Easter Six, 2011 Immanuel Chapel, Acts 17:16, 22-23
Several years ago my nephew and I, now a pastor in Michigan, were squirrel hunting on the farm where we both grew up. We made a wide arc through the woods emerging on a ridge overlooking an alder filled swamp. A farmstead sat on the crest of a hill a ways off. We thought we knew where we were, but did not recognize the farm. Had we gotten turned around as we made our way through the woods? Then it came to us. It was our home farm. Sometimes become lost, even in familiar surroundings.
In our day we are all walking through a forest, not of trees, but ideas about religion and God. We too may get lost in this forest populated by so many ideas, some of which seem attractive, like the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden.
When St. Paul entered the city of Athens he was confronted by a forest of stone, marble and medal statues. A gold and ivory statue of Athena holding a spear with a gleaming point could be seen reflecting the sun from 40 miles away. Statues to Apollo, Jupiter, Venus, Mercury, Bacchus, Neptune and Diana were only a part of the forest. Athens prided itself as an intellectual center. It had been home to Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus and Zeno. These men sought to provide direction on life and how to live it.
St. Paul was petrified as he viewed the dead forest of idols. It wasn’t that people worshiped the idols themselves. They were symbols of what stood behind the Greek ideas about gods and humanity’s place in the universe. On the Sabbath he spoke with the Jewish community about Jesus. During the week he discussed Jesus Christ in the public square with the Epicureans who thought the gods were so far removed that they didn’t matter, therefore, enjoy life. He talked with the Stoics, who thought the gods were involved in their lives, determining their fate so they might just well try making the best of life. Paul was well educated and knew Greek philosophy. However he was an apostle of God’s Son, Jesus Christ who became a real human being. He lived among us. He suffered in his flesh. He died for us. Through his resurrection has given us new and eternal life. Jesus was the way, truth and life. The Gospel of Jesus and the salvation he brought through faith was his chief interest.
Paul noted that the Athenians were “very religious.” American culture too has a number of “very religious trappings.” “In God we trust,” is on our coins. “Under God” was inserted into the pledge in 1954. However, is being religious the same as being Christian? That the Athenians were religious had not led them to Christ. They had simply gone on in their lost groping among a forest of gods and philosophical ideas about the universe and life. As we follow Jesus, we find people all around us groping to find some basis for their life.
The “There-is-no-truth” god is popular today. Jesus was sent into the world as the truth himself, to reveal God’s faithfulness to his promise to free us from sin and the result of sin, death. Jesus, God’s Son, went to the cross and his own death that he would carry out God’s instruction to love everyone to the end, his own end. Just before dying, Jesus announced, “It is finished.” His resurrection freed us from death, that we might receive his abundant life which is ours by believing in his name, which has the power to save us.
But those who worship the “There-is-no-truth” god are in tune with Pontius Pilate’s question to Jesus, “What is truth?” Many is our society would answer, “There is no one truth.” Whether it’s Oprah Winfrey’s truth, Gandhi’s, the Dalai Lama, your neighbor who lives across the street or Jesus, it doesn’t matter. One opinion is as good as another. The only truth is that you dare not try to foist your truth onto someone else.
Lying in back of the forest of gods through which we walk day by day, is also a three in one god in the flesh which has about 7 billion variations, but one name “Me, Myself and I.” We are something like Jacob of old, who when he escaped from his uncle Laban, stole Laban’s household gods hiding them under the skirts of his wives. Israel was never quite able to get rid of those gods. “Me, Myself, and I” is always close at hand, as near as I am to myself. In the comic strip Lola the pastor greets Lola at church, pastor john says, “I think you should pay particular attention to the sermon this morning.” Lola asks, “Yeah? What’s it about?” “Putting God first,” the pastor replies. Lola, now seen wearing golf shows and carrying her bag of clubs, “Not sure how that applies to me, but whatever.”
Let’s not forget another popular god which is proclaimed today. It’s the candy machine god proclaimed by some on TV and in some of the largest churches in our country. Sometimes it’s known as the “Prosperity Gospel.” This god wants to sweeten your life. His sole purpose is to help you improve yourself, reduce your stress, and offer Scripture based coping skills with satisfaction guaranteed. The question is not, “How can I be saved?” Rather, its, “Am I satisfied?” Does it feel right to me? God wants to fill your goody bag with anything your appetite desires. To gain the bonanza god has in store for you, you must banish defeatist thinking and replace it with a positive attitude. To the Sweetener of Life god and those who preach it, sin is a bad word, a negative word. This god looms large and enticing in the forest of religion. After all why would god have invented Malls and on line shopping if god did not want you to fulfill your every whim for a beautiful life.
However, what is passed over is the reality that when Adam and Eve were exiled from the Garden of Eden, they landed in a swamp, not in a pot of gold or in the fountain of youth. Jesus came to get us out of the swamp. Before shouting the Alleluia of Easter we pass through Jesus on the cross in the darkness and death of Good Friday. Jesus asked the heavenly father to forgive those who crucified him, not to give them a change of attitude so he could bless them with wide screen TV’s and the latest in cyber space communication.
This Thursday we celebrate Jesus ascension to the right hand of the heavenly Father. Before he removed his visible presence from this world he promised to a helper, the Spirit of truth. As we walk through the forest of religious and spiritual offerings Christ has not left us as orphans. He has sent his Holy Spirit to us to lead us into the truth, that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. Anyone offering anything or anyone different is offering much less than the riches we have in Christ, in his mercy, forgiveness and grace leading to life and salvation.
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