Revs. Erin Gilmore and Thandiwe Dale-Ferguson engage in a dialogue reflection on Acts 16:13-15 at the installation of the Rev. Dr. Marta Fioriti as Plymouth's Associate Minister.

Acts 9.1-20
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning,
Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado
 
Many of us have, shall we say, “feelings” about Paul, asking ourselves whether he is an appalling or an appealing apostle. For some of us, we heard a lot of Paul growing up, assuming that all of the New Testament epistles attributed to him were actually written by Paul himself. The Letter to the Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, Philemon, and 1 Thessalonians were indeed written by Paul, but others clearly were not, and some have dubious authorship. It isn’t that they were forgeries, but rather they were written by the followers of Paul, perhaps a generation or two later, and it was a common convention in the ancient world to attribute a letter to a revered leader. Interestingly, much of what we find difficult about Paul (“Slaves, obey your earthly masters,” “Women should be silent in the churches.”) were not written by Paul himself.

Marcus Borg and Dom Crossan write, “There is more than one Paul in the New Testament…it is essential to place his letters in their historical context…His message—his teaching, his gospel—is grounded in his life-changing and sustaining experience of the risen Christ; Paul…is best understood as a Jewish Christ mystic.”[1] And that brings us to today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles, often called the Damascus Road Story.
Last week, I had a fascinating conversation with one of our members about different ways of knowing and experiencing truth. Not everything is factual in a literal way, yet it still may be true. When we read scripture, as when we hear a parable, we know that it may not have happened exactly the way the storyteller relates it. We don’t actually know if there was a Good Samaritan or a Lost Sheep, but we know that the story is true, because we appreciate the wisdom it contains, namely that we should love our enemies and that we are loved by God. This is a “more than literal” reading of scripture. It is more than literal because it conveys a greater truth than a straightforward narrative account.

There is also experiential knowing, feeling something in your gut that you know to be true. If I were to give you a video camera and ask you to prove the depth of your love for your parent, you wouldn’t be able to film anything convincing at the heart of the matter…just the effects of your love, like running errands or giving a hug. The depth of feeling is something you experience in the depths of your being, and it is likely something you experience differently than anyone else, yet it is profoundly true.

So, what about this story of Saul/Paul’s radical experience? If there was a video camera there, do you think it would have captured what happened?

Mystics, like Paul, have a direct experience of God, not simply a knowledge or a belief in the divine. William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience, written 120 years ago, details different types of mystical experiences. He describes mystical experience as: transient (the experience is temporary), ineffable (beyond words), noetic (that the person has gained knowledge and insight), and passive (can’t be controlled with an on/off switch). All four of these characteristics define Paul’s experience on road to Damascus. Paul has a vision of a bright light, which James would call an illumination. The medieval mystic, Hildegard of Bingen, also had such visions which she called “reflections of the living light.” Mircea Eliade, a great scholar of comparative religions, called them “experiences of the golden world.” These are visual encounters with the holy that involve light.

John Philip Newell (who will be with us at Plymouth on May 11) suggests that we all have inner divine light, which is the very essence of life. In the Celtic tradition, creation itself is a theophany, a showing of the divine light. “Our job is not to create the light,” he says, “but of releasing the light that is already there.”

Interestingly, Saul doesn’t see a person, but radiant, blinding light, which is why he asks Jesus to identify himself, and he says, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” And those who were accompanying Saul don’t see the light, but they do hear a disembodied voice, so they had an auditory mystical experience.

What would we have seen if there had been a CCTV camera on the road to Damascus? Would we have seen a flash of light? Probably not, since Saul’s companions didn’t see it either. Would microphones have picked up the voice of Jesus speaking to Saul? Probably not. Does that mean it didn’t happen?

Nothing suggests that Saul ever met Jesus, the living man whom Marcus Borg describes as the pre-Easter Jesus. His sole experience is a direct encounter with the post-Easter Jesus, and it changes him forever.

