Sermon for May 17, 2020 Easter 6 A Acts 17:22-31; John 14:15-21

House of Prayer Lutheran Church Rev. Karl-John N. Stone

What’s the differences between a blizzard, the season of winter, and a mini ice-age? That might seem like a strange question to ask with warm weather finally arriving, but it’s an analogy I recently came across from an entrepreneurial leadership group known as “Praxis”. They compared our perceptions of what we’ve been going through during this pandemic to the differences between a blizzard, the season of winter, and a mini ice-age.

In a blizzard you hunker down for a few days then go back to normal. This is what our initial response was like when we first realized the seriousness of COVID-19. But a blizzard is different that the season of winter. You know winter lasts a while, so you prepare and make the needed changes until the warmer weather comes. This is what we've been doing for the last several weeks. But then there’s a mini ice-age--that lasts longer than just one season. So you have to re-evaluate your assumptions and adapt to a new reality. This is where we are now that we realize we’ll be living with this pandemic for a lot longer than we originally hoped. And that’s what it takes to make it through the pandemic: continually re-evaluate and adapt.

We know it’s not easy. Human nature much prefers to find a comfortable way of doing things and then sticking with it. Even when a “mini ice-age” comes, we prefer (at least at first) to think of it as the season of winter, or as just a blizzard. Sure, it might be difficult, but we’ve managed through blizzards before. We’ve lived through winter before and know how to do that. But finding our way when we realize something more profound is going on? Something like a mini ice-age? That takes some doing.

This analogy applies to St. Paul in Athens, as well, when you consider how he was asking the Athenians to so thoroughly re-evaluate their assumptions in Acts 17. Athens was a great city. It had produced great thinkers: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. The people who lived there held a great diversity of philosophies and world-views. Yet as Greeks in the ancient world, they knew nothing of either Jewish tradition nor Christian tradition. But that doesn’t mean they weren’t religious. They had shrines to many different gods all over their city, and at these shrines they offered sacrifices to try to get on the “right side” of these gods.

And to hedge their bets, just in case there was a god they didn’t know about, and that god was mad at them, they built an altar to worship “an unknown god”. Paul noticed the Athenians’ desire to reach toward holiness--so as he stood in the marketplace and talked with the people, he introduced them to a radically different God--not the Greek gods who reflected the imperfections and imaginations of human beings--not an unknown god who was standing ready to punish people for their ignorance--but a loving God who is the Creator of heaven and earth. A God who gives life and breath to all people, not as an accident, but out of love. A God who doesn’t despise us for what we don’t know, but who is always finding ways to break into our lives so that we might know true love, mercy, grace, and forgiveness. A God who wants to be known and who willingly goes to great lengths, even suffering death on a cross and rising again from the tomb, so that people will know how much the God who created them loves them.

This God, the one and only God who created the heavens and the earth, was even trying to find ways to break into the lives of the Athenians as they worshiped their multiple gods. And because God wanted so much for the people to know him, the Holy Spirit was at work in gradually directing people towards God. So Paul points out that even the Greek philosophers realized the presence of Someone greater than themselves when they declared “In him we live and move and have our being”. And even the Greek poets recognized that life is holy, writing “For we too are his offspring.”

St. Paul found the common ground, but he asked the Athenians to re-evaluate their assumptions about their faith--because the resurrection of Jesus changes everything. The good news of Jesus--that life and not death has the last word; that death has been defeated and salvation is available for all people; that forgiveness and new life is free for anyone who turns their heart towards God in repentance--this good news of Jesus means that there is a living God who is reaching out to everyone, everywhere, in every situation.

And even today, in the midst of a global pandemic, our uncertainties about the future, our grief over what we’ve lost, and our anxiety about what will happen next--even today our living God--the God of resurrection and new life who raised Jesus from the dead--is still reaching out to you, and to everyone, everywhere, with a Word of hope and a promise of eternal love.

The Athenians once offered sacrifices to an unknown God--and Paul invited them to instead turn to a God who knows us and wants us to know him. Today, even if we are not worshiping an unknown God, we are facing simply “the unknown”: how much will we have to adapt and change in order to navigate to the “new normal”? St. Paul once invited the Athenians to reevaluate their assumptions about their “unknown god”. That way they could re-interpret what their philosophers said: so “in him we live and move and have our being” means the Creative power of God is constantly at work within each human being. Today we can understand the same point: that the creativity of God’s Spirit is available to each and every one of us, and can guide and transform us when we turn to God in faith.

St. Paul invited the Athenians to re-interpret what their poets said: so “we, too, are his offspring” means not only that life is holy, but that we are actually created in the image of God. Today we can continue to take heart in this good news, and know that the holiness of God dwells inside each one of us--and that through baptism into Christ, God has claimed us forever as his beloved children.

St. Paul knew what it meant to have to re-interpret and re-evaluate things for the times he lived in. Likewise for us, because of this pandemic we’ve started to re-evaluate our assumptions about many things. We have faced many challenges, from loss of jobs to loneliness, and maybe you even feel that God has abandoned you. The message of St. Paul for us in the times we live in is that God is always closer to you than you even realize. God is always reaching down into your life and the challenges you face so that you can know divine love, mercy, grace, and forgiveness. God is even within the challenges themselves. If God can be in the crucifixion of his Son, then God can be in whatever challenge you are dealing with right now. God is suffering with you, and offering you a love that will not let you go.

Even as this pandemic has upended many things, we know it will not last forever. And when God finally leads us to the other side, we will see that there is one thing we’ll never have to re-evaluate: "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever"--he knows you and loves you. That will never change. Amen.