Lectionary Reflections

An Unknown God
 By Stacy F. Sauls
Thursday, April 21, 2005
 

Lectionary Reflections for the Sixth Sunday of Easter (A)

Readings for Easter 6, Year A, May 1, 2005

  • Acts 17:22-31
  • Psalm 66: 7-18
  • 1 Peter 3:13-22
  • John 14:15-21

I was wandering through the halls of Narita Airport, tired and hungry, in search of something to eat. Despite abundance and variety, finding something to eat is not that easy at Narita for English speakers. There is an array of restaurants -- Japanese, Italian, Chinese, Thai, French, and of course, McDonald's, but the menus are solely in Japanese. The plastic replicas of menu items are helpful. How something looks is suggestive of whether one would want to eat it, despite what my mother always told me about eating with my eyes, but the ingredients still remain unknown.

I confess. I almost went to McDonald's on the theory that I was too jet-lagged to have to deal with the unknown. In the end, though, I compromised on Chinese food. It had a basic familiarity but held the possibility of being authentic. It wasn't. In retrospect, if I wasn't going to go with McDonald's, I should have taken my chances on a plastic replica of something completely unknown.

Paul arrived in Athens and invited the Athenians to the unknown (Acts 17:22-31). The Athenians were acquainted with the idea that there could be something divine beyond their knowledge. Paul had observed that they had erected an altar "to an unknown god." But Paul also observed that given a choice between the known and the unknown, they chose the known.

We, as [the Athenians], prefer our divinity safely packaged -- appropriately in gold or silver -- but in containers of our own construction. We, as they, prefer our humanity that way, too, safely packaged in prejudices and systems of our own construction, even if we are fond of attributing those constructions to God.
Who can blame them? "The devil we know is better than the devil we don't know," we are fond of saying. The future is just about all the unknown we can cope with, and even that we do our best to minimize through horoscopes, popular culture's fascination with the end of the world, and diversified portfolios. The present, though, is something we have a high predilection to keep the same, even if our efforts are nostalgic or illusory.

We share this basically human trait with the ancient Athenians. We, as they, prefer our divinity safely packaged -- appropriately in gold or silver -- but in containers of our own construction. We, as they, prefer our humanity that way, too, safely packaged in prejudices and systems of our own construction, even if we are fond of attributing those constructions to God.

Paul will have none of it. He introduces the Athenians to a God of the unknown, one that cannot be constrained in any construct of human making, whether shrine or prejudice. It is not just that Paul exhorts the Athenians to trade the gods they know for the God he knows. He asks them to trade the gods they safely know for the God who by nature cannot be known at all.

It is true that the God he introduces them to is the God whose name has been revealed by Godself to Moses. "I will be what I will be." Now that's a big help. It is true that the God he introduces them to is the God made known in the resurrection of Jesus. The empty tomb. Now that's a big help, too. And humanity -- all the safe categories of human prejudice that we are comfortable knowing: those have to go as well. For, Paul says, "God has made of one blood all the peoples of the earth" (v. 26).

The God of Paul -- the God we struggle sometimes to love, the God we struggle so often to worship, the God we struggle with limited success to know and describe -- it turns out, cannot be known, no matter how much we, and even God, may wish it. At least this side of the reign of God, God simply cannot be known. The altar of our God, it turns out, is the altar of an unknown God. God is the God, not only of life, but of the adventure of life -- what Paul described as the seeking of the unknown, the "groping" our way along so that in the seeking of an unknown God we might find God (v. 27).

Seeking the unknown, after all, is why we travel in the first place, to Athens or to Tokyo or to God. And over and over what we find is that the plastic replicas just don't do the unknown justice.


The Rt. Rev. Stacy F. Sauls is Bishop of Lexington (Kentucky). He may be reached by email at diocese@diolex.org.