We are incurably religious! Wherever you go, you will find that people are religious. We are groping for something we never quite find.
Ride with me up and down Sixteenth Street, here in the city, or out New Hampshire Avenue, past Colesville. The architecture is ample proof that people are incurably religious. Temples, churches, and mosques; Asian, European, and African; speaking Greek, Russian, Syrian, Serbo-Croatian, Arabic, Khmer; accenting their English a dozen different ways. From all over the world there is evidence that people are incurably religious. We are groping for something we never quite find.
Tune in to the TV set with me. One channel offers everything from Gregorian chants to faith healers to political activists. Switch over to Nifty Fifty and watch Dionne Warwick peddle her psychic hot-line. Try a little farther around the dial, and the home shopping channel is pushing new age crystals. Do you agree with me? We are incurably religious.
Wherever you go, people are religious. We are groping for something we never quite find.
I need not mention the bookstores, where it is not only the Bible which is a hot seller, but also self-help books, books about angels, books about life after death, speculation and guesswork galore. And all of it surrounded by a glittering array of goods, from Jesus T-shirts to Holy Spirit bumper stickers to "God is the greatest" buttons for your lapel. Don’t tell me we aren’t a religious people. We are.
But we are groping for something we have not yet found. And we will look almost anywhere, trying to find God. A number of years ago there was a man who was, during his lifetime, both adored and hated, both imitated and feared. He died much too early, a tragic death, and was laid to rest by his followers. They loved him, they cherished his memory, and before long some of them spread the word that he had come back to life. And to this day, because they truly believe that he lives, they worship him.
Do you know who I’m talking about? I’m speaking about Jesus Christ, right? I’m talking about the one whose life and death and resurrection we celebrate, Jesus, right? Jesus Christ? Wrong! Not! No, I’m talking about Elvis. As in Presley. Believe it or not, there are at least 200 people who belong now to something called the First Presleyterian Church of Elvis the Divine. They make annual pilgrimages to Graceland, they sell Elvis T-shirts and publish the New Testament of Elvis. They speak of the day, not far off, when Elvis will return in his pink Cadillac and reward his followers!
Oh, I tell you, we are an incurably religious people. Wherever you go, we keep on groping after God. And never quite find Him.
One of the reasons we never quite find God is that He is ultimate mystery. God is beyond our understanding. Every time we attempt to capture Him in our words, we fail. Every time we think we have packaged God in our ideas, we find that something doesn’t work.
Just think of a few of the puzzles you and I deal with:
· Is God one or three? Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. One in three, three in one. What exactly does that mean and how can anybody explain it? Mystery.
· Who made God and when did God start? That’s what the kids in the after-school program keep asking me. They’re not satisfied with my response that God always has been and always will be. They want to know how old God is? That’s a mystery.
· If God created this vast universe, with its millions of stars just like our sun, then are we alone in the universe? Could there be other planets like ours, filled with living beings? And, if so, are they too made in the image and likeness of God, free and capable of sinning? And again, if so, has God sent them a Savior? Has God acted to redeem them too? Maybe someday we will invent instruments capable of looking at the vast distances out there, but until that time, all those questions are mysteries too.
· And the problem of evil, the fact that absurd and terrible things happen, for which there seem to be no explanation. I stand at the grave of a young person, an innocent bystander, the victim of a hoodlum’s bullet, and I ask why? There seems to be no answer. The playwright complained very pointedly, "If God is God He is not good; if God is good He is not God." I don’t stand there; I think I know a little more than that. But I do understand the complaint. It lies in the mystery of God.
Friends, on this Sunday, devoted to celebrating the fullness of God as the Trinity, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we just have to stand in awe before Him and see that for all we know, there is much more that we do not know. For all that we understand, there is much more that we will never understand. God is ultimate mystery.
Does that mean, then, that we are no better off than anybody else? Does that mean that we don’t really know any more than the Muslim or the Buddhist, that we don’t have any better leg to stand on than the philosopher or the agnostic? Does that mean that Timothy Leary, who gave us the "tune in, turn on, drop out" generation, and who insisted that experimenting with LSD would give us spiritual experiences ... does that mean that as Timothy Leary came to his death this week, that he just might finally find what all of us are groping for?
Ancient Athens was amazingly like us. Astounding how the more things change, the more they remain the same. The apostle Paul went to Athens, the cultural center, the intellectual capital of the ancient world, and saw what was going on.
I
First, he noticed that the city was very religious, and it distressed him. Paul discovered how thoroughly religious the people of Athens were, and it troubled him. Our text reads, "While Paul was … in Athens, he was deeply distressed to see that the city was full of idols ... He said, ’Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in very way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, "To an unknown god."’"
Paul was distressed because just being religious is not the same thing as having the truth. Just being spiritual is not the same thing as perceiving God for who He really is. Everything which gropes for God and falls short is an idolatry. It is an idolatry.
Now I am aware that there are plenty of perfectly nice people who are spiritual, groping after God, but they are not Christians. There are plenty of genial, wonderful, enjoyable, friendly people who are Jews or Muslims or Buddhists, but they are not Christians. Does that matter?
There are plenty of people who give themselves to good causes, who raise money for charity, who tend to the sick and feed the poor, and who may even know that they are searching for God; but they are not Christians. Does that matter?
Every one of us knows people who are honest, law-abiding, hard-working; who would give the shirt off their backs to help others, who care passionately about some social issues. I will agree that they are groping after God. But they do not name the name of Christ. So what?
