Karen Hollis | May 14, 2023
6th Sunday of Easter
God of Many Names
Acts 17:22-31 Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every 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.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we too are his offspring.’ Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. 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 whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”
John 14:15-21 ”If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you. ”I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be reflections of your word to us today, in Christ’s name we pray. Amen
This summer I will be doing a preaching series on the values the congregation identified during the visioning process last year. The values begin of course with spirituality. So I thought, before we talk about that, it would be helpful to first explore the question: who is God? We do this implicitly each week and I think it’s helpful to once in a while step back and reflect on what we’re talking about when we talk about God.
Theologian Marcus Borg introduces the term Panentheism in his book: The God We Never Knew. This term is different from pantheism, which means the universe is synonymous with God. Panentheism means everything is in God. “God is more than everything, yet everything is in God.”1 This term affirms both the immanent and transcendent nature of God . . . God’s incarnation, with us, and the Mystery or Otherness of God. This term is even descriptive of themes and images in scripture.
And so we have this “is/is not;” this “yes, and,” theology of God. Yes, we know God . . . and we cannot know all of who God is. Yes, one image or another expresses the God I know . . . and there is so much more beyond the veil. My theologian friend, Jason Byassee, puts it in a different way in his little book about the Trinity, “If you understand it . . . it’s not God,” which is actually a quote from St. Augustine. We humans are meaning making machines, so we both want to solve the puzzle of the universe and we are invited to be with the mystery.
Knowing we can’t fully understand, let’s explore some ideas about God. This human need to solve the universe mystery . . . well our tradition would argue God started it! Our tradition teaches that God seeks us out and invites us into relationship. The relationship different peoples of the world develop is contextualized in place and culture (which is also contextualized by place) – this idea has always fascinated me. God seems to speak into the world through the world, in ways that connect with people of a particular place . . . and ways of relating with God develop and evolve over time. Christianity, for instance, was seeded by an existing religion and an event that people lived through and then over the decades and millennia that followed, made meaning of that event through a pattern of gathering we still use today. It’s quite different from the way relationship with Creator developed in North America: belonging to the land, understanding the created world to be animate and as family. In both there is an acknowledgement and acceptance of the unknowable, even as we engage in relationship with it.
In Acts this morning, Paul is in Athens and as he walks around the city, he notices all the statues of gods they have identified, the gods they relate to. And then there is one statue for the god they can’t quite name, the Unknown god. They include this statue perhaps to cover their bases in case there is one they left out. In response, Paul affirms their quest to name the divine presence among them and uses the unknown god as an opening to talk about the God he knows. The way God showed up in the ancient Greek world as individual gods with different characteristics is really different from God of the Hebrew people . . . and different still from Creator who was and is known in North America.
In fact, by learning from people of other faiths, we learn more about God . . . because one culture, one people cannot possibly live into all God has to offer.
The truth of God known by nomadic peoples who follow herds on mountains and planes is different from the Inuit, whose world is framed by snow and ice. This is different still from island peoples surrounded by ocean and bathed in sunshine.
Even scientists have a unique lens on God. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: my studies in physics and astronomy only strengthened my faith in God. I mean, just look at this universe God created! I remember one conversation I had in university with a fellow student in the sciences who was also Christian. He postulated that God exists in something like the 10th dimension. Think about it, he said: if there were flat beings, living in the 2nd dimension on my palm, and I put the fingers of my other hand on my palm like this, they would think those were 5 individual things, because they wouldn’t be capable of seeing how all of these things are connected parts of my body. (mind blown) So by extension, if God were in the 10th dimension, think of the complexity God brings to a world in the 3rd dimension. It’s a cool idea to think about . . . and whether or not it’s true, it is at most only a fraction of who God is.
Some other ideas about God: I remember hearing theologian, Marcus Borg, give a lecture in about 2005. He talked with a great number of people over the years who told him they don’t believe in God. He asked in response, “who is the God you don’t believe in?” They would most of the time describe a bearded man sitting on a cloud, looking down on the activities of earth . . . Borg would then reply, “yeah, I don’t believe in that God either,” and the conversation would continue.
The image of God many of us actually connect with is much more difficult to describe. I like Paul’s phrase, or rather the phrase of the Greek poet: God is the one in whom we live and move and have our being. Theologian Paul Tillich uses the phrase: Ground of Our Being. Many authors of scripture have used the phrase: Dwelling Place. These all affirm that God is vital to our lives and survival in ways we don’t even begin to understand . . . we are like fish swimming in water, trying to identify this presence that yields to our movement, and yet is constantly surrounding and supporting us.
This is also why Jesus is so powerful . . . because he is an aspect of God we can see. When we interact with Jesus, we can experience the Word of God and learn about the God we can’t see . . . with Jesus we don’t have to reach for a connection . . . because we can hug him and follow him and listen to his teaching . . .
His teaching is love . . . and if I could be so bold, this is the primary thread that connects religions and spiritual expressions around the world. Jesus says to his disciples this morning in John’s gospel: keep my commandments and the Holy Spirit will come to you. This refers to a teaching he gave in the previous chapter, saying “love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’” Love is mercy for one another, love is justice, love is comfort, love is radical. It’s almost like he’s saying the Holy Spirit works through love . . . like it’s the medium through which the Spirit acts. Interesting idea for another reflection – perhaps when we discuss Radical Love. As always with God, there are new horizons to explore.
In a few weeks we will take the next step in this journey. Having explored a bit about who God is, we will continue with who we are in relationship with God. Thanks be to God.