You're not gonna believe this
Acts 17: 22-31
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
May 17, 2020
I’ve used this before but I think some stuff in the Bible might make more sense if it began this way. What’s the difference between a story from north of the Mason-Dixon Line and a story from south of the Mason-Dixon Line? The northern story starts with “Once upon a time”. The southern story begins with “Y’all ain’t gonna believe this…”
All good stories ask us to put aside what we think we know but so does hope in the face of despairing circumstances. When we are confronted with the stubborn resistance to wear a mask, with news stories of angry and armed shoppers, people of color killed because it doesn’t matter what they’re doing, the continued genocide of Native peoples, hope asks us to put aside our fear; courage asks us to put aside our despair; grief asks us to not normalize pain; justice requires we give up the mythology of ‘I don’t see color’.
And yet in our human story we persist with capitalism that demands we put aside the value and worth of every human being. Our economic system has convinced us wealth is earned and poverty is deserved; that it’s impossible to erase debt; that civilization can’t exist without money. We say we’re all in this together and yet communities of color, poor people, prison and nursing home populations, and the most vulnerable among us continue to suffer the worst of this pandemic.
There are always gaps, empty spaces between what we know, what we think we know, what we believe, what we don’t know, and how we live our lives. To one degree or another, we’re all hypocrites, we’re all heretics, we’re all cult followers. We’d love to experience the inner peace that comes from being free of conflict and judging and worry but in truth most of us have too much self-interest invested in the way things are. And so we fill those gaps with religion and idols of all sorts and our egos and science because the painful loneliness of that empty space is often hard to bear.
According to the story in the book of Acts the Greeks of the 1st century in Athens attempted to fill that gap not only with many idols and religious devotion and new learning but also with a shrine housing an altar inscribed with the words “To an unknown god”. Or as Eugene Peterson paraphrased it, “To the god nobody knows”. They certainly have more of an open mind than some other places Paul has preached. “Y’all ain’t gonna believe this.”
He’s been preaching in Thessalonica, then Berea, and now Athens. He hasn’t exactly had an enthusiastic following as yet; he stirred up such emotion and passion in the synagogues he visited that mobs threw him out of town. Yet in Athens things are different. They are keen to hear or tell of something new. Paul debates with Epicurean and Stoic philosophers. These Athenians seem to know little of the history of Abraham and Sarah and their descendants, of God’s covenant with the Hebrew people. The Jews were not known for their evangelism—Peter, Paul, and the rest of the apostles are the first. But people gather to listen nonetheless, to hear this new teaching. “Y’all ain’t gonna believe this.”
They bring Paul to the Areopagus, or Ares Rock, Mars Hill, which was also the name of the high court in Athens, so it’s not clear whether they’ve brought him to a large outcropping of rock or to a court of elders to be judged. Either way, Paul gives the sermon of a lifetime. He had noticed all the idols in the city and being the good Jew that he is, he was deeply distressed—the Ten Commandments forbid idols and the worship of them. And yet when he speaks to the people, he compliments them on how religious they are. The shrine dedicated to an unknown god gives Paul the perfect opening to talk about the God he knows, the One who made heaven and earth, who gives life and breath to all living things, who cannot be contained by gold or silver or stone or by anything made by human hands.
Paul starts off with mystery and poetry—God is not far from us; in God we live and move and have our being—but he ends his sermon with some very specific claims, namely a day of repentance for all people to be judged by one risen from the dead, and I think we know who that is. Paul cannot help but preach the one who raised him from the grave of oppression, who healed him of his blind hate, who showed him a more excellent way.
In Deuteronomy there is a verse that says “Now Israel, what does the Lord ask of you? To walk in His ways…and serve Him.” The Hebrew word for “what” sounds similar to the Hebrew word for “100”. How would our experience of sheltering in place be altered if we recited 100 blessings a day?
Jesus also used midrash when he told the parable of the Good Samaritan after someone asked him “Who is my neighbor?” “Y’all ain’t gonna believe this but your neighbor is the person you least want to live with and is more merciful than you are”.
Another way to decrease this gap, this empty space is what the Jewish tradition calls tikkun olam: repairing the world. We do this when we give, when we serve, when we allow ourselves to feel the empty space between we who have much and those who don’t have enough and we do something about it. The empty space is less lonely, less painful when we live by the truth that I am because we are, that my well-being is dependent on the well-being of others.
