Nancy E. Petty
Pullen Memorial Baptist Church
April 27, 2008 — Sixth Sunday of Easter
Text: Acts 17:21-32
To An Unknown God
The quest to know God has consumed humanity since the beginning of time. Intellectually, emotionally, psychologically and philosophically women and men of all faiths and walks of life, believers and non-believers alike, have sought to know and understand the deity we call God. For every argument as to God’s character and how God works in the world there is a counterargument. Some of us sitting here today would argue that God is a God who is present—whose love and acceptance we feel in our lives daily—while others of us might argue that God is basically an absent God who, at best, is distant and aloof. For some of us here this morning, we rely heavily on our intellect to know God; while others of us depend on our emotions to draw us into God’s presence. For most of us, however, regardless of our approach to knowing God, the truth is that sometimes we feel like we know God, as small as the glimpses may be; and yet other times we feel that we will never know God. The Biblical writer Paul understood this human dilemma—that of knowing, yet not knowing God. And as he addressed the people of Athens he did so with a full understanding of what happens in the human experience when we set out on the search to know God.
In the text that Rachel read, Paul was preaching to a group of people not unlike those of us sitting here this morning. Much like Raleigh, Athens was a university town. The greatest scholars and philosophers of all time resided there making the city an intellectual haven. But Athens was not just the center of intellectualism; it was also a city rich in religious experience and tradition. Paul noted this fact as he went through the town observing the many temples, shrines and altars of worship that the Athenians had built. In fact, he began his sermon with an acknowledgement of just how religious the people were. He begins, “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.’ ”
One gets the impression that, even in all their intellect, the Athenians questioned their ability to know God. So just in case they had missed some piece of knowledge and so as to cover all their bases, they had built an altar that would in their minds absolve their ignorance—the altar to an unknown god. Humanity really hasn’t changed that much in over 2,000 years, have we? The unknown gods to which in ignorance or in fear we pay tribute still exist. And the question of “How much more attention and devotion and priority do we give these unknown gods than to the God who created us, who sustains us and who redeems us?” is still a fair question for us to ponder. From the golden calf idol set up by Moses’s brother Aaron to the Athenians and their altar “to an unknown god,” idolatry continues to be one of humanity’s ways of responding to the tension between knowing and not knowing God. Indeed, in our struggle to accept the transcendence and mystery of God, our worship more often than not turns toward the tangible, the explicable and the proven. And to that struggle, Paul offers some good news.
In his sermon to the people of Athens, Paul reminds us of what we can know about God. With words of assurance and promise he captures the essence of the Biblical conception of a God who is at once transcendent yet personal, sovereign and yet fully engaged in human life. Listen again to his words.
The God who made the world and everything in it, the God of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is God served by human hands…rather God gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.…God made us so that we might search for God, and perhaps grope for God and find God—though indeed God is not far from each one of us…For in God we live and move and have our being.
You see, God is in us and beyond us. God is known to us and God is that mystery that goes beyond all our knowing. So, when you feel like you know God, when you have caught a glimpse of the One who created you and who sustains you—rejoice in your knowing. And when you find yourself struggling to know anything at all about God, rejoice still—rejoice in the mystery of a God who loves you more than you can know or explain or prove.
It wasn’t until I traveled to Cuba that I became more fully aware of this truth; that God is in us and beyond us and that God is at the same time known to us and beyond our knowing. Like many of you, I traveled to our sister church not speaking a word of Spanish. Also, like many of you who have made that trip, I worried about my ability to connect with the people there given that I didn’t speak their language. But as any non-Spanish-speaking person who has ever worshiped with our sister church in Cuba can tell you, in those worship experiences God is at once transcendent yet personal; God is known and God is beyond any knowing. In those worship experiences, I didn’t understand one word that was being said, and I literally mean not one word. And yet, it was there in that worship, with people whose words I didn’t understand, that I felt most wholly in the presence of God. I felt it again as I worshiped with the people of our sister church in the Republic of Georgia. In the absence of understanding the words, I knew that we were worshiping the God who gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. In the absence of knowing what was being said, I felt a oneness in our common search for God. This may be the only time you hear me say this: Paul is right. Paul is right when he says that “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.” God is so much more than our knowing. God is in us AND beyond us. God is known to us AND God is that mystery that goes beyond all our knowing. The good news of the gospel is this: while we search and grope for God, God is not ever far from each one of us.
For over two weeks now I have watched our friend, Bonnie Stone, as she makes her journey from this life into the next. In my better moments, I speak to her with confidence about the hope and promise of the new life toward which she is moving. At other times, though, I have struggled to make sense of her dying. In those moments, with grace and faithfulness, she has reminded me that we must trust in the mystery of God that goes beyond our knowing. Her emphasis, however, is not on the word “mystery” or our not knowing. Her emphasis is on trusting God. I feel certain that she would tell us that the Christian faith allows us to say that we do not worship an unknown god, we do not worship in ignorance; rather we worship the one who made us, who preserves us, who sustains us, and who redeems us. This is what we know about God and it is the good news of the gospel.