Imagine with me, being in Athens, 2000 years ago.
For those who have actually
visited Athens, that’s probably not a hard thing to do, while for those like me
who know Athens only from grade 6 social studies, it takes a bit more imagination.
The Apostle Paul had the task
of spreading the good news of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles and now he has
arrived in Athens, the centre of Greek culture.
As a Jew, Paul had grown up with a strict prohibition against idols of
any sort, yet here he was in Athens, a city which honoured forty or more
deities. At first, it was “distressing”
(Acts 17:16) for Paul to be surrounded by idols as idolatry stood directly in
the face of the second commandment, which prohibited bowing down to graven
images or even making them. Yet at
another level he couldn’t help but be impressed at how “religious” this place
was. Even if the Greek beliefs were very different from his own, it was hard to
go to Athens and just be offended.
In the midst of idols to
Athena and Zeus and Poseidon was an idol with the inscription, either “to an
unknown God” or “to the unknown God.”
The Oxford Dictionary of the Bible puts it this way: “Although such an
altar has not been found [in Athens] by archaeologists, inscriptions are known
of altars [elsewhere] dedicated 'to unknown gods'. The reasoning was that one
or other of the gods might show anger at having been overlooked. Such an
inscription was designed to cover all contingencies”.
The oddness of this is striking: amidst all the
specifically named idols, an idol to an UNKNOWN GOD, sort of a safety-net idol
to appease any deities that may have gotten overlooked. And so, in our imaginary tour of ancient
Athens, we pause at this unusual monument and ask what Paul’s experience in
Athens has to say to us in our time and place.
At first, I admit that I’m a bit amused by an idol
with a question mark on it – but there is something both familiar and disheartening
about a monument to an unknown deity. For
the fact of the matter is that in the year 2026, many communities in the
northern hemisphere could truthfully have a billboard, plaque or building with
this same inscription on it: “dedicated to an unknown God”. The news keeps us apprised of the actions of
religious extremists of all sorts, including Christian, who focus hatred in the
name of the God of their understanding on those who are least able to defend
themselves; but outside of that, to huge swaths of our population, God is
completely unknown. And in many corners
of social media, anyone who speaks of God is mocked and eagerly dismissed, this
notion of God a childish folly practiced by the deluded. Recent figures indicate that some 35% of
Canadians identify themselves as having “no religion,” and that number goes
above 65% in places like Estonia and the Czech Republic.
Some of this is entirely of our own making. Wars of religious origin push the entire
world to think twice about the whole concept of God and religion. Hatred
against the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, active limitation of a woman’s agency over
her own body, the banning of books that encourage an open mind, are all actions
inexplicably undertaken by religious folk in the name of God and happily
publicized as if this what a true Christian should think. Actions of cultural genocide, including the
Residential Schools, generate shame that we will need to deal with for a very
long time. The Church, I’m afraid, has
made it easy for God to be unknown in this time and place.
But it’s not that simple. In the forty-five years
since I preached my first sermon, I have seen a steady increase in western
Canada of people whose ancestors had identified as Christian for centuries, who
now have no knowledge of the faith and no Christian memory, because neither
they, nor their parents nor their grandparents had a Church connection. My brother’s family falls into that category:
he was a preacher’s kid in the 1950s and absolutely hated the judgmental
expectations, so his kids were raised with no knowledge of Christianity except
that the Church was narrow-minded and limiting, and then when they had
kids, the whole “religion” thing didn’t even warrant a mention. That’s a really common phenomenon in Canada
and it has been happening since 1965, when Church involvement started its
steady downward slide. Add to that other factors –Sunday shopping and sports, growing
secularization, the un-cool factor attached to mainline Christianity, as well
as the hateful things said by some Christian leaders, a statue with the
inscription “to the unknown God” fits the bill.
But there is good news to be found as we seek present
day connections. Paul used the idol “to an unknown God” as a door-opener, acknowledging
how important religion was to the Athenians, then speaking of the God who was
anything but unknown to him: God the creator, God the source
of wisdom and dignity, God made known in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Some of his points were accepted, others were ridiculed, but
it’s the way he presented it that impresses me.
Paul met the people where they were; he
presented his beliefs clearly and rationally, without demonizing their beliefs.
Rather than the “I’m right, you’re wrong” attitude that has marred so many
religious interactions, Paul found a way into religious dialogue by
respecting what was there as a starting point.
This
approach is so important, right now, for mainline Christian Churches that hope
to have a future: meeting people where they are, whether they are folks who
used to be Church-involved but are now burnt out or wounded by the experience;
folks who have no Christian memory; or folks of completely different cultural
or religious backgrounds, who have religious leanings of a totally different
shape.
