Sunday Sermon - May 10, 2026

What can we learn about evangelism from Paul? How does seeing an altar to an unknown god invite curiosity about what the God we know is doing in the world? This sermon focuses on Sunday's readings from Acts (Acts 17:22-31) with reassurances from the gospel reading (John 14:15-21)

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Scripture quotations from the COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE. © Copyright 2011 COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Transcript

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A reading from Acts Paul stood in front of the Aeropagus and said, In Dinians, I see how extremely spiritual 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 all to mortals life and breath and all things. From one ancestor he made all peoples to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times for their existence in the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps fumble about 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. The word of the Lord.

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Would you all please pray with me? Good and gracious God, we pray that you breathe your spirit into and among us, that we don't just hear words with our ears, but hear in our hearts the message you have for us this day. Amen. So if you were reading last week's bulletin, the reading from Acts came from the seventh chapter. And in the seventh chapter, we met this guy named Stephen. And what happened to poor Stephen? He was stoned. And while he was being stoned, there was another young man who was standing there, and I imagined standing a little something like, mm-hmm. And people were putting coats at his feet. Does anyone remember who that was? It's another S name. Saul. Oh, look at you guys remembering. Excellent. You're gonna do great at the Kahoot downstairs. Saul was standing there watching as they stoned Stephen. And my guess is at that time he was still the persecutor of the followers of the way. And so my guess is he was kind of going, that's right, you got what's coming to you. Except then, two chapters later, in Acts 9, I won't read it, you can read it on your own. But in Acts 9, Saul is walking along the way on his way to Damascus, and all of a sudden, Jesus shows up. And Saul falls to his face, and he's like, oh boy, I don't know about this. And after that, Saul becomes not a persecutor of the church, but a preacher of the church. And thereon we start to call him Paul. Nicely done. So now we have Paul, and we are now in chapter 17 of Acts. So for those last eight chapters, Paul, previously Saul, but now since converted and now a preacher of the way, has been traveling like here, there, everywhere. Last month the confirmation kids and I went through the book of Acts in about 30 seconds flat. And basically it boiled down to, and then they went here, and then they went here, and then they went here. And at each here, Paul went straight into the synagogue, walked up to the group of Jews that happened to be there already, and said, Let me tell you about my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And he continued to then preach and teach and tell them about this risen Messiah. Well, then he got kicked out of a town once. That's another story for another time. It's Acts 15, 16 if you want to look that one up. But then after that, he's fleeing to try to avoid people who are now persecuting him. And he winds up in Athens. Yes, the same Athens we know, the same Athens that has been around for centuries before Paul ever stepped foot there. And he goes and he does his thing at the synagogue. And then Paul's looking around at all these idols, all these altars to different gods, all these symbols of worship to other gods, and he's like, uh what am I gonna do here? But he's talking about his God, he's talking about his experience with Jesus, and then people in Athens are naturally, as a town, very curious. And so they look at Paul and they say, Paul, tell us, tell us a little more about this God that you're talking about. Tell us a little more about this risen Messiah, because we don't get it. And so he winds up at the um the town hall, basically, the Aeropagus. I don't know how to pronounce it, I'm not great at Greek. Um, and he winds up there, and that's the place basically where people would go to make their case to the town, to the town leaders, and Paul is there, and he gives us today's lovely little speech. But you notice, he's talking now to a bunch of Greeks, he's talking to people who do not worship the God of Jesus, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. He's talking to a bunch of people that have a bunch of altars to a bunch of other gods and still have this random altar for kind of the catch-all category, this unknown God. And so what does he do? He starts there. He starts off by saying, You are a religious people, you recognize that there is divine presence all around us. You recognize that there is more to life than just what we have right in front of us. You recognize that there are beings greater and larger than us that are involved in life. He says, and I noticed. You have this altar, and you have it listed as to an unknown God. Well, let me fill in some gaps for you, says Paul. And he then proceeds to talk about God, the God who made heaven and earth, the God who is the very breath of life, not just for the Jewish people, but for all of creation. Everything under the sun that breathes or photosynthesizes does so by the breath of God, as Paul declares him, as Paul declares the God of Jesus and the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. And then he goes on. Because Paul, don't forget, is now not just a really great Jewish person, but