The god I Don't Believe In
David C. Myers
April 27, 2008
Acts 17:16 - 29
John 14:15 - 21
Text: ". . . I found . . . an altar you worship with an inscription, 'To an unknown god.'" . . . Acts 17:23
William Barclay is best known to many of us for his helpful Bible Commentaries on the New Testament. Writing in his Spiritual Autobiography, he tells of a great tragedy in his life. Barclay's 21-year-old daughter and her fiancée were both drowned in a boating accident. He writes about the tragedy, "God did not stop that accident at seas, but [God] did still the storm in my own heart so that somehow my wife and I came through that terrible time still on our own two feet."
A few weeks passed, and Barclay received an anonymous letter, "Dear Dr. Barclay, I know why God killed your daughter. It was to save her from corruption by your heresies." Barclay says in his book, "If I had the writer's address, I would have written back, not in anger, for the inevitable blaze of anger was over in a flash, but in pity. And I would have said to that person, as John Wesley said to someone, 'Your God is my devil.'" William Barclay, had he been able to write to that anonymous author of the letter, would have told him or her, that, in essence, "Your god is the god I don't believe in."
This morning we encounter the Apostle Paul as he engaged the people of Athens, Greece; and this is his message: "Your god is the god I don't believe in."
He begins his sermon by acknowledging that "in every way you are very religious." Being religious is a good attribute, and it is to their credit. Actually, everyone is religious. I remember studying the Philosophy of Religion with Dr. Joseph Mow at West Virginia Wesleyan College. He told us that the root word for religion from Latin is "religio", which literally means, "that which you are ultimately attached to." Dr. Mow pointed out that we are all ultimately attached to something - be it popularity, security, money and wealth, power, or perhaps . . . our Christian faith. He then went on to say, it isn't a question of being religious or not, the question is, "what is your religion?"
Back to Paul. Paul says in today's lesson, "Your souls are alive, I perceive that you are a very religious people." But there is a catch. They were worshipping everything and everyone, and in essence, they were not worshipping anything. Their desire to worship was right, but the objects of their affection were wrong.
Paul said, "We ought not to think that the Deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, a representation by the art and the imagination of humanity." Sigmund Freud, in his book, The Future of An Illusion, argues that God does not exist apart from human beings, and further, that God is only a figment of our fertile imaginations. The great reformer, John Calvin (he the founder of the Presbyterian faith) said that "the human mind is a perpetual factory for idols."
Athens is not unsimiliar to our contemporary society. Athens was the cultural center of the Greek world. Its history included Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle. It envisioned itself as a very sophisticated people - not unlike the people of Washington and surrounding environs. The Athenians, while they appeared very religious, did not believe in the one true God that Paul was proclaiming. So Paul's sermon is on the many gods he encountered in Athens, all gods that Paul did not believe in.
In Athens there were many wonderful stone altars, most of them devoted to some person, some mythic character, or a famous philosopher or writer. However, one of them was not dedicated to any object and bore this inscription, "to an unknown god." If there was ever a good line for a sermon, this was it, and Paul picked up on it saying, "what you worship as 'unknown' is the God I proclaim to you."
Paul develops the sermon carefully by listing the kind of qualities shown in the gods that had altars and icons - qualities that were very limiting, qualities that could not be used to define Paul's God . . . and hopefully our God. So let's look at Paul's analysis and see if it describes any of the various gods that are prevalent in our society - gods of which we, as believers in the one God of our Judeo-Christian faith, would join Paul in saying, "these are gods we don't believe in."
1.) The first god that Paul did not believe in was a god that lived in shrines and was made by human beings. Indeed, Paul's God was just the opposite. God made the world and everything in it. God is not limited to statues, or holy water, or holy lands, or even great cathedrals.
Somehow we get so caught up in our worship that we forget the true object of our worship. And then we create lovely buildings, great statues, and holy places - as if we are trying to contain our God, to put God in a place where, whenever needed or convenient, we think we can find God.
It is good to remember that our God, "Who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of Heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands." (Acts 17:24)
As beloved as this church building is; it is not to be the object of our worship. As much as we love our sanctuary or our chapel, God does not reside here. God resides in our hearts and is revealed in our actions.
2.) The second god that Paul didn't believe in is a god that needs anything. Oh, how this is tough for us to understand. But Paul proclaims it - God does not need any help from human beings. That doesn't mean that God won't use us in God's service, but it does mean that God can get done what needs to be done without us. . . . How does it feel to be insignificant?
Again, it is our tendency to get caught up in so much church work, thinking that if we don't do it, God's work won't get done. WRONG! Our God is not dependent on us. God is not sitting around waiting for us to act before God's will gets accomplished. So Paul preaches against a god who can only work through willing servants. It is certainly easier to work through the willing, but did you ever notice how many Biblical heroes and heroines first resisted God's call? As a matter of fact, can you name me more than 5 Biblical heroes or heroines that did not resist God's initial call? For those of us so eager to do the work of the church, this ought to give us pause - especially if we think seriously about how difficult, demanding and uncompromising God's call to us can be.
But even if you can get your mind around that concept - that God can co-opt the unwilling, God has an even more incomprehensible manner of showing us that we are not entirely needed to get God's work done. All throughout the Bible there are examples that God can even work out His purposes even from those persons of evil intent.
