The Unknown God Acts 17:16-31 Life In Christ Lutheran Church
Rev. Michael A. Trask
Perhaps you remember a fellow who billed himself as “The unknown Comic”? He had many appearances on shows in the late 70’s and early 80’s. He was known for his groan worthy jokes and his two tone shoes and polyester suits. But he was best known for always appearing with a brown paper bag over his head. In one of his bits, he pulled out a little paper bag put it on his hand and called it ventriloquism and you couldn’t see his mouth move because he was wearing a bag over his head. That was his kind of stuff. And he managed to keep his identity hidden for quite some time. You wondered who he was; you wondered what he looked like without the bag; you wondered what his name was. You wondered what kind of person he was. Nobody seemed to know. He was the unknown comic. And to tell you the truth I hadn’t thought about him for years. I hadn’t thought about him until I read the text for this message: Acts 17:16-31. It would seem, that the Athenians had built an altar for and actually worshiped “The Unknown God.” How I jumped from the Unknown God, to the Unknown Comic I can’t say, but think about it: for many people, and perhaps also for you yourself, God to be an unknown quantity. Yes, you hear his words as they are read from the scriptures, but you don’t feel like you can really know him in a satisfactory way. He remains an obscure abstraction, an enigmatic spirit, an uncertain force whose presence you are unable to confirm or deny. We learn in Acts, that Paul found the people of Athens to have this kind of uncertainty their religion. Now we have been told that Athens is the cradle of western culture. The buildings in our capitol pay homage to the buildings in Athens. For it was in Athens that the concept of democracy was first invented, it was in Athens that our politics, literature, art and theater, and philosophy, had there respective births. Plato, Socrates and Aristotle all hailed from Athens. The Athenians, as we say, had it all going on! Or so it would appear. Now here’s where it get really interesting. As enlightened and proud and savvy and capable as the Athenian people were, they were not without a rather pronounced weakness that is quite easily seen in the text. The city was “full of idols” The Greek word that is used in the original is informative. Its “Kateidolon” and it means completely subdued by idols, covered by idols, weighed down by idols. Even the ancient Pagan writers who visited Athens found it remarkable. A writer named Petronius says “It was easier to find a god than a man in Athens.” Xenophon calls Athens “One great altar”. The place really was subdued, covered, weighed down with idols. But even though they bent over backwards to honor every god they could think of, Their hearts were not at peace. Oh no! So driven were they to cover all of there bases, Paul noticed that they even erected an altar to “The Unknown God.” Now from the modern perspective it appears that such an act would be an “Open minded” or multicultural thing to do: to hold out the possibility that there might be other gods besides those they already knew, such an attitude would be applauded in many a institutions of higher learning in our day, but that wasn’t what was going on at all! This altar to the unknown God was erected out of craven fear....fear that they might have forgotten some god....and that some God might get angry that he was forgotten and proceed to punish them. That’s what was going on. They’re city was weighed down with idols because they wanted to be sure to be on the good side of whatever gods there might be. They were superstitious in their religions. Religion becomes superstition whenever the worshipper does not personally know the God they worship. Have you ever had the experience of knowing of a person, but not actually knowing the person? What sort of things does your mind do to with this person that you don’t know? It begins to make assumptions, assumptions that are often unfounded and ungrounded. Sometimes its possible to have a whole picture of another person form in your mind. But then when you meet them and get to know them personally, you discover that you were way way off base and in some cases quite unfair. Now when you do this to God, and a lot of people do, that’s what is called superstition. The person who believes that the reason he or she got sick is because they didn’t go to church enough is superstitious. The person who suffers any kind of tragedy and privately thinks that God is blasting him for some particular sin is superstitious. The parents who make sure that their baby gets baptized but see absolutely no reason to regularly bring that child into God’s house for further instruction treats baptism in a superstitious manner. Parents who make sure to “get them chillen confirmed” but then disappear after they are confirmed are treating confirmation in a superstitious manner. The person who is motivated to go to church every Sunday to “keep God off his back” is coming to church for superstitious reasons. When you act upon assumptions about God’s person that are unfounded and ungrounded, your so called faith becomes just another superstition. When you purposely treat god as if he is a dumb idol that needs to be appeased so that he will leave you alone, you are treating him with superstition. He has become the unknown God to you. And this is the exact opposite of what God really wants. God want to be known by you! God wants to be a friend to you! He calls himself a shepherd! He calls himself a mother hen longing to take her chicks under her wings. God doesn’t want to fulfill your bald superstitions, he wants you to know him personally! This is basically what Paul said to these superstitious greeks on Mars hill. He said “I see you are in every way very religious. As I walked around in your city I even saw an Altar ‘To an unknown God.’ Now what you worship as unknown, I’m going to make known to you.” He then proceeds to tell them just how close and how personal this God actually is: “He gives all men life and breath and everything else” “From one man he made every nation....he determined the time and places for these nations....where they should live and the like.” And why did God do this? Why did he act upon history in this way? Paul explains: “God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him.” God took charge of history so that he so that he could work it for people to know him!. People say “oh, what does God want, what does God want” I’ll tell you what he wants: He wants people to find him and know him! He wants you to know him. He wants you to know him personally. But you already knew that didn’t you? You’ve learned about the personal way Jesus came down to be one of us. You learned about his intimate knowledge of you and your life. You’ve learned about his indwelling spirit, you’ve felt his presence in your life; urging you to come closer to the Lord; to get into God’s word, to start praying like you mean it. You know God wants you to get more personal, that is all known by you. Yet still you are tempted to keep him at bay. Oh, you might complain about how little you know God, but it could very well be that you yourself are submarining your own relationship to him. Could it be that you are afraid of what might happen to you if you get to close? Might he make you cool it with the sinful habits you enjoy? Will he ask you change your ways? Can’t you see that your sinful nature is running scared! It’s just silly to feel that way; to get all nostalgic over your old sinful self, because the Lord doesn’t ask you to change all at once! And when change does come, you yourself will welcome and agree with it and help to usher it in! Perhaps you don’t understand that you live in grace; that right now, as you are right now, he wants to be closer to you. That’s what Jesus did: he died to bring sinners closer to God. But he also rose again so that new life is possible. We can take strides our sinful nature. We can get better. We are not diminished by drawing near to God, we are restored! Don’t let your sinful nature keep the Lord at arms length. Don’t make him out to be an unknown God. Because you know that would be true. AMEN |
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