Rather than rounding up followers of Jesus and carting them off to Jerusalem for punishment, Paul joins the rebel movement. Can you imagine what might cause such a radical transformation? There is ample evidence that whatever happened on the road to Damascus was a dramatic catalyst in changing Paul’s life. He shifts from becoming the hunter to the hunted, from the tool of religious establishment to a leader of the anti-imperial movement. Borg and Crossan write, “This sets up the fundamental opposition in Paul’s theology. Who is Lord, Jesus or empire? In Paul, the mystical experience of Jesus Christ as Lord led to the resistance to the imperial vision, and advocacy of a different vision of the way the world could be.”[2] It is hard to imagine a greater transformation.
You all remember Plymouth’s mission statement, right? “It is our mission to worship God and help make God’s realm visible in the lives of people, individually and collectively, especially as it is set forth in the life, teachings, death, and living presence of Jesus Christ. We do this by inviting, transforming, and sending.” If you need a reminder, check out the very cool banner Anna Broskie made with a caterpillar, a chrysalis, and a butterfly to illustrate inviting, transforming, and sending.

What happens to Paul is a life-transforming chrysalis experience. A phenomenal transformation occurs in Paul’s life. It isn’t just a one-and-done experience, but rather one that shifts who Paul is, not only in name, but in the marrow of his being. That is what religious transformation is about: having our lives shift.

Not all of us see a blinding light, hear a clap of thunder, get hit by lightning. But I imagine that there are those among us who have had experiences of union with the divine or the presence of God that have shifted our directions. Have you had that kind of transformative experience? When I was in my 30s, I was sitting at the dining room table in our house in Boulder reading Dom Crossan’s book, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, and I paused for a moment, had the sense that there was a hand on my shoulder, and I heard a message: “You can do this.” A year later, I was switching careers and studying theology at Iliff. How about you? Have you ever just known something in your bones? What happened when you listened to it, considered it seriously, and changed course?

When Ananias came to Paul and laid his hands upon his eyes and something like scales or flakes fell from Paul’s eyes, and he could see again. That is part of the mystical transformation: gaining new sight. We sing these words and perhaps take them too lightly: “I once was lost, but now am found. Was blind, but now I see.” The gift of new sight is a powerful metaphor for a noetic experience that can help change our lives.

All of us can be transformed, and I would daresay that we need to be transformed. Maybe it isn’t a one-time occurrence, but rather a gradual process of realization and knowing. We can open ourselves to the presence of the holy and continue to be open. It may not be that we hear trumpets or see flashes of glaring light, but part of our human spiritual journey can involve knowing the numinous firsthand, without mediation. We can be open to letting God have her way with us and guide us. And that takes trust.

How have you experienced transformation and growth over your years? Major life events — confirmation, marriage, the birth of a child, joining a church, the loss of a loved one, illness, divorce, starting a new career, two years of pandemic — all of these can be occasions for transformation. In terms of your spiritual life, when have you felt closest to God, and when has your relationship seemed distant? One of the things about spiritual transformation is that there is no pressing it, demanding it, controlling it. It is a gift, and perhaps the best we can do is to stay open to the possibility, to delve into our faith in all the ways we can. Whether it is exploring a new spiritual practice, coming to learn about Celtic spirituality with John Philip Newell, spending time walking the labyrinth, or volunteering to help with Faith Family Hospitality.

Paul had an experience of the holy that was out on the road, not in the pew, and you may find your own mystical experience in the process of living your faith, even or especially if it is on a day other than Sunday. And may you release the divine light that is within you and help others to do the same.
May it be so. Amen.
 
© 2022 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact hal at plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.

[1] Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, The First Paul, (SF: HarperSanFrancisco, 2009), p. 13.
[2] ibid., p. 26.

Acts 2.1-24
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning,
Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado
 
The day of Pentecost is often referred to as the birthday of the church, marking this episode when the Holy Spirit was poured out on the followers of Jesus, giving them the power to hear the proclamation in their own language. The story of the Tower of Babel results in people being deprived of a common language, and this story in the Acts of the Apostles is a reversal of that mythic episode in Genesis. It isn’t about glossolalia, speaking in tongues, it’s about understanding across cultures, which seems especially important in our current day and age.

We know that Jesus was trying to reform Judaism, not attempting to form a new religion. The followers of Jesus, his disciples and others who joined with them after his death, continued to be worship in Jerusalem and throughout the diaspora as Jews, and we see conflict arise as the movement begins to extend beyond the boundaries of the synagogue, as non-Jews begin to be included without rites of initiation or being bound by the strictures of observation of things like dietary laws. The church was essentially born of a crisis within Judaism and the ways it was unable to incorporate Gentile believers without the barriers of ritual purity. Jewish Christians, like the apostle Paul, who argued in favor of inclusion, carried the day, paving the way for the expansion of the movement around the Mediterranean Basin and now around the world.

