May 10, 2026 Easter 6 First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA
“Athenians, I see how extremely spiritual you are in every way. 23 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.” (Acts 17:22-31)
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
How do we know there is a God? There’s generally three different responses to that question:
First, I know there’s a God because I can see the evidence in the world around us.
Or, I know there’s a God, because the Bible says it’s so.
Or… I don’t know; I trust, I hope…
Knowing about God just from reading the Bible can be hard (difficult) if only because reading the Bible is hard… the Bible is a translation of a series of book that are between two and five thousand years old. They were written for people who did not know about modern science, and who mostly were shepherds, traders and farmers. Because it was written for a different way of life, getting more than surface meanings requires us to study it – and that’s not always easy.
All too often, we mis-read it, thinking that if there’s a story about Jonah and a Whale, it must be a new story, like it had been originally written for the Boston Globe. The thing is, it – and many other stories like it – are more akin to fairy tales… the important thing is not the facts, but the lesson the facts are there to help us “get it”. (maybe use Androcles and the Lion??)
It’s easy to see why many of us see God more clearly out on the golf course, or on a hike in the woods, sailing on the lake, or visiting the Bridge of Flowers up in Shelburne. The beauty of a flower is unmistakable. And there are other ways people feel that they see God in the world…ways like observing the Fibonnaci sequence – not just in math, where it shows that each number in the sequence is the sum of the two preceding numbers, but it shows up also in nature in the arrangement of tree branches, pineapple sprouts, artichoke flowers and on and on…. You can see why, when folks discover there’s an actual order to the way trees grow their branches, that they might see that as a sign of the existence of God.
But that’s not all there is to God… neat and orderly math sequences, or ways of growing trees. Let’s look a little more closely at Paul’s story.
Today’s story tells of the first visit of Paul to the city of Athens, in Greece. The Greeks were known all over the world for their interest in philosophy, their devotion to working out questions like who made the world, why are there human beings. They were a people who made sure to cover their bases, so they put up statues – devotional centers, worship spaces – for every conceivable option. They even had a statue to an “unknown god” – and that’s the god that Paul works from.
In those days, the Greeks, indeed most people, believed that there were little, local gods, maybe like a spirit that watched over a spring – and you honored that spring and its spirit, by pouring out a little of the water on the ground before you drank.
The scholars call that “pouring out a libation”; even today, you’ll occasionally see someone pour out a little of what they’re about to drink on the ground, or pour out a beverage at a new grave. I doubt they have any sense as to how old that practice is!
Folks believed that those gods took on the attributes of whatever they stood for – so the spirit of the spring needed to be kept happy, so that the spring wouldn’t go dry in high summer. And the major gods, the ones like Zeus, or Hera, were understood to be just like humans, only bigger, braggier, sometimes trickier, and always needing their worshippers to keep them happy – or things wouldn’t go well.
That’s the bitter edge of those kinds of human-derived understandings of gods. They are, as a group, beautiful, powerful, and unreliable. They do not love humans, they use humans to satisfy their needs and desires.
You can imagine, therefore, just how astounding it was when Paul came to Athens and told them that their “unknown god” was a god of sustaining love, a person who wanted us to be happy, safe, prosperous…. This god wanted peace and justice for all.
It’s just that amazing today, you know. That’s what’s important now. We follow a God who love us, who is not capricious, doesn’t demand our unthinking submission. Our God, the God we follow wants us to be the best we can be, and helps us get there by showing us a way that doesn’t just build us up, but creates and nourishes good community for all.
Sometimes, it doesn’t work.
Sometimes, that community turns into an “everyone for themselves” wreck. I’m not just talking about current events. You might have read the book “Lord of the Flies”, about a group which tries to form a community and fails miserably – written right around 75 years ago.
Some communities aren’t formed to make everyone better; some communities are formed to support the leaders, and everything else is designed to keep the leaders wealthy, healthy, and strong.
But that’s not Christian community. Our kind of community is always struggling against the self-centered kind, because we are willing to give up our personal power so that everyone will have enough. Christian community is not just about personal stuff – not just our own happiness, prosperity and power.
In fact, Christian community places our personal success in the context of what makes our world, our community stronger. It helps us shares our wealth so that we will all have decent schools, child protective services, immigrant education, and other things that just make life better.
It’s also about less obvious problems — like making sure that people don’t struggle to find and afford food because there are no grocery stores, or because the prices in your area are twice what they are across town. I didn’t realize this was an issue in my area until I realized that prices at the Stop and Shop near me were higher than the one 3 miles away, in a more prosperous suburb. That’s right, food costs less for people who have more money.
That’s our call…. To care about people who struggle to survive, to stand up for those who need help, to live as kind, generous, decent people. Our God, known through Jesus Christ, provides the pattern for our living… every day, all the time.
Come and be a part of the family.
Amen.
©2026, Virginia H. Child
To Believe is to Care. . . To Care is to Do 