A
case in point: thirty years ago, I served a New Church Development congregation
in north Calgary, who had recently constructed a functional little Church
building. The main room in the Church, our
Sunday morning sanctuary, was a bland multi-purpose room with no Christian
symbols displayed. That was done on purpose, as there was a school of thought
in the early ‘90s that putting up a cross or anything like that would turn
people off. In particular, there was a
large Asian population in the area, many of whom were Muslim or Buddhist, and
nobody wanted to cause offence when that space was used for voting, or
community meetings, or rummage sales.
But
there was a space up high in the room just begging to have a cross put in it, and
eventually I asked a woodworker in our Church family to hand-craft and install
one. And within ten days of installing
the cross (ten days!) we got a phone call from a local Muslim group, asking if
they might perhaps be able to do their Ramadan observances in our Church
building. To this day, I believe that it
was our willingness to claim our faith that signalled to neighbours of different
beliefs, that religion is something that mattered to us, as it mattered to
them. When we installed the cross our sanctuary changed from being a room
dedicated “to an unknown God”, to saying, like St. Paul did, “you and I know
about God in different ways, let’s talk about it.”
Now,
if I wanted to I could keep circling this block, finding one example after
another of how the society we live in does not know God, of know God in vastly
different ways. But the inscription, “to
an unknown God” is challenging in a good and very personal way, bordering on inspirational,
because it pushes me to say, “well, how do I know God? What does it mean to say I know God,
given that God is by definition beyond my ability to really know or understand?
For me, much of the answer, is that we have a
history with God, we know what it is to feel existential love, we have
experienced freeing grace, we know how it feels to do something just and loving
in Jesus’ name. We cannot claim complete
clarity and knowledge when it comes to God, nobody can, but we can identify
those holy moments and blessed relationships where God is made known.
In Paul’s letter to the Colossians (1:15), he wrote that Jesus Christ is
‘the image of the invisible God.’ If we
think back to the nativity stories, Jesus is known as “Emmanuel, God-with-us”, his
birth a pivotal moment when God says to us, “I’m not going to leave you
stranded and isolated, wondering how you could possibly know me; I’m going to live
your life, experience the emotions you experience, and show you what it means
to love one another even when you are despised or betrayed”. As the one bearing the image of God, Jesus
discloses what God is like; he is, for Christians, the decisive revelation of
what God is like. This need not imply
that Jesus is the only manifestation of God, but for Christians, it does
mean that in Christ Jesus, the person of God who lived, and died, and lives
again, God ceases to be “unknown” or “unknowable.”
In the good news of Jesus Christ – his preaching, his embodied
commitment to healing, his repeated demonstrations of love without measure – we
experience that God is love. And I,
personally, have found that when I acknowledge that I am embraced by love, and
attempt to live my life like Jesus, expecting to encounter God through love, then
I will encounter God. And that
opens us to see God all around us:
We encounter God in the amazing presence of an infant, who has
absolutely no barriers between herself and those who love her. In the wide-eyed expectancy between a little
one and her mother, we are reminded of what it means to completely trust in the
loving gaze of our God.
We encounter God when people roll up their sleeves for a cause, whether
the cause is homelessness, or hunger, or safe haven for refugees, or true
welcome of the queer community. (A
shout-out here to my spouse who is a particularly fierce “Mama Bear”, as many
moms of trans kids are). We encounter
God when people change their behaviour to be more loving. We encounter God when people intentionally
choose a path that serves others, rather than being motivated by their own
greed.
We encounter God in the living, breathing organism we call Mother
earth. In the rhythms of growth and
decay, in the rain, in the enlivening power of a hot summer day or freshening
breeze, in the interplay between waterway and soil and plant and creature, we
feel God’s creative love in action. As
we anticipate another year in the orchards and the vineyards, God is known.
We encounter God in moments of prayer when we become completely quiet,
shutting off the constant stream of thoughts and distractions in favour of her
gift of silence. And we can even
encounter God in the holiness of death.
When this life reaches its end, and thankfulness is expressed, and
gratitude is shared, and reconciliation can be found, God is there.
To quote the Apostle Paul once more, “in God we
live and move and have our being.” The
God in whom we live our lives holds us in creativity and love, wisdom and
justice and kindness all at once, and that guides us as we engage others in
their sacred journeys. It is a blessing
to be on these paths, sometimes converging, sometimes diverging, sometimes
criss-crossing, as we together with one another and together with all living
beings embrace God’s amazing gift of life.
While I can understand the sentiment of “an unknown God” I am so
thankful for the ways that God bridges that gap, to be known to us, and fill
our lives with love. Thanks be to God. Amen.
References cited:
Oxford Dictionary of the Bible: available as an
app on Google Play!.
Smit, Jana Louise. https://historycooperative.org/greek-gods-and-goddesses/
Theoi Project. https://www.theoi.com/
Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_irreligion
© 2026 Rev Greg Wooley, Osoyoos-Oliver United Church Pastoral Charge.
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