You may recall the story of Joseph and his two brothers, who had sold him into slavery. Years later, after they had grown into adulthood and Joseph, after interpreting the dreams of the Pharaoh, was set as ruler over Egypt by the Pharaoh, the brothers, who still lived in the famine-starved Israel, went to Egypt in search of grain. They had to go before Egypt's ruler, who now was their brother Joseph, whom they did not at first recognize. When Joseph's true identity was made known the brothers are worried that Joseph would punish them as a way of getting even with them for putting him in the pit. Joseph's response was, "You meant evil against me; but God meant it for the good." (paraphrase, Gen. 45:44f). And let's not forget that some of the greatest heroes of the Hebrew Bible were Moses, . . . the murderer; Rahab, . . . the prostitute; and even the great king David, . . . the adulterer.
Oh, it's so hard for us to believe in a God that can use what we consider evil for good; or, at least it is hard for us to see what we consider evil to be used for good. The god that Paul does not believe in is one that is dependent on its worshippers. The God Paul does believe in is the God that confounds us, the God, "Whose thoughts are not our thoughts, and Whose ways are not our ways." (Isaiah 55:8) We could take a lesson from God's only Son Who, in a moment of total agony in the Garden of Gethsemane could pray, "Lord, please take this cup from Me. But not My will, but Thine, be done." How hard it is, even for God's own Son, to be mindful that God does not need us.
3.) The third god that Paul does not believe in is a tribal god. A tribal god is a god that loves only one tribe, one people, one nation, one color, one income category, or one sex. We saw such tribalism with Hitler and we saw it in Kosovo. But, lest we forget we also see it in our own country. This is especially hard, I think, for American people to understand, for a large part of our country's most cherished writings have long invoked god's blessings as if we were the only country to have an inside track on God's will. But in reality, the idea of a Christian nation goes back to at least 321 a.d. when Constantine made Christianity the religion of Rome, declaring all its inhabitants Christian.
So Paul preaches to the Athenians and to us, that if our god is the god who only defends one country; and, for us, a god who loves only America, or that America is always right - then that is a god that Paul doesn't believe in. If your god is never active in the affairs of other nations then that is the god Paul does not believe in. Paul's God is bigger and broader, and Paul's God embraces every nation and every person alive.
The disciple Peter, seven chapters earlier in the book of Acts, had a similar awakening. After having a dream, Peter visits a Roman centurion named Cornelius. Up until this time Peter was a strong believer that the work of Christ could only be faithfully done by the Jewish people. And then he had the vision where God unveiled to Him that indeed, God was the God of all. That every person was a chosen person. And so Peter began his sermon by saying, "The truth, I now realize, is that God shows no partiality." (Acts 10:24a). And now Christianity is known in every country of the world, and its teachings have been translated in over 1,100 different languages.
It is important that we be patriotic, don't get me wrong. But we need to remember that as religious people, there have to be limits to our patriotism. The God that we believe in is a jealous God, and demands total allegiance. And ultimately, our God has no boundaries; our God is a God Who does not recognize walls, oceans, or rivers that divide countries, or any other division that keeps us from being one people.
4.) And finally, Paul does not believe in a god who demands nothing from us, expects nothing from us, or a god who is passive in the face of outrageous injustice. Paul does not believe in a god who would wind up the universe like a watch and leave it alone to run down.
The God that Paul knows is a God Who has great expectations for the people God created. God is a God that wants us to look back at our lives and see that we can do better.
I'm sure it is by more than mere coincidence that both in Germany and in Esteli, Nicaragua there are statues of Christ that have been damaged by the fighting that ravaged those countries in the last century. Both of those statues of Christ have no hands and had no arms. And underneath each statue is inscribed the words, "This Christ has no hands, it is up to us to be the hands of Christ."
Yes, God expects a lot from us. There is injustice in our world, and in our very community. There are hungry mouths to feed, there are illiterate children and adults to teach, and there are nations and regions fighting against each other.
No, it's not easy to serve the God of our Judeo-Christian tradition. It's even very hard sometimes to know our God's will. You may recall that earlier in the sermon I mentioned that Paul is trying to proclaim to the Athenians an unknown God. It was a hard concept for the Athenians to understand; and it is still hard for us to understand. But ultimately our God has to be unknown to us. God is our Creator, and as the creature, we can hardly fathom the will of the Creator. It is not our lot in life to be able to contain, to understand, or to put God in a convenient place in our life - as much as we try to do that.
But then again, there is the Athenian alternative; we could worship idols. The choice is ours.
Juan Arias, a Spaniard, puts that choice before us rather poignantly:
No, I shall never believe in the God who loves pain . . .
the god who sends people to hell;
the god who does not know how to hope;
the god whom only the mature, the wise, or the
comfortably situated can understand;
the god who sometimes regrets having given us free will;
the god who is interested in souls and not in people;
the god who says and feels nothings about the agonizing problem of human suffering;
the god incapable of making anything new;
the god who has never wept;
the god in whom there are no mysteries, who is not greater than we are;
the god who is not love and who does not know how to
transform love everything god touches.
(and then Arias concludes)
I believe in the other God.
So do I!