Y’all ain’t gonna believe this but at the same time we can also allow that empty space to just be. We can still strive for knowledge. We can continue to make scientific discoveries. We can still and must find solutions to our problems. We can help repair the world. We can pray in our own way, immerse ourselves in ritual and story and tradition. But let us never confuse any of what we know or believe for the only truth, the only way, that there is only one god or even any god in that gap.
There is still so much we don’t know, so much out of our control. And yet what a miraculous marvelous mystery we find ourselves in, full of beauty and terror, wonder and pain, ache and longing and fulfillment, the miracle being that any of us are here and that we have found each other. Thus, anything is possible.
From the opening scene of episode 7 of season 9 of “Call the Midwife”:
“There are times when all we can do is our best. We’re tested. We’re challenged. We must have faith. We must do our utmost. We must trust in those around us. We must trust ourselves. We have to say ‘I can do this!’ We have to believe it too. Belief is the beginning of all things.”
Y’all ain’t gonna believe this but the story, our story, the Jesus story, the resurrection story, the human story isn’t over yet. The story is made by living it, all of us together.
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
May 17, 2020
I’ve used this before but I think some stuff in the Bible might make more sense if it began this way. What’s the difference between a story from north of the Mason-Dixon Line and a story from south of the Mason-Dixon Line? The northern story starts with “Once upon a time”. The southern story begins with “Y’all ain’t gonna believe this…”
All good stories ask us to put aside what we think we know but so does hope in the face of despairing circumstances. When we are confronted with the stubborn resistance to wear a mask, with news stories of angry and armed shoppers, people of color killed because it doesn’t matter what they’re doing, the continued genocide of Native peoples, hope asks us to put aside our fear; courage asks us to put aside our despair; grief asks us to not normalize pain; justice requires we give up the mythology of ‘I don’t see color’.
And yet in our human story we persist with capitalism that demands we put aside the value and worth of every human being. Our economic system has convinced us wealth is earned and poverty is deserved; that it’s impossible to erase debt; that civilization can’t exist without money. We say we’re all in this together and yet communities of color, poor people, prison and nursing home populations, and the most vulnerable among us continue to suffer the worst of this pandemic.
According to the story in the book of Acts the Greeks of the 1st century in Athens attempted to fill that gap not only with many idols and religious devotion and new learning but also with a shrine housing an altar inscribed with the words “To an unknown god”. Or as Eugene Peterson paraphrased it, “To the god nobody knows”. They certainly have more of an open mind than some other places Paul has preached. “Y’all ain’t gonna believe this.”
 |
| Paul Preaches in Athens |
He’s been preaching in Thessalonica, then Berea, and now Athens. He hasn’t exactly had an enthusiastic following as yet; he stirred up such emotion and passion in the synagogues he visited that mobs threw him out of town. Yet in Athens things are different. They are keen to hear or tell of something new. Paul debates with Epicurean and Stoic philosophers. These Athenians seem to know little of the history of Abraham and Sarah and their descendants, of God’s covenant with the Hebrew people. The Jews were not known for their evangelism—Peter, Paul, and the rest of the apostles are the first. But people gather to listen nonetheless, to hear this new teaching. “Y’all ain’t gonna believe this.”
 |
| Mars Hill (foreground) and the Acropolis |
They bring Paul to the Areopagus, or Ares Rock, Mars Hill, which was also the name of the high court in Athens, so it’s not clear whether they’ve brought him to a large outcropping of rock or to a court of elders to be judged. Either way, Paul gives the sermon of a lifetime. He had noticed all the idols in the city and being the good Jew that he is, he was deeply distressed—the Ten Commandments forbid idols and the worship of them. And yet when he speaks to the people, he compliments them on how religious they are. The shrine dedicated to an unknown god gives Paul the perfect opening to talk about the God he knows, the One who made heaven and earth, who gives life and breath to all living things, who cannot be contained by gold or silver or stone or by anything made by human hands.
Paul starts off with mystery and poetry—God is not far from us; in God we live and move and have our being—but he ends his sermon with some very specific claims, namely a day of repentance for all people to be judged by one risen from the dead, and I think we know who that is. Paul cannot help but preach the one who raised him from the grave of oppression, who healed him of his blind hate, who showed him a more excellent way.
