Brant Hills Presbyterian Church: Sermon, February 16, 2019 Rev. Curtis Bablitz “YOUR NAME HERE”

Imagine that you’ve been invited to a wedding, and you arrive at the reception and enter the dining room, and you see all these beautifully decorated tables, with each place setting perfectly arranged and identified with a card carrying the name of each of the invited guests, all carefully written in elaborate calligraphy on embossed cardstock. And you start searching from table to table, looking for your place, reading each and every name at each and every place, all carefully written and placed with care, and you can’t find your name. So, you keep looking, you check every table until at the last one, you find one last place. And it has a piece of scrap paper that’s been folded over, and on the back, someone has scrawled in what looks like crayon, Your Name Here. You’ve found your place at the party, but it’s not all that welcoming, is it? It would seem clear just how much your hosts really value your presence that they couldn’t even be bothered getting your name right, couldn’t be bothered to take any trouble to make you feel welcome, make you feel like you belong. I don’t know if anyone here remembers the old TV show Gilligan’s Island, where the theme song mentions all the different characters on the show, Gilligan, the Skipper too, the Millionaire and his wife, the Movie Star … and the Rest. There’s only two more names! Poor Mary Ann and the Professor are so unimportant, so insignificant, that they get lumped together as “the Rest”, the Others, the unwelcome, unwanted ones who don’t really belong. When someone doesn’t know your name, doesn’t acknowledge your name, it’s pretty hard to feel welcome. It’s pretty clear that you’re just not that important to them.

So, when I read today’s passage from the book of Acts, I don’t think that the people of Athens have really thought through what kind of message they’re sending with the altar that catches Paul’s attention as he tours through the famous Greek city. It’s inscribed with the words, “To an Unknown God”, and I get what they’re trying to do. They’re trying to cover all their bases. They’re trying to keep everybody happy, make sure no-body could ever possibly feel left out or offended, make sure that every possible pilgrim from every possible corner of the Empire who might visit their town will have a place a worship. In Athens there are altars and shrines for all the big, important Greek Gods and Goddesses, Zeus and Hera, Athena, Apollo, Ares, Hermes, Hades, Poseidon, and there are altars and shrines for all the lesser known, lesser loved members of the pantheon, all the sky gods and sea gods and titans and giants, spirits representing all the different emotions and elements and so on and so forth, but there are thousands of these minor gods, so many that it would be impossible for one city, even a city as grand and wealthy as the great Athens, to honour them all. So the people of Athens try to protect themselves from ever possibly offending any of these thousands of minor deities by throwing up one last altar, one last shrine, and dedicating it to An Unknown God. This is the shrine for the Rest, for the Others, for the god who visits Athens and wanders the streets looking for his or her shrine, and finally finds one with a half-hearted inscription scribbled in crayon, Your Name Here.

But really, do you really think that’s going to work? I mean, if you know any Greek myths and legends, you probably know that all these Gods and Goddesses are pretty much jerks. They are incredibly shallow, incredibly petty, they lose their tempers at the drop of a hat, they’re constantly pitting humans against each other for their own entertainment. So, if you really believe in all these gods and goddesses, do you really think they’re going to be appeased by the most half-hearted attempt to keep them happy? These Gods aren’t rational, reasonable friendly sorts who give out points for a good effort. They’re not going to look at this altar and chuckle and say, oh, bless their hearts, they didn’t get my name right, but at least they tried. No, any Greek god worth his salt is going to take one look at that dumpy little shrine and just lose it, pull out the thunderbolts, wipe out half the city or something. Everything the Greeks think they know about Gods should tell them that Brant Hills Presbyterian Church: Sermon, February 16, 2019 Rev. Curtis Bablitz “YOUR NAME HERE” you need to get things right, you need to know their names, you need to treat them with respect, you need to bow properly and worship correctly and offer them sacrifices and do all the proper things in just the proper way, and if you don’t get everything exactly right, watch out. No self-respecting God should be happy with an altar that reads “Your Name Here”

