St. Paul's On-the-Hill Episcopal Church

The Rev. Stephen C. Holton, Rector

Easter 6; April 27, 2008

Acts 17:22-31

1Peter 3:13-22

John 14:15-21

A PERSONAL GOD

People Explain and Reflect on how the Savior Of all Needs A Listen

I want you to think for a minute, of the time an unexplained good thing happened in your life, something that you did not deserve and did not expect. Something that might have been completely unexpected – just a strange combination of events that left you feeling great, and better and happier than you were before.

I want you to think of a time when all that happened, when you were otherwise enduring a great deal of pain or a great deal of misfortune – and still this accidental goodness, this accidental help entered your life, helping you get through those bad times.

God does not promise us the end of bad times. We do live in the world after all. The letter of Peter reminds us that suffering will continue. But God does promise us to be with us in the bad times. That is the meaning of the Incarnation and the presence and manifestation and embodiment of God in Jesus. Jesus is God in the world. Jesus is God present in the world, present in the bad times and the good, teaching us in the bad times and the good, helping us get through the bad times and the good – even through his own bad times and good ones.

Think back to your own bad times and good ones, and to the event and circumstances – predictable and unpredictable – that helped get you through.

Those, particularly the unexpected and unpredictable, may have been experiences of the God who is with all people in the world.

But if you are religious or Christian, if you come to church and study his teachings and expose yourself to his presence more deliberately and constantly, you learn to expect his presence outside the church, and to expect it in the world.

For you know by faith that he is in the world. This is where he came. This is where he died and rose and continues giving us comfort.

Look for that comfort. Expect it.

Paul is one of the first people to explain his experience of Jesus, and to reflect on its meaning for other people. Paul is like us for he did not have a direct, bodily experience of Jesus; so perhaps our reflections and explanations are like his, and are as valid as his, for they rest on the same experiences of the living, risen, yet not so tangible Lord.

He speaks to the Athenians of this unknown god. He sees this altar, among all the other altars. It is not there because the Ahtenians are secret monotheists. It is there because they are hyper-religious and are afraid they might have missed somebody in their polytheism, some unknown god, so they have thrown in this extra altar just in case.

Paul uses it as an excuse to testify, much as we might find some excuse to testify. He uses it as a marketing tool.

And he uses it to undercut their entire religiosity. Not only does he cast doubt on the religion of any particular God. He casts doubt on their whole way of being religious.

Perhaps we are in some doubt over the whole way in which our culture is religious, or the way our whole culture gets through life. Our religion gives us the ability and the confidence and the objectivity to do that.

He says to the Athenians that its ridiculous for them to make things to worship and to think that God needs their worship. Isn't that about what atheists say about religion, that its ridiculous to worship and to think that it helps anything?

Well, Paul seems to say that too. Perhaps the atheists are right in their critique of religion, though they are not correct in their critique of God. They are correct about the institution, not about the Spirit, the God beyond the institution.

God does not need our worship, says Paul. Our worship changes nothing; for God loves us regardless of our worship. God feeds us, provides for us, provides the whole created order for us in all its beauty and nourishment whether we are Christian or not, religious or not.

Stop praying one day and see if the Sun still rises or the rain still falls. I'll bet it does. And God – in Jesus or in the Spirit – will still love you, even if you forget him. He will never forget you. Even if there was a time when you did not know him, he always knew you.

He loves you and provides for you and needs no worship to remind him of that. He cannot be manipulated by gold statues and altars and fancy churches. Those might help us; they do not help him. Paul almost seems to say that it is beneath us, as God's creation, to invent images to worship. Why not worship God directly, suggests Paul.

Why not understand that God loves us directly, since he created us directly, says Paul.

Peter also speaks from his experience of the love of God, though he did experience Jesus directly, and watched him heal people whom others thought were accursed, and watched him teach those who knew little about how to get through life.

He says that when Jesus died he went down into the underworld to save the souls of those who had died in the Flood of Noah.

Remember who these people were?! They were the ones who were so sinful and evil and wicked that God almost destroyed the whole world! That's how evil they were.

These are the ones Jesus went to get. He did not want to leave them out of God's blessing.

If Jesus did this, imagine what he would do to find you and save you and love you and not leave you comfortless and alone and isolated in your condition. He'd come for you too.

Peter says this – based on his knowledge of Jesus and his experience.

What would you say, based on your experience, now that you look back on your life with the eyes of faith, especially at those places where you get into a situation by your own fault. And yet God got you through.

The one who Created you, had no interest in you failing, even if it was your own fault. He has an interest in you living – joyfully – and will work to that end, faithfully, day in and day out.

Don't resist him and his life-giving Spirit. He'll keep after you.

He is with you always.

The same Savior, the same Teacher who was made present and visible in Jesus, who Created us and the world at the beginning, is with us now in the Spirit.

Jesus says: “I will not leave you orphans; I am coming to you.”

“I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate,” another Comforter, “to be with you forever.”

This comforting, nurturing, loving one whom we have known in the past, we will know in the future. Those moments of salvation and comfort and happiness, in the oddest of circumstances, were no accident. They were the breaking in of the Living God into our lives. Get used to it.

Look for it. Listen for his voice of love in those oddest of circumstances. Expect it. You'll find it.

Here we learn to look and listen. We concentrate our hearts and minds and souls and bodies to see him, hear him, loud and clear. His presence is not accidental but real. Here we learn to recognize it and not to go through life blind and deaf to it as so many do.

Then, at the right time, an accidental time or an opportune time, we can give an account of the hope that is in us; we can explain the very real reasons we can endure beyond all hope.

It is because of God, present now, whether or not we worship, whether or not we believe. But his gentle pressure calls us to worship, calls us to belief, like the gentle rain or the peaceful breeze reminds us that there is a Creator of all around us, just waiting for us to look up, and say: Thank you.