I believe that it does matter. I believe that it does make a difference. I must stand in this pulpit and proclaim that there is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we may be saved. All the things we do to grasp for meaning and to grope after God, as fine as they are, still fall short of truth. They still fall short of discerning the mystery of who God is. They are idolatries. And we need to feel some of the same distress that Paul felt when we look at this.
No, I do not believe that all religions are equivalent. I do not believe that it’s just being sincere that counts. I do not believe that simply being spiritual is enough. That just puts us in the same predicament the ancient Athenians were in ... very religious …but it’s idolatry.
It ought to make us distressed that so many are so far from groping the truth. Theirs is an unknown god.
II
But now notice also that a part of our problem is that we so easily get muddled and confused in our search for God. Notice that instead of pursuing our thirst for God, we go off into the dry deserts of religion. We substitute knowing a little about religion for knowing God well.
Paul in Athens found himself quickly in the thick of debate. Those who propounded popular philosophies were right there to question him. The Epicureans and the Stoics; well, today it would be the secularists and the new agers, the folks who believe that we just eat and drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die; or the folks who give themselves to exotic rituals and big deal extravaganzas and who follow the latest hot preacher! We love to discuss and debate religion! But that is not the same as knowing God personally.
How intriguing this passage is, and what it reveals about human nature! It says that they tried to figure out this preacher, and concluded that he had brought in a couple of foreign gods named Jesus and Anastasis. Now you and I know that what Paul said was that he wanted to tell them about Jesus and his resurrection. The word for resurrection in Greek is anastasis; but they thought it was somebody’s name. Oh, how nice, he’s taking about a boy god and a girl god, Jesus and Anastasis. What were they doing? They took a tiny scrap of religion and ran with it! They drew conclusions on just a little smidgen of information, but they didn’t stay around to get it right!
And isn’t this a telling verse? "Now all the Athenians and the foreigners living there would spend their time in nothing but telling or hearing something new." Tidbits and tales, spicy stories and meaningless myths, that was their life. Talking religion. Running with scraps and half-baked notions. It was a way of avoiding confronting the real thing. It was a way of avoiding dealing with the mystery. It was groping after God but never finding Him.
Oh, you and I are subject to the same temptation. How much easier it is to talk religion than to speak of Christ Himself! How much more fun it is to argue about whose church is better and whose choir is more dynamic and whose preacher goes off or will let you out with the shortest sermons! How much more fun it is to discuss these things than to get right down to the issue of what is your relationship to Jesus Christ!
The world has only the vaguest sort of idea what the Christian faith is all about ... and even less of an idea who Jesus Christ is. The times cry out for Pauls who know the faith and can communicate it. I tell you, we live in an Athens of educated, sophisticated, spiritually groping people. If you go out there and talk religion with them, dabbling in all the peripheral stuff, you will leave them more confused than ever. If you offer up half-baked ideas, you will leave them thinking they may be on to something, when really they are grasping at straws. If you do not know at least something of the awesome mystery that is Christ, you will suggest to them that any old belief will do, any old superstition will suffice, any old way of life will be good enough. And that won’t wash. That just won’t wash.
Christians, learn your faith. Grasp as much of it as you can. Examine the Scriptures. Focus on Bible study. Get yourselves in gear to get here for Sunday School and Wednesday night and Thursday night and the other things we provide. When men and women are groping after God, you cannot afford to have nothing more to give them than hazy, hot, and humid!
We are incurably religious. Part of our problem is that we are muddled, confused, and lazy. We have not paid the price in discipline to know what we can know about who God really is. Even for too many Christians, God remains an unknown god.
III
Nonetheless, today I simply want to encourage you to share what you do know. My heart’s desire is for each person here, whether you are theologically literate or not, whether you know the Bible from cover to cover and covers included ... my heart’s desire is for you to share what you do know. To share the Christ you know personally.
It matters. It matters because not knowing Christ has consequences. Grave consequences. Listen, "While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man who he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead." That seems pretty important to me! I will not take the time today to spell it out; but I tell you we cannot escape this side of the Christian faith: to reject Christ is to face judgment. Consequences. We call it hell. It’s not our favorite subject, is it? But it’s there.
I ask you to share Christ with others, to share what you do know. For you see, we’ve been going at this the wrong way. We’ve been talking about groping for God. But the truth is that God is out there reaching for us. We don’t find God; God finds us!
In the end, it’s not how much information you have, but what kind of relationship you have with Christ. That’s what you have to share. This world that gropes after God is not looking just for facts and figures about religion. They are looking for a relationship with the living God. If you have that, you have something to share. You have something to teach.
What do you know? And what can you teach? How can you tell them about this unknown God? Oh, there are a lot of things you could say.
Well, you could say that God is like Coke, He’s the real thing. You could say that God is like Hertz, He’s number one. Maybe say that God is like Delta Airlines, he’s ready when you are, and then that God is like Allstate, you’re in good hands with Him.
More than that, you might say that God is like the Energizer rabbit, He just keeps going and going. Or you might contend that God is like E. F. Hutton, when He speaks everybody listens.
But I would say even more. I would say that God is like Visa, everywhere you want to be. And most of all, that God is like Hallmark Cards, He cares enough to send the very best.
An unknown God? Not at all. Mystery, yes. A God we grope after? Yes, but better, a God who finds us.
Oh, you may not preach like Peter, and you may not pray like Paul. But your God is not unknown. You can tell the love of Jesus and say he died for all.
This I proclaim to you: Jesus Christ, raised from the dead. Jesus Christ, right here with us, filling us with His love. Jesus Christ, at this table, body broken, blood spilled out. Jesus Christ, way, truth, and life. That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
