in his notebook in which he frankly admitted that no one could prove that God exists but one should live their lives in a way to satisfy the expectations of the Christian faith in case it is true. If it is true, then you gain heaven and avoid the punishment of hell, if it is not true, then you have led a good life and that is not a real loss..... you may miss some great concerts and parties but, all in all, it is a good wager to make.
Of course, to make that wager really work, you have to assume that God is pretty easy to trick. It is difficult for me to conjure up a notion of an all powerful but intellectually limited God though such paradoxes do exist.
Similarly, I was not surprised that Arnold Schwarzenegger had an affair with his maid. What surprised me was that he was able to keep the love child secret from Maria Shriver for ten years because doing that actually required acting skills which is not something I would have accused Arnold of having.
When Paul went to Athens, the heart of Greek culture and philosophy, we are told that he had a public conversation with some of the philosophers gathered on Mars Hill. In a way he is gently making fun of their polytheism but he knows that they largely didn't take it all that seriously either.
Plato had written his works four hundred years before Paul stumbled into town and everyone had read Plato's rather mater of fact assessment of religion.... That the gods were useful in keeping the uneducated masses in line.... Religion was good for the state, it kept people honest, persuaded soldiers to fight in battle unafraid of death and generally supported the rulers.
The Athenians had public art which was, in many ways, just that, art, but the subject of art was generally religious in some way and so the art served the double purpose of also being places to pray or make oblations before a god of war, or agriculture, or fertility or commerce and, in this case, even to an unknown god in case we missed any.
The Athenians didn't know Pascal but they understood the wager. As we all have, consciously or unconsciously, understood the wager. But if you are here you have abandoned traditional religious views and all of its magic and superstition. We're more like Joe Friday on an old black and white Dragnet show.... We want the facts, not the superstitious interpretations and wagers.
Luke does not even claim to have been in Athens with Paul so this is a second hand, Cliff Notes version of what Paul would have said in that civil trial. Unlike when Paul spoke in synagogues and among Jews and Jewish converts, Paul does not quote scripture or mount a doctrinal argument.
He speaks to them in the images of poets and calls their attention to the natural world around them. I think that is honest. That is something we can respect.
When I was a young college student, we said that in the philosophy department we were seeking truth but that search was like looking for a black cat in a dark room. When I went to seminary, I heard one student say that the difference between philosophy and theology is that in seminary we are looking for a black cat in a dark room that isn't there.
That was too cynical for me then and it is still too cynical for me now. I have grown out of both belief and patience with a lot of the idolatry that disguises itself as Christian faith in our age but I have not grown out of faith. To say that there is no God doesn't ring true with what I see when I look at the night sky... it doesn't ring true with what I observe when I take a walk at the nature center.... It doesn't square with what my heart tells me when I am confronted with suffering or injustice.
I believe in God but I believe that any time you try to nail God down to a set of dogmas in any religion, that you turn faith into an idol and all idols are slated for destruction.
My family and probably your family and every family you have ever known, felt something of the divine presence and they were told to take that feeling and shove it into the straight jacket of being Catholic or Pentecostal or Lutheran or Baptist when, in fact, God is none of those things and all of those things and too big to be contained by any of them.
And acknowledging that fact allows us to come back to the Bible and read it, not as a book written by God but as a book written by our ancestors in the faith who have also been looking for a black cat in a dark room. Sometimes they get it right and sometimes they get it wrong. The Bible contains brilliant revelations and really embarrassing and sick stuff, side by side.
Perhaps it is more accurate to say that it is not God's word, but God's word is in it, if we can find it. Just as God is in the tiniest quark and atom as well as in nature and the cosmos, if only we can find her.
For the most part, the nature of God remains shrouded in mystery. We can stand in awe but we cannot know. We can worship but we cannot describe or control God.
And so we come here, not to participate in secret rituals which get us into God's favor while most of the world is in danger of punishment nor are we willing to play the childish game of trying to be barely religious enough to keep a demonic god off our backs. We come to encourage one another to be more like the one who has taught us to show compassion and mercy, to forgive and to love, to be peaceful and generous.
There is a lot we will never know in our mortal lives but what we do know is that good can conquer evil and we can bring light into darkness and that love can heal hate. We will not be dogmatic about what cannot be known but we are devoted to what is obviously true and so we are willing to sacrifice to give birth to the good and in so doing, we draw near to God.