So, we have the birth of the church, inspired by the movement of the Holy Spirit. Has it ever occurred to you that without that event, you probably wouldn’t be Christian? Unless you had relatives in Syria or Turkey or the Jewish homeland, your ancestors probably worshiped other Gods in the first century, whether Wotan or Dagda or Aphrodite or animist spirits. And without that wider inclusion, Christianity may have died out. The universalizing spirit of the early church opened it up to all cultures.

A wag once said, “We were promised the kingdom of God, but all we got was the church.” And there are times when I feel that way, too. I find it dispiriting at times when churches around the world and here in the U.S. are busy trying to erect barriers about who can receive communion and who can or cannot be ordained because of who they love and whose gender identity makes them unwelcome. You and I may sense moments of frustration with Plymouth when we don’t quite measure up to our best aspirations. When it does happen, it often manifests itself as grouchiness and self-concern, a lot of which comes from our own anxiety. Those moments are thankfully rare at Plymouth, but the frequency has increased during the pandemic. I can attest that there have been moments during the pandemic, when I have not been at my emotional and spiritual best. How about you? God doesn’t expect us to be perfect…just trying our best to love one another as Christ loves us.

All of us have been through a struggle these past 15 months. We’ve been isolated from one another, worried about our own and others’ mortality. We’ve lived in a politically divided nation that continues to wade through the mire of lies and insurrection. We’ve been reawakened to the realities of American racism and violence against people of color. And last summer we had the largest wildfire in Colorado history right over the hills.

As a community and as a culture, we have been traumatized. No wonder we’re tired! No wonder we have a lot of pent-up frustration! No wonder we feel hopeless, depressed, isolated, or as Adam Grant called it in the New York Times, “languishing.” All of us, even your clergy, have run an incredible gauntlet of challenges just surviving the past year. So, what do we do about it as we stand at the threshold of new post-pandemic possibilities? Part of the solution is to acknowledge that the trauma and “languishing” exist. If we take a good, long pause and sit with the pain we’ve been through, it allows us to start dealing with it. We can also stop trying to control the things we cannot change and turn some of that over to God, as you heard our visiting scholar say last week. Here is the rub: if we don’t acknowledge and deal with our collective trauma, our reactions to it come out sideways: in bitterness, pettiness, shaming and blaming, and unproductive anger.

I’m also aware that there have been mental health issues great and small among our congregation during the pandemic, and if you are feeling persistent anxiety or depression or hopelessness, please get help. Call me or Jane Anne, and we can help you find a therapist or psychologist, or call your physician. You don’t need to face those challenges alone. 

We’ll also address our post-pandemic challenges by leaning into our faith. By turning to God, the church across the millennia has recovered from tragedy, pestilence, and mayhem. And as part of that same church universal, we can recover, too.

The board of directors at La Foret have a three-year plan for recovery with the themes: survive – revive – thrive. Not everything is going to just pop back into shape the way it was before the pandemic. We are in a liminal space, on a threshold between what is … and what God is calling us to become, and that can be both unsettling and exciting. We’ve survived, and reviving is going to take hard work, and not just from your church staff…it’s going to take each of us, coming together, working with the Holy Spirit, and chipping in our efforts, gifts, and faith for the good of the whole. When I say whole, I don’t just mean Plymouth.

The pandemic also has led some of us to focus inward on what we want, rather than outward on what others need. We need to look beyond ourselves and our own wants to see what our community needs and what God needs us to do. If we are, as I claim, an outpost of the kingdom of God, it obliges us to move beyond our narrow preferences and peculiarities for the greater good. In order to revive ourselves and our corner of God’s realm, we are going to have to be countercultural, leaving behind “me and mine” and moving toward “us and ours.” We are going to have to try and hear and understand the metaphorical foreign language our sisters and brothers are speaking, just like those first followers of the Jesus on Pentecost. To intentionally misquote John F. Kennedy, “Ask not what God can do for you…ask what you can do for God.”

We have an incredible opportunity as we move beyond the pandemic and as we get back into circulation: we can grasp the invitation of the Holy Spirit and help to rebirth the church. There may not be tongues of fire above any of our heads, but if we think that God is still speaking and the Holy Spirit is acting in the world, we can be co-creators in this moment of rebirth.