Paul is now also a devout and enthusiastic follower of Jesus. But these people in Athens, these Greeks, who have all these other gods, who have not even met the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob yet, don't know who Jesus is. So Paul doesn't tell them that Jesus is the Messiah, because frankly, that language would have fallen completely flat on them. They would not have gotten it. So Paul instead describes what he knows to be true in Christ. He describes what God is doing in Christ, that God is bringing things into alignment with God's purpose through Christ, that God is redeeming the people through Christ, and but not naming the word Christ, did you notice? God sends a man, a person, and it's gonna happen. So basically, Paul looks at his audience and he translates his message so that it can be accessible to the people in front of him. Even going so far as to quote their own poets. When it says, uh, in whom we move and live and breathe and have our being, that's a quote from an Athenian poet. And the next line, which I can't remember off the top of my head, that's also a quote from a prop from a poet, a Greek poet. And so Paul is saying, You who have experienced the divine but don't have a name to put to it, let me give you a name. And his name is Jesus. So, as we go through our baptismal promises and the season of Easter, we have gone to uh gather or live among God's faithful people and share in the Lord's Supper. We've talked about serving all people and following the example of Jesus, striving for justice and peace in all the earth. We've talked about sharing in the Lord's Supper, we've talked about all these things. And now we talk about proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ in word and deed. And Paul gives us a beautiful example of what that can look like. Paul did not do this alone. Paul met Jesus along the way, or Jesus met Paul, depending on how you choose to say that. And Paul was filled with the Holy Spirit and went traveling around and found his place in Athens and filled with the Holy Spirit, he proclaims the good news of Jesus Christ without ever using the word Jesus Christ. Because Paul knew that they wouldn't get that. And so we too, as we go out into our lives, as it says in our first Peter reading, we can be ready to defend or explain the source of our hope. That is the life and resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ, the love of God that is stronger than any level of hate. We too can be ready to explain this good news, the source of our hope. And we can do it in words and deeds that are accessible to other people, to the people we meet. So when we go into our workplaces, when we go into our schools, when we go into the grocery store, we can proclaim in word and deed using the language of that space. We don't have to talk about Jesus using the name Jesus. We can talk about the hope that outlasts everything. We can talk about the joy that stands in the face of sorrow. We can talk about the life that we know in the face of death and grief. But before we can speak in the language of the people, we have to do what Paul did. We have to be curious. Because when Paul, when we get to Paul's beginning part in today's reading, what does it say? I was walking around looking at all your stuff. I was noticing what you've got going on here. And I saw where your curiosity was. I saw where you were still longing for something more. I saw where you were longing for life and love and connection to the divine. And in that, I can explain to you where I see God moving and breathing and having God's being. In that space, in your language, in your curiosity, I can say this is what God is up to. God is putting the breath of life into every inch of creation. God is putting life in the face of death, love in the face of hate, joy in the face of grief. The Holy Spirit is moving and breathing. And we are dwelling in that Holy Spirit. For God is not a God that is far off, but a God that is nearby, so near that God is the very breath we breathe. So I fell into some poetic language because I can't help it, it's an occupational hazard. But this is what we would call evangelism. Evangelism, that scary E-word in the Lutheran Church, is nothing more than being curious, finding out about the people around us, learning about our neighbors, learning about our environment, and saying and saying, this is where I see God already here in this space, in these people at this time. Naming it, claiming it, and welcoming people into that truth and into that joy and into that life. We meet others where they are, and we pray, proclaim the good news in words or deeds and ways that are accessible to those who are hearing us. Now again, you are not expected to do this by yourself. Because Jesus Christ, in that final discourse before his death, resurrection, and ascension, looks at the disciples who are panicking a little bit because they don't know what to do without Jesus physically with them. And Jesus says, I will not leave you orphaned. The Holy Spirit is coming, the paraclete, the advocate, the companion, the helper will fill you, will guide you, will support you, and will fill you with life and love abundant, abundant to share everywhere you go with everyone you see. So I get to end today's sermon, not with an amen, because this isn't a statement kind of a day, but a challenge kind of a day. As you I got a couple of like oh no's. As you go out into the world, look, be curious, be curious what language the people are speaking, and be curious about what God is up to. Because God is out there, sometimes moving in ways we don't even expect. So be open to surprise and go and proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ in word and deed. Thanks be to God.