An Open Table where Love knows no borders

Christ, the unknown God

A sermon on Acts 17:22-31 & John 14:15-21 by Nathan Nettleton

Last Sunday, I preached on the claim by Jesus to be the way, the truth, and the life. I argued that it should not be heard as attempting to answer our questions about what to make of other religions. I hadn’t noticed, at the time, that this week’s readings would toss up some material that was dealing with other religions. So having made such a big deal about not addressing that question last week, I’m feeling obligated to face up to it this week.

The passage that deals with the question fairly directly is the one we heard from the Acts of the Apostles. Paul is in Athens, sometime before Greek Orthodox Christianity became the dominant religion there. As he wanders around the city, he finds evidence of religious devotion everywhere; devotion to all kinds of different gods and all kinds of different faiths. He concludes that the people of Athens are a very religiously minded people. As if to confirm that impression, he is invited to meet with the Areopagus, a council of the most respected and distinguished thinkers in the city, and to explain to them what his faith is all about.

His speech to the Areopagus would, I think, have got the thumbs up from the Apostle Peter, because in the extract we heard from his letter, he said that when we are given the opportunity to speak about our faith, we should do so readily and with gentleness and respect. Gentleness and respect may not be the words that immediately jump to mind when you think of the Apostle Paul, but it would be hard to fault him on this occasion. He begins by affirming the Athenians for their keen interest in religion. He quotes approvingly from two of their own respected poets. And far from telling them that their religions are all rubbish, he links his message directly to things he has observed in their own religious practice. He had found a shrine in the city dedicated to “the unknown god”, and so he begins by suggesting that the faith he is there to preach is not something strange and new, but rather it is the missing knowledge of a faith that is already within their experience.

Now that raises a question. Is this just a slick bit of marketing on Paul’s part? Or is he actually speaking with integrity about some deep truths concerning the nature of God? Well, although I think the advertising industry would have been proud of the angle he took, I think we have to conclude that he meant what he said. The quote he uses from the Greek poet Epimenides is particularly instructive. “In God we live and move and have our being.” In using that quote, Paul is saying that no one, regardless of what they might or might not believe, is entirely cut off from God and removed from the influence of God. To live, to move, to be; all is surrounded by God and underpinned by God. A person’s ability to walk across the room is as dependent on God as it is dependent on the oxygen that they breathe. Indeed Paul specifically says that although God wants to be sought out by us, God is not far from anyone and is within reach of everyone.

So it would appear that Paul is recognising that the religious endeavours of people of other faiths are genuine attempts to reach out to God. And it would also appear that he is saying that God does not refuse their advances and insist that they get their doctrines spot on before having anything to do with them. In fact Paul goes so far as to say that God has tolerated idolatry among people who knew of no alternative. But, says Paul, once you are aware of the alternatives, God does call you to make a choice to get your life on God’s track. This does, I think, tally with what we heard Jesus say in the gospel reading when he made the rather exclusive sounding statement that the world cannot receive the Holy Spirit, because it neither sees or knows the Spirit, but that the disciples can and do. It seems that both are saying that there is something confronting about the gospel made known in Christ, something that demands a tough choice, something that does not simply allow people to add a bit of Christian faith to their lives and leave everything else unchanged. The demands of Christian discipleship will not be domesticated to fit “the world”. There comes a point in understanding when you are forced to choose one or the other. You can’t have both.

So in Paul’s speech, we find what looks like a mix of affirmation of other people’s religious faith and a challenge to go beyond it and find something more. So where does that leave us in our view of other religions. Well, if you hoped after my introduction I’d offer an opinion on whether people can be saved through other religions, I’m going to have to disappoint you. I don’t think this passage offers an answer to that question either. But it does offer a stinging critique of much of the way Christians have treated people of other faiths, and it does challenge us to avoid any thoughts that we might have a monopoly on insight and experience of God.

Paul’s speech is clearly asserting that there are people who do not know anything about Christ who are nevertheless reaching out for God and responding to God. And he also clearly implies that we cannot, so to speak, “take” Christ to them, because Christ is already among them. In God they live and move and have their being. This should come as no great surprise to us. We believe in a God who takes the initiative and comes to us while we are still set on our own ways and unwilling to change. We believe in a God who takes flesh among us, who embodied himself in places where he may not be welcomed. We believe in a God who is present in ordinary things, in bread and wine and water, reaching out to us and asking us to offer ourselves in return. So it should be no great surprise to us that this God who is not far from anyone is present among people of other faiths, reaching out to them in the ordinary things around them. And so we would be horribly out of line if we were to barge in and begin denouncing other faiths and asserting the claims of our own without listening first and learning what Christ has been doing among them.

To me, there seems no obvious reason why people who are genuinely seeking God might not discern enough of God’s response to turn their lives around and entrust themselves to God and so be accepted as God’s people. I don’t think the Bible either tells us that or rules it out. But what I am sure is that all of us — those who know the story of Christ and those who don’t — will come closer to the truth and to understanding what God is calling us to as we listen to one another and allow one another’s stories of grace to reveal God to us and challenge us to offer ourselves more fully into the hands of God. And as I said last week, I don’t think we need cringe uncomfortably in that, listening respectfully but never speaking up. We have much to learn and much to offer.

For us it begins here, encountering the risen Christ in the word spoken and the bread broken, and as we do we learn to recognise him in places ever more strange and foreign. Henri Nouwen said that “when we have met our Lord in the silent intimacy of our prayer, then we will also meet him in the camp, in the market, and in the town square. But when we have not met him in the centre of our own hearts, we cannot expect to meet him in the busyness of our daily lives.” So as we encounter the Christ here, let us go out ready to acknowledge and celebrate the Christ wherever and in whoever we encounter him, and to allow that recognition to call us and others to offer ourselves, ever more fully and consciously, into the hands of God.

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