This is no time to be complacent or lukewarm Christians. It is no time to say, “I’m taking the summer off from church,” or “I’m soooo tired of broadcast services.” As I intimated in last week’s reflection, we need to come on back and wade in! Our Strategic Planning Team is almost done with the Plan, which we hope to present to Leadership Council in June. After that, there will be Strategy Implementation Teams formed to put legs on the ideas generated by our congregation. This process will be lay-led and lay-driven, so if you are asked, please consider the invitation very carefully, and try not to see it as just one more commitment, but as a way to live into your faith and the ministry to which you have been called as the church. Our team has been outstanding, and half of the group is in their 30s, and I am grateful for their commitment and insight.

The church isn’t just another civic organization like Rotary or the PTA. It isn’t just like Public Television or United Way. And the reason is twofold: the church universal was birthed 2,000 years ago by the movement of the Holy Spirit and we are guided by the presence of that same Spirit. We affirm that when we covenant with each other as members of this church. When we take an action as a church, it isn’t because we are good progressives or good Republicans or good Democrats or because we’re nice, civic-minded people…it’s because we are called to come together and to work for the kingdom of God.

There is also a reason that the church has endured 2,000 years of persecution, famine, plague, war, division, and re-formation, and it isn’t just dumb luck. It is because the Spirit embraces and empowers, lures and encourages, beckons and sends the church to reinvent itself in every generation. Our time is no different. Let’s cross the threshold together as we rebirth the church.
Amen.
 
© 2021 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact hal at plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.

Acts of the Apostles 8.26-40
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning,
Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado
 
For me, this is one of the most memorable stories in the New Testament, not because it is about Jesus himself, but rather because it is about how his disciples — how we — can follow a path of inclusion. For many years, the UCC was nearly alone in working to include LGBTQ folk in the life of the church, and this passage yields some profound messages about welcoming those whom some Christians consider outcasts or untouchables. I remember following Matthew Shepard’s death reading a memorial sermon given at St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral in Denver by Tom Troeger, who was my preaching professor at Iliff. Tom told a story about being a little kid and his playmates during recess would link hands and form a circular human chain, and the game consisted of having one child outside the circle trying to enter the circle and the other children trying to keep them from breaking in, while chanting, “You’re out! You’re out! You can’t come in!” Have you ever felt you were kept outside the circle that you wanted to break into? Most of us have. Insiders are often good at keeping the outsiders at bay, whether on the playground, the workplace, in church or society…some people even build physical walls.

Imagine what it was like for LGBTQ folks to be rejected and excluded by the church of their youth…of maybe you yourself felt that exclusion. It is horrific and spiritually damaging. But what if the church decided to turn the tables when we speak of inclusion and of extending the love of God? What if we opened our arms wide and chanted, “You’re in! You’re in! Love won’t let you go?”

The story of the Ethiopian eunuch has become even more relevant in American society in the past few years with the wide media coverage of police shootings of African-American women and men and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. (You may or may not be aware that I’ve been part of a Fort Collins clergy group that has been working with Fort Collins Police Services for six years on issues surrounding dialogue, training, and accountability with our community. Overall, our police are doing things  pretty well.) It is stunning to read of yet another police shooting or killing of unarmed Black men and women. The message from some quarters seems to be that Black lives really don’t matter. And you know that ISN’T what our text today says.

When Philip stops on his way to Gaza and hears a Black man, an Ethiopian, reading aloud (as was the norm in the ancient world) he stops and asks if the man knows what he is reading about. And the reason Philip does that is because he knew that Black Lives Matter. They matter to God and they matter to us.

You don’t need to look very far to find African people in the Bible. Whether Pharaoh, Simon of Cyrene, or the Ethiopian eunuch, Black and brown people populate both testaments. The Ethiopian eunuch was not untouchable because he was Black…he was considered ritually impure because he had been castrated. Though he was a court official and was educated, reading the Hebrew scriptures, the Ethiopian eunuch could never become a full member of the Jewish tradition because of what they considered his ritual uncleanliness. So, why does the author of Acts include this account? Why does the writer describe this scene of encounter, teaching, baptism, and inclusion? Jesus himself and his early followers replaced the centrality of ritual purity with the core value of compassion. This story highlights a great departure from our roots in first century Temple Judaism, namely that our religious tradition is meant to welcome the other, the untouchable, to be part of God’s household. That is our goal…as yet unattained.

God has work for us to do around compassion and inclusion. Our White sisters and brothers have work to do around examining our privilege and acting to dismantle it. We, especially White Christians, need to do a lot more listening to our sisters and brothers of color about how they experience the world. The Interfaith Council and World Wisdoms Project presented a powerful presentation on Zoom hearing the stories of people of color here in Fort Collins while asking all of the White persons on the Zoom call to mute themselves and turn off their video cameras. It gave others a chance to be seen and heard. (You can find it on the World Wisdoms Project website.[1])

Deep repentance, metanoia, starts by listening, hearing the brokenness of American history played out in millions of lives. It continues to transformation: changes of heart and mind, shifts in our patterns of belief and behavior. And it concludes in wholeness, both for individuals and for societies. Our nation can never be whole while the wound of racism remains open. And it takes people like you, like all of us, working together to make a difference. It’s in the way we raise our children, talk to our neighbors, lift up our voices, march where and when necessary, and vote to affect social change.

In October, you will have the chance to listen deeply to the Rev. Traci Blackmon, who will be with us as our second Visiting Scholar. She is not only our associate general minister for justice and local church ministries but was also the pastor of a UCC congregation in Ferguson, Missouri, during the shooting of Michael Brown in 2014. She knows of what she speaks, and I hope you will join us to listen and to learn.

You may know the passage from Isaiah the Ethiopian was reading: it is the story of the suffering servant from Isaiah 53. Let me read to you from that prophecy: “By a perversion of justice he was taken away. Who could have imagined his future? For he was cut off from the land of the living.”
How many perversions of justice have we seen in this nation in regard to our Black sisters and brothers since 1619? How many Black men have been taken away unjustly by mass incarceration? How many Black men have been cut off from the land of the living by miscarriages of justice in applying the death penalty?

We need to end perversions of justice. We need to work toward our goal of listening to, including, and advocating for “the other.” We need to work on our own racism, which is rooted deeply in American culture.

Christians of privilege, which includes most of us in some form or fashion, must work toward collective salvation. As Paul said, we must “work out [our] own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”[2] I do not believe that we are beyond redemption as a people. And I know that redemption of our history of racism will take lots of hard work and it will take generations. So, let’s keep on working as midwives, helping to birth the kingdom of compassion, inclusion, and justice that Jesus proclaimed. Let us not say that we are too weary…because “You’re in! You’re in! God’s love won’t let you go!”
Amen.
 
© 2021 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact hal at plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.

[1] worldwisdomsproject.org/library
[2] Philippians 2.12-13

Carla preaches on Pentecost Sunday.

Acts 1.6-11
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning,
Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado

In all my ministry, I have never preached a sermon about the Ascension. Part of the reason is that it is a very odd story. I mean we just don’t see people being lifted up into the sky, and if you want to call that a mystery, that’s fine; if you want to call it a metaphor or a literary device, that’s fine. In terms of my own faith journey, it isn’t a terribly important story, but it has certainly received a lot of attention when it comes to art. And the artists didn’t have a lot to go on…you just heard it: “He was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.”

This fourteenth-century image by Giotto  is in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, near Venice. Giotto and his assistants covered the inside of this amazing place with frescoes that many art historians say helped bring in the Renaissance in Italy. Obviously, Jesus is at the center of the image with little angelic beings that look as if they are encouraging, as if to say, “Go! Go! It’s that way!” And below Jesus are the two “men in white robes” mentioned in the text, each pointing upward. Mary, the mother of Jesus, is in characteristic blue on the center-left of the bottom register, with the rest of the crowd.

Rubens’s Ascension puts the viewpoint from underneath Jesus, again putting Jesus in the center of the scene. No crowd is shown, just two cherubs, and the viewer is part of those gathered and looking upward. The reds in Jesus’ robe and the yellow light pouring forth from the clouds tells you what is really important. 

And even into the 20th century, Salavador Dalí shows Jesus being taken up into a heaven that looks almost like the center of a sunflower with the dove of the Holy Spirit facing him and a distinctly feminine onlooker, who I take to be the feminine face of God the Creator. Jesus is at the center and the crowd and the men in white robes are absent.
 
But the imagery hadn’t always been focused just on Jesus. 

In this 13th century manuscript, the focus is on the disciples…the only part you see of Jesus is his feet.

I love this early manuscript image that shows not only Jesus’ nail-punctured feet, but even the footprints he left behind. And the crowd is looking up wondering.

But my favorite, in terms of what it says about the story from Acts, is a late 19th century painting by James Tissot. 

It doesn’t even show Jesus’ feet. It’s all about the light permeating everyone in the painting, which in this case is the two men in white robes and the crowd. Look at the crowd and what they are doing…do they look like they have their “act” together? They look confused, mortified, wondering what they would do next! But the light is still among them. 

I don’t think the story of the ascension is primarily about Jesus. You see, it comes at the very beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, and Jesus needs to finish his curtain-call after the resurrection and take his place. And that leaves the crowd of followers. And it leaves us. 

Imagine yourself for a moment as one of Jesus’ early followers, and you’ve walked with him through the triumph of Palm Sunday’s entrance into Jerusalem, overturning the tables of the money-changers in the Temple, his betrayal, arrest, and crucifixion. What must they have thought after the crucifixion? The Jewish renewal movement he started was now doomed to fail, and the kingdom of God he proclaimed was nothing more than a pipe dream.

And then he came back, rose from the dead and was seen by his followers. They must have been so amazed and gleeful that he was back among them. But then it happened again: Jesus was gone. Or was he? Can’t you just imagine the disciples saying, “Well, now what?! We’re supposed to carry the news to Judea, Samaria, and the whole world! This isn’t what we signed up for! This is a whole new thing…it’s all different…it’s not what we were expecting!”

If you are like me, perhaps you’ve caught yourself at some time over the past three months saying, “Well, now what?! The church building is closed and we have to learn to livestream and handle Zoom meetings…This isn’t what we signed up for! This is a whole new thing…it’s all different…it’s not what we were expecting!” And we all know that this pandemic is nothing as earth-shaking as the disappearance of Jesus. 

Have you ever thought what the first disciples were up against? Has it occurred to you that it was a miracle that this ragtag group of Jewish heretics started a movement that would grow into the largest religion on the planet? There are about 2.4 billion Christians in the world today.

What are we up against? A deadly virus without a cure that continues to spread around the globe. A president who is more concerned about how he looks than about the lives of US citizens. An economy that is at best volatile. Job losses surpassed only by the Great Depression. And closer to home, having to be church in the world, instead of being church together in this building. 

If you only have one theological take-away from the pandemic let it be this: the church is not the building. The church is you and me and all of us together being the hands and feet, the eyes and ears of Christ in the world. It is you bringing groceries to elders and also having the grace to receive the gift of help. It is you supporting people with food and housing insecurity, immigrants, and those working on the border. It is you paying your whole pledge early so that we avoid cash flow problems. It is you supporting our beloved camp at La Foret, which has birthed more UCC ministers than anyplace I know. And as one of our elders of beloved memory, Bob Calkins, used to tell me: “Hal, it’s all about love.”

You are the love and the light, my friends, and I am so grateful that you are a part of the mission and ministry of Plymouth. You are the hands and feet of Christ in the world today.  It’s hard being apart, and it won’t be forever. It’s not about the building…it’s about God’s love and the love we share. And love continues…. Christ’s light continues. 
Part of the mystery of the growth of the church is contained in the light in Tissot’s painting. Amid the bedlam of humanity doing its best, and oftentimes failing, there is love and there is light. Keep shining bright, my friends!

Amen.

© 2020 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact [email protected] for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.

Images: public domain

Acts 17.16-32
Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year A
Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC
The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson

I want to share some background with you about our story for today from the Book of Acts, chapter 17. The Acts of the Apostles tells of the movement and expansion of the good news of Jesus the Christ as well as the actions of the earliest followers of Jesus and their gatherings or churches after they receive the great anointing of the Holy Spirit during Jewish festival of Pentecost. Acts tells the story of the preaching and evangelism of the apostle, Peter, who knew Jesus so well and of the apostle, Paul, who never knew the man, Jesus. Paul received God’s good news of Jesus in a miraculous vision of the risen Christ as he was literally pursuing the persecution of Jesus’ Jewish followers after Pentecost. 

Our story today centers on Paul. Paul was born in Tarsus, now in modern day Turkey. He was a Jew from his mother’s heritage and a Roman citizen from his father’s. As such he was educated not only in the Torah but also in Greek/Roman rhetoric. All of these elements go into the complex character of Paul whom we can learn so much from in theological dialogue, sometimes in theological conflict, as we read his letters to the earliest churches. In Acts the stories of Paul are told through the lens of the gospel writer of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles and was very likely writing some 20 or more years after the death of Paul.  Not necessarily concerned with writing fact-checked details of Paul’s life, this writer wants to picture Paul’s audacity and passion in sharing his new faith in the revelation of God in the risen Christ. 

At the beginning of chapter 17 in Acts, we find Paul traveling throughout Asia Minor from city to city with his companions, the older, Silas and the younger man, Timothy. They are fervently spreading the redeeming and powerful news of Jesus to Jews and any Gentiles who might listen as well throughout the region.  We have to admire their tenacity as time and again they are thrown out of the synagogues by fellow Jews offended by their claims of Jesus as the Messiah. Their lives are threatened. They are beaten and jailed by the Romans for being subversive in preaching that the God of Jesus the Risen Christ is Lord rather than Caesar. Having been thrown out of the town of Thessalonica by the Jews, they are followed to the town of Beroea by these same irate men who are want to expel them from the whole region. Believers in Beroea find and shelter the three. They hide Silas and Timothy and secretly escort Paul to Athens in order to save their lives. 

Our story begins in the middle of chapter 17. Paul is waiting for his missionary companions to join him in Athens. It ends with his sermon to the intellectual elite of Athens at a place of council and debate known as the Aereopagus or “Ares’ Hill” for the Greek god of war. During the Roman Empire it became known as Mars Hill for the Roman god.  This was a hill outside the city center with a stone amphitheater. For centuries, even before the democracy of Greece was formed, the educated went to this hill to debate philosophy and make legal decisions. These men were often advisors of the king. Though Athens was part of the Roman empire in Paul’s time, Mars Hill and its council still functioned as a seat of authority in the city.

You will hear that Paul’s intent as he preaches to the intellectual elites is to open their minds to a new image of God, the ONE God revealed in Jesus the Christ. The information in his sermon may seem quite familiar to you. It is the salvation story of the Bible. To challenge what may be our overly familiar images of God, I have changed some of the pronouns that Paul uses for God from “he” to “she”.  Hearing an unfamiliar pronoun takes our images out of their familiar God boxes that are culturally constructed to even speak of the God mystery. Now we know that the Holy cannot be contained in an intellectual box so perhaps, hearing new pronouns, the ears of our minds and hearts will open to bring us a new encounter with the Holy ONE. Perhaps we will hear the words of Paul with some shock and awe as the Athenians did so long ago and begin to seek God anew. Acts 17. 16-32

16While Paul waited for them in Athens, he was deeply distressed to find that the city was flooded with idols. 17He began to interact with the Jews and Gentile God-worshippers in the synagogue. He also addressed whoever happened to be in the marketplace each day. 18Certain Epicurean and Stoic philosophers engaged him in discussion too. Some said, "What an amateur! What's he trying to say?" Others remarked, "He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign gods." (They said this because he was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.) 19They took him into custody and brought him to the council on Mars Hill [The intellectuals on Mars Hill said to Paul,] "What is this new teaching? Can we learn what you are talking about? 20You've told us some strange things and we want to know what they mean." (21They said this because all Athenians as well as the foreigners who live in Athens used to spend their time doing nothing but talking about or listening to the newest thing.) 

22Paul stood up in the middle of the council on Mars Hill and said, "People of Athens, I see that you are very religious in every way. 23As I was walking through town and carefully observing your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: 'To an unknown God.' What you worship as unknown, I now proclaim to you. 24God, who made the world and everything in it, is Lord of heaven and earth. He doesn't live in temples made with human hands. 25Nor is God served by human hands, as though [She] needed something, since [She] is the one who gives life, breath, and everything else. 26From one person God created every human nation to live on the whole earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their lands. 27God made the nations so they would seek [God], perhaps perhaps even reach out to [God/Him] and find [God/Her.] In fact, God isn't far away from any of us. 28In God we live, move, and exist, [have our being.] As some of your own poets said, 'We are [God’s] offspring.' 29"Therefore, as God's offspring, we have no need to imagine that the divine being is like a gold, silver, or stone image made by human skill and thought. 30God overlooks ignorance of these things in times past, but now directs everyone everywhere to change their hearts and lives. 31This is because God has set a day when [God/She] intends to judge the world justly by a man [God/He] has appointed. God has given proof of this to everyone by raising [this man] from the dead." 

32When they heard about the resurrection from the dead, some began to ridicule Paul. However, others said, "We'll hear from you about this again."33At that, Paul left the council. 34Some people joined him and came to believe, including Dionysius, a member of the council on Mars Hill, a woman named Damaris, and several others. [Bible, Common English. CEB Common English Bible with Apocrypha - eBook [ePub] (Kindle Location 42947). Common English Bible. Kindle Edition.] For the word of God in scripture, for the word of God among us, for the word of God within us…. Thanks be to God.

“An unknown god”…. Mirabai Starr, world religions scholar, author, and translator of St. John of the Cross’ Dark Night of the Soul and Teresa of Avila’s The Interior Castle, writes of “an unknown god” in a 2014 Huffington Post Article:
“I have always been drawn to a God who eluded me. A God who transcends gender — transcends everything, actually. A God who rebels against all forms, annihilates conceptual constructs, blows my mind. In other words, a God I can’t believe in. Because beliefs are dangerous — dangerous to God, anyway. The minute we define Ultimate Reality we destroy it. God chokes and dies inside the boxes we make.” 

Starr goes on in this article to write of the God she seeks to be in relationship with rather than intellectually construct. I think this was Paul’s intent as he introduces the unknown god to the Athenians as the God he knew as creator and redeemer of the world, the very Ground of Being. In Paul’s Jewish heritage, the God who names God’s self as “I AM” or “I Will Be Who I Will Be.” Paul begins with images of God from natural theology, as creator the cosmos and all of its beauty, then moves to an ever-present, seemingly beneficent God who is the parent of humankind. These would have been familiar images to the Athenians as he indicates. Finally, he brings in the shock and awe, announcing the God who has the unbelievable power to conquer death, to resurrect a man from the dead. No wonder some to the Athenians laughed at, ridiculed Paul, in one translation called him “babbler.” And yet others said, “We want to hear about this again!” And some believed and followed this God of Jesus the Christ on the way of faith. 

This God that Paul preached to the Athenians rebuking their notions that God can be kept and worshiped in human-made idols – who is this God for us today? Is this a God that will turn us from the idols of our times? What are the idols that flood the cities of our lives? They are probably as numerous as the idols of the Athenians, though we may not make them out of gold or silver or stone. We may make them out of achievement in work, or in wealth, or in athletic endeavor, or in intellectual pursuits, or in following the best health practices. We can even make an idol of following religious practices in order to earn God’s notice. Are our works of social justice ever in danger of becoming idols? Our political views and actions? Our need to be right? Whatever we set before seeking, reaching out to God can become an idol. Trying not to have idols could become an idol. 

Do you catch my drift here? God is the undefinable container in which all of the universe, all that we know, has its being. Each of us lives and moves and has our being in God, whether we acknowledge this or not. “Bidden or unbidden God is present with us.” This wisdom saying is usually attributed to Carl Jung, yet he found it in the ancient Latin writings of a Desiderius Erasmus who attributed it to an even older Spartan (Greek) proverb.  Paul proclaims this unknown, yet ever-present God as not just a beneficent creator, but a fierce lover of humankind, so fierce that God defeated death itself in the risen Christ. Paul proclaims that this God, “I AM,” who raised the man, Jesus, from the dead, was Lord of all, not Caesar or the empire. This unknown God is not an inanimate idol made by human hands or human will, but a living presence.  

Who is the God that we proclaim? Who is the ONE that we seek before any of the idols in our lives? Is it the God of relationship, ever-present, fiercely loving, and always seeking us, revealed in Jesus the Christ? Our biblical and theological heritage speaks of this God as “he”. Yet we know that God is neither male nor female, God is ALL, God is ONE. God answers to Father, to Mother, to Beloved, to Holy Mystery, to Gracious Bearer of Light, to Challenger of Our Lives, to Comforter of Our Souls’. 
During our time, as we live and move and have our being in this God in the midst of pandemic, in the midst of intense political strife, in the midst of extreme economic uncertainty and divisive polarized rhetoric of our day, may we put aside the idols that tempt us when we are fearful, that distract us in our grief. May we turn our hearts, our ears, our minds, our full attention to the ONE who is ever-present, who grieves with us, who rejoices in our presence and in our joys. The ONE who has conquered the power of death and brings us gifts of grace, mercy, hope and forgiveness as we seek to be in relationship with one another and with God. May we take the time during these tumultuous times to still ourselves that we may know again and again the “unknown” living God in whom we live and move and have our being.

Amen.

©The Reverend Jane Anne Ferguson, 2020 and beyond. May be reprinted with permission only.