Sixth Sunday after Easter (A)

May 5, 2002

Groping After God

Acts 17, 22-21

Through the ages, people have invested great amounts of energy in trying to prove, or disprove, the existence of God. Paul seems to understand that this is really not the most important question. We all live in some kind of a relationship with that which is beyond us. Whether or not we know it, whether or not we know or choose to call that to which we are related "God," we all live in some kind of a basic relationship that amounts to a relationship with God. The really important question is, "What is God like?" The answer we discover, or choose, for that question will shape our lives.

It would be hard to over estimate the importance of Athens as an intellectual and cultural center in the ancient world. Its influence is still with us. But when Paul spoke to the sophisticated intellectual leaders of the city, he started with the assumption that they were already "very religious people." Picture him standing before a gathering of philosophers on an open terrace somewhere on the slopes of Mars Hill, with the Acropolis, the Parthenon, and the cluster of other shrines, above them and the market place and the seaport below. He began by referring to the shrine dedicated to an unknown God. Then he told them about the God who was made known through Jesus Christ.

I. Do you know yourself as one who lives in a relationship with God?

Quite honestly, some will answer, "No." If we look for the near end of a relationship with a God who is a particular separate person who lives in heaven, some of us will have to say that we have no real experience of that.

But look rather at that bigger relationship, that most basic of all relationships that is your relationship with life. Look at those experiences that you are referring to when you say things like: "Life has been good to me" or "Life can be tough." Can you visualize God as one who is present and interacting with you everywhere that life touches you, either from without or from within? Can you visualize God as that greater reality "... in whom we live and move and have our being?"

II. If you have a consciousness of God, do you know what God is like?

Again, some will answer, "No." Even some, who are familiar with the Christian teachings about God may never have thought of those teachings as having to do with that awesome greater reality that we bump up against every day in life.

Some of us experience God as a mysterious other, like a presence we are aware of in the darkness -- or maybe like one with whom we are dancing or wrestling -- in the darkness, one whose actions impact our lives but whose face we cannot see.

Many of us do indeed "grope after God" in the hope of finding Him and knowing Him.

III. Paul tells us that God can be known through Jesus Christ.

Realizing who God is will immediately require us to enlarge our concept of God. We can no longer think of God in terms of the little images we have created in our own likeness to justify certain things about ourselves or as a manageable little genie whom we can bribe through our practices of piety to make him do what we want done.