None of us can resist filling in that gap, inhabiting that empty space with what we know, what we believe, what we’re passionate about, what we think. It’s not easy admitting that sometimes “I don’t know” is all we have. “I don’t know” reminds us how little control we actually have, that so much is out of our hands. The danger of filling that space with only our answer is that we can end up colonizing that empty space, declaring it as our own, making exclusive claims, leaving no room for other possibilities. Or we fill that space with entertainment and play and possessions or something that will numb us to that painful loneliness of what we don’t know and can’t control. Or we fill it with violence and anger and aggression—anything to help us feel like we know what we’re doing. Especially now when we are in the midst of one of the worst of spaces—between the comfortable, familiar what was and the terrible, unknowable what could be.
Most of the time, though, I think what we really want is to make a difference, to leave this world better than when we entered it, to add to our body of knowledge, to decrease that gap between what we know and what is yet to be known. One of the best ways we do this is with stories that point us toward what is true. The Jewish tradition does this with Midrash—when there are gaps in the faith narrative, that is, what isn’t said, what we don’t hear outright, biblical commentary takes the form of a story or parable. Midrash tells the story of a pandemic during the reign of King David in which 100 people died per day. David said that he perceived the root of the illness and decreed that everyone should recite 100 blessings a day.
Most of the time, though, I think what we really want is to make a difference, to leave this world better than when we entered it, to add to our body of knowledge, to decrease that gap between what we know and what is yet to be known. One of the best ways we do this is with stories that point us toward what is true. The Jewish tradition does this with Midrash—when there are gaps in the faith narrative, that is, what isn’t said, what we don’t hear outright, biblical commentary takes the form of a story or parable. Midrash tells the story of a pandemic during the reign of King David in which 100 people died per day. David said that he perceived the root of the illness and decreed that everyone should recite 100 blessings a day.
In Deuteronomy there is a verse that says “Now Israel, what does the Lord ask of you? To walk in His ways…and serve Him.” The Hebrew word for “what” sounds similar to the Hebrew word for “100”. How would our experience of sheltering in place be altered if we recited 100 blessings a day?
Jesus also used midrash when he told the parable of the Good Samaritan after someone asked him “Who is my neighbor?” “Y’all ain’t gonna believe this but your neighbor is the person you least want to live with and is more merciful than you are”.
Another way to decrease this gap, this empty space is what the Jewish tradition calls tikkun olam: repairing the world. We do this when we give, when we serve, when we allow ourselves to feel the empty space between we who have much and those who don’t have enough and we do something about it. The empty space is less lonely, less painful when we live by the truth that I am because we are, that my well-being is dependent on the well-being of others.
Y’all ain’t gonna believe this but at the same time we can also allow that empty space to just be. We can still strive for knowledge. We can continue to make scientific discoveries. We can still and must find solutions to our problems. We can help repair the world. We can pray in our own way, immerse ourselves in ritual and story and tradition. But let us never confuse any of what we know or believe for the only truth, the only way, that there is only one god or even any god in that gap.
There is still so much we don’t know, so much out of our control. And yet what a miraculous marvelous mystery we find ourselves in, full of beauty and terror, wonder and pain, ache and longing and fulfillment, the miracle being that any of us are here and that we have found each other. Thus, anything is possible.
From the opening scene of episode 7 of season 9 of “Call the Midwife”:
“There are times when all we can do is our best. We’re tested. We’re challenged. We must have faith. We must do our utmost. We must trust in those around us. We must trust ourselves. We have to say ‘I can do this!’ We have to believe it too. Belief is the beginning of all things.”
Y’all ain’t gonna believe this but the story, our story, the Jesus story, the resurrection story, the human story isn’t over yet. The story is made by living it, all of us together.
Amen.
Benediction – enfleshed.com
In knowledge of Love’s abiding presence,
let us move into the rest of this day
with a well of tenderness for ourselves,
with generous patience towards all who are struggling,
and with renewed loyalty to only the things which further life
for all our neighbors, our kin, our family in shared humanity.
For God is close to each of us,
and so our hope is always near.
Go in peace.
Benediction – enfleshed.com
In knowledge of Love’s abiding presence,
let us move into the rest of this day
with a well of tenderness for ourselves,
with generous patience towards all who are struggling,
and with renewed loyalty to only the things which further life
for all our neighbors, our kin, our family in shared humanity.
For God is close to each of us,
and so our hope is always near.
Go in peace.
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