Readings (RCL): Acts 17:22-31, Psalm 66:7-18, 1 Peter 3:13-22, John 14:15-21
I have thinking a lot this week about certainty – how we are, or at least seem to be, certain about some things and uncertain about others. And I have been thinking about certainty through the lens of today’s fascinating reading from the book of Acts.
Here is Paul in Athens, Greece, one of the greatest, if not the great city of the West, rising from the city-states of ancient Greece in the six hundred years before Christ. Athens was the birthplace of many of the disciplines that undergird our civilization: democracy, philosophy, and literature. Athens gave us thinkers like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle as well Herodotus, the “father of history,” and playwrights such as Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles. Unlike many outposts of human civilization where mere survival was considered an accomplishment, in Athens people would gather to debate public policy, watch the first plays, or simply to discuss truth. Pericles, an Athenian in the fifth century B.C., once remarked, “our whole city is an education, for our citizens excel all … in versatility, resourcefulness, and brilliance.” What a humble guy!
Now one would think such “brilliant,” people would have quite literally everything figured out. From the ordering of the natural world to the best way to organize human civilization to the very nature of God, one would have to assume that such an accomplished society would have been certain that they knew all there was to know about the universe. But maybe … just maybe, maybe Athenians were not so certain. For today we read in Acts about our friend Paul, a learned man in his own right, a Pharisee, a Roman citizen, and most importantly an enthusiastic disciple of Christ, who arrives in Athens to preach the Good News of Jesus. And in Athens Paul finds the temple to the Agnostos Theos, the temple of the Unknown God. How bizarre – a temple to an unknown God. Must have been a real challenge to decorate.
Athenians were pagans, worshiping primarily the twelve Olympians: Zeus, Athena, Poseidon, Aphrodite, etc. But there was also this thirteenth god they would worship, the Unknown God. The ultimate covering of one’s spiritual posterior in my opinion, Athenians worshiped this unknown God to ensure that they were right with whoever was actually running the show just in case their gods turned out to be false. So, in light of this admission of unknowing, we can assume that, despite all of their accomplishment, despite all their work in government and philosophy and art, despite the level of certainty about the universe that seemed apparent from the outside looking in, the Athenians, with this nod to an unknown god, revealed themselves to actually be as uncertain as the rest of the world.
Perhaps this was a sign of great wisdom: a personification of the old adage that the first step towards wisdom is admitting you know nothing. Or perhaps this was a deeper psychological and spiritual disclosure that despite grand buildings and mental gymnastics, the people of Athens were still as uncertain about life as the next person.
So, in light of the quote-unquote unknown god (and being a history major – thank you for your indulgence), I have been thinking about certainty and uncertainty this week. We love to be certain. We need to be certain. This goes here, that goes there, this means this, that means that, she is good, and he is evil. All organized, all in their collective boxes, everything in their modern, understandable place. But, if we are honest with ourselves and risk being a bit vulnerable, we must admit that all a façade for there is much to be uncertain about as well. We go into the doctor’s examination room and wonder if it will be a good number or a bad number. The phone rings at an odd hour and we wonder if it will be a good news or bad news. We look at the newspaper each morning and wonder if today will finally be the day when it all falls apart.
In my own life there have been many such rivulets of uncertainty. But one of the most difficult and dramatic for me was living through the Beltway Sniper. In October 2002, during my last year in seminary and Ellen and my first year of marriage, the D.C. area was engulfed in terror as two men, John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, shot and killed ten people in a series of meaningless attacks. They would pull up somewhere in a jerry-rigged car with a hole in the trunk to aim and shoot their gun and just pick off someone at random. Average folks, folks like you and me, would be going about their day – filling the car with gas, shopping, going to school or work – and bang, the sniper would strike. One of the victims was shot in the parking lot of a Home Depot less than a mile from my apartment and only one day after Ellen and I had been there ourselves. And so everything became uncertain and the daily occupations of life strangely morphed. When you filled up your car with gas, you would duck down behind the car or go into the station while the tank was filling. When kids went to school, recess, sports, and all after-school activities were cancelled because the schools were in lockdown. At night we would huddle in front of our televisions watching the police chase after the mythic white fan supposed to be the snipers vehicle – in the end it turned out to be a maroon Chevy. Even the simple act of walking between the parking lot and Ellen and my apartment became an act of fear. For instead of just strolling from the car to our building – and this sounds so silly to describe in retrospect – we would, under the advice of the local authorities, we would run in a zigzag pattern from one place to an other. Life was so insane, it is hard to describe the atmosphere in the community. After three long weeks, the two killers were eventually captured while sleeping in their car at a rest stop and they have been since tried and sentenced by the State. But I still shutter at the thought of those horrible days.
We all live in uncertainty. Whether we are Washingtonians or Athenians or Gastonians, going about a normal day or living through an extraordinary time, if we truly stop and are honest with ourselves, we must admit that there is little in life of which to be certain.
Well, except for one thing – one miraculous, glorious, wonderful thing. And that is the love of God. In today’s Gospel, Jesus says, “[T]he Father … will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth … You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you. I will not leave you orphaned … In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live.” Jesus tells us today that despite all of our uncertainty, no matter what life may throw at us, in the face of all of our fears and grief, conscious and subconscious, God is with us and God will never abandon us. God’s love for us is certain and real and present, now and forever. We may or may not be as smart or accomplished or worldly as those Athenian’s that Paul preached to 2,000 years ago, but whatever we might build for ourselves is nothing compared to the love of God. And we may be in the grip of a fear or circumstance unlike anything you have experienced before, but God will not leave our side or stop supporting us.
I am not advocating a rejection of the world – far from it for I believe that God wants us as Christians to be in the world, even in its most strange and scary places. But God also wants us to, when all seems lost and all that we rely on in the earthy existence falls short, God wants us to remember that nothing that we create and nothing that fate ordains will ever have the longevity, the sustainability, and the comfort that God’s love can provide. For our God is not an Unknown God as the Athenians and many others may have known him. But our God is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit – the one God that, in Paul’s words, “made the world and everything in it,” and the God who unconditionally loves you and me.
And with God all is certain. AMEN.
