Acts 17:22-31; John 14:15-21

Near to All, Present in You
​
Justin Brierley is a British podcaster. For the last decade, he's been observing a trend no one expected. The confident secularism of the early 2000s has begun to fade. People are no