2023 05 14 Sermon
Easter 6A
Acts 17:22-31
Rev. Karl-John N. Stone
“Common Ground & Alternative Perspective”
This past week I had the blessing to attend the National Workshop on Christian Unity. This event has a 50-year history of Protestants and Catholics coming together from all around the country, not to ignore or erase our differences, but to come to a better understanding of our common ground in Christ. This is inspired by the prayer Jesus prayed to his heavenly Father in John 17:20-23, that all his followers would be one, as he and the Father are one, “so that the world may know that you sent me and that you have loved them.” We worked on this goal through learning, conversation, and worship.
I met lots of great people from all over the country, including the Rev. Dr. Evangeline Anderson-Rajkumar. Pastor Evangeline is from India, and she taught for many years at an ecumenical seminary in India, until about 6 years ago when she came to the United States, and now serves as pastor of a Lutheran church in southern Indiana. When I met her she saw my name tag and greeted me in Swedish, which she is fluent in! But for someone so accomplished, I was struck by her spirit of kindness, welcome, and Christian love. You could just sense the presence of the Holy Spirit within her. Throughout our conversations this week, she shared bits and pieces of her story. It turns out that back in India she is a “dalit”, which according to the caste system of India this is the lowest rung. Actually, it's below the lowest rung, she explained. Not even considered part of the caste system, dalits are “out-caste” or sometimes called “the untouchables”.
The origins of Christianity in India go all the way back to St. Thomas the Apostle, and through the centuries there have been missionaries from many different Christian churches that have developed a presence in India. Pastor Evangeline told me there are 12 Lutheran church bodies, all founded independently of each other but they all work cooperatively, along with most of the other Christian denominations in India. All together they make up 3% of the population—the other major religions are Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh, and there are some other religions as well—but in a country the size of India, 3% means there are 35 million Christians!
But—even though there is a spirit of unity and ecumenism among most Christians there, the caste-system still has a toe-hold, because one of the church bodies in India only allows upper-caste members! Evangeline, as a dalit, could not be a member of that church body even if she wanted to. What a loss to the Body of Christ it is that people like her would not be welcomed.
As I reflected on her ministry and experiences that she shared, I was struck by the commonalities between how she proclaims the gospel, and how the Apostle Paul proclaimed the gospel, because both of them demonstrate that sharing the love of God and the message of Jesus begins with an attitude of valuing people as people, regardless of their beliefs or background.
Imagine St. Paul arriving in Athens, and standing in front of the Areopagus—the center of Greek religion, culture, and law. It was a thriving place, in a well-developed and sophisticated civilization—yet not without some cracks, some rough spots, even some ignorance. Because so many people living in those times, even as they could see the splendor around them, also were regarded with contempt. Many were slaves, their homelands subdued and trampled upon by the Roman Empire. Many others were considered “lesser” people—such as women who were considered the property of men, or those forced to be temple prostitutes in a form of worship, or the poor who lived under constant injustice. [For more background on this sermon see https://cac.org/daily-meditations/we-are-temples-of-god-2023-05-11/ ]
Paul knew the seedy underbelly of this great civilization, and he had an alternative message of hope and freedom to proclaim to all the people. And he started this message by looking for the common ground. “Athenians! I see you are extremely religious. I walked through the city and even found an altar dedicated to an unknown god.” St. Paul is recognizing the desire that God has planted in every human heart to reach out beyond itself and seek God. Even though Athenians worshiped multiple gods—and Paul, being a faithful Jew, adamantly believed in only one God, who made the world and everything in it—Paul realized that the Athenians were acting on the God-given impulse to seek God.
The Athenians even hedged their bets by worshiping an “unknown god”, in case there was something they missed. By naming this “unknown god”, they even had a point that Paul appreciated: God is greater than we can know and imagine. We can only handle a little glimpse into God’s full glory and full nature. Paul even picks up this theme in his first letter to the Corinthians 13:12, writing “Now I know only in part; then [in heaven] I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.”
Finding first the commonality, next Paul shares his alternative perspective: even if we can’t know everything about God, that is okay, because God in Christ already knows us and loves us completely! And Paul talks about this to the Athenians, saying “God is not far from us. In him we live and move and have our being. He gives all people life and breath and all things. From one ancestor he made all nations.”
Paul’s proclamation of Christ gets down to the God-given dignity of everyone, regardless of race, religion, gender, nationality, class, education, philosophical disposition, or social position. This is a theme he keeps coming back to as he writes the letters which we now read in the New Testament. It’s a message of freedom and hope in Christ for everybody—not just those lucky enough to be born into a privileged caste, or to be born to parents who gave them every advantage, or those who were skilled enough to have earned a higher spot in society.
St. Paul teaches in 1 Corinthians 6:19 that “You are a temple of the Holy Spirit!” You haven’t earned this distinction nor could you, and you don’t need to either, because God’s grace in Jesus Christ has given it to you! A new world has been born through the resurrection of Christ from the dead, which means that through him, you (along with everybody else) have been created inheritantly worthy and good. Yet we often fail to live up to the goodness God created us with, therefore, your flourishing is tied into helping make sure that everybody else can flourish along with you. No wonder St. Paul was the church’s greatest missionary. His message about Jesus resonated powerfully among the people back then, people who desperately needed freedom and hope in Christ, just as we do today.
Pastor Evangeline explained to me that in seminary she taught feminist theology. I think this flows from the teaching of St. Paul in Athens, because feminist theology is about how the bible teaches us to pursue the mutual flourishing of all people. It’s not against anyone; it’s not privileging one group over against another. It is about how the gospel of Jesus Christ calls us to work in cooperation with as many people as possible so that everybody, men and women of all backgrounds, all races, can flourish with dignity and love.
St. Paul concluded his sermon in Athens saying, “Since we are God’s offspring, he now commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which the world will be judged in righteousness by Jesus Christ, who has been raised from the dead.” Repentance means having a change in mind, leading to a change in behavior. So in the gospel messages of both St. Paul in Athens, and Pastor Evangeline in India and Indiana, I think repentance comes down to recognizing that everyone has been created in God’s image, and is therefore a temple of the Holy Spirit—just as you are. God is not far from each one of us, whether we realize it or not! Similar to the modern-day quest for Christian unity, this kind of repentance doesn’t mean ignoring our differences or erasing our differences (whether they be differences of religion, race, gender, culture, or whatever the case may be)—but it means to regard the differences we live with as things God can use to teach us how to love and serve our neighbors, and how to help them flourish alongside ourselves; and how to recognize more clearly the presence of God in whom we live and move and have our being. Amen.