And so Paul comes to Athens, and he is troubled, deeply troubled by all these altars, all these shrines, all the little idols and niches, all the effort to try and keep all these Gods and Goddesses happy, because Paul knows that they’re not real. Paul knows that Zeus and Athena and Poseidon and Apollo, they can’t actually harm the people of Athens one little bit, because they don’t exist. The Athenians are wasting their time and effort and wealth, trying to keep all these temperamental deities happy and appeased, covering their city with religious offerings on every street corner, all for nothing. So when Paul is invited to speak to the gathering of philosophers in the public square, he points to the Altar of the Unknown God, and says, you’ve got this altar, dedicated to a God without a name. So let me tell you about this Unknown God. He made everything. He made the world, and everything in it. He’s the Lord of Heaven and Earth. Unlike all those other Gods, who each have one little area they get to be in charge of, this God is in control of everything. And that means he doesn’t need anything from us. He doesn’t need our worship. He doesn’t need our offerings. He has no needs, and in fact, he gives us everything we have, he satisfies all of our needs. And he doesn’t live far away, on top of Mount Olympus, or in the depths of the sea, or in the underworld. He’s right here. He’s here with us at every moment. And unlike all these other silly gods who demand perfect obedience, perfect loyalty, this God has really low standards. He’s not offended that you don’t know his name. He’s not upset that you’ve given him such a crummy little altar instead of a grand temple. This God isn’t hotheaded and vengeful and cruel like all these other two-bit gods. He’s a God who loves. He’s a God who forgives. He’s a God who is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, a God who lavishes his grace and compassion on his people, a God who reveals himself to every people in every nation, a God who overlooks our ignorance and patiently waits for us to come and follow him. He’s a God who brings light and life and power to anyone who calls on him, he’s a God who judges the world with justice, he’s a God who can raise the dead. The Athenians have been wasting their time worshipping all these silly gods and goddesses who demand obedience and sacrifice, to be treated with honour and deference and worship, but Paul tells them about the Unknown God, the God who has been seeking them all this time, the God who can be found in the most unexpected places, in the most humble, insignificant person imaginable, in the person of Jesus Christ.

And it’s funny to read about those silly Athenians and their idols and altars and shrines to all those silly gods, but I think we’ve got more in common with the people of Athens than we like to admit. Sometimes we act like our God, the God we worship, the God we serve, that he’s more like Zeus and Apollo and Ares and all those other Gods the Athenians used to worship. We think that being a Christian means we need to get everything right. We think that we need to do everything just right, use the right names, treat God with respect, you need to bow properly and worship correctly and offer him sacrifices and do all the proper things in just the proper way, and if we don’t get everything exactly right, watch out. We think that God is angry and vengeful, that if we fall out of line just a little bit, God is going to smoosh us like bugs. We think that God demands holiness and perfection, that we are supposed to be these perfect, pious, unsmiling, unfeeling statues who never dance or sing or smile or have any fun. We think that all of this, all of the work we do in church is all of us desperately trying to earn our way into God’s good books, as if getting into heaven requires earning enough points by showing up on Sundays and pretending to be happy. All too often, Christians completely miss the Brant Hills Presbyterian Church: Sermon, February 16, 2019 Rev. Curtis Bablitz “YOUR NAME HERE” point of who God really is. All too often, our God is still an Unknown God, a God we think we know but who we’ve completely misunderstood. Because our God is not out to get us. Our God is not a god of judgment. God doesn’t care about his reputation, he doesn’t care about our offerings, all the things we think we can give, all the things we think we need to do for him. Our God has incredibly low standards, he will accept anyone, anyone, anyone, no matter how much you’ve messed up, no matter how low you’ve sunk, no matter whether you’re only following him because you literally have no other options left, he will still accept you, he will still love you, he will still lift you up and heal and strengthen you and give you new, abundant, everlasting life. We think that following God is so hard, that being a Christian is so difficult, that it’s all about rules and procedures and do this and don’t do this, and that’s not it at all. Following God is just realizing that he’s already here, he’s not far from any one of us, he’s come to us and become one of us and died for us so that we can live, and all we have to do, the only thing we have to do, is just recognize that it’s true. Recognize that God is with us, recognize that he loves us, realize what he’s already done for us and then live as if that’s true. We follow a God who knows our names, knows us inside and out, knows every rotten thing we’ve ever done and still loves us, and he wants us to know him too, he wants to be more than just an Unknown God, he wants us to know him and love him the way he knows and loves each one of us. Today, our God is calling us to follow, to bring our hearts and our lives to him so that we can be blessed, to set aside all the other gods, all the other loyalties, all the other fears and worries that drive us, set them aside and follow the God who knows our name, who sets us free, who brings us back to life. Today, let us follow Jesus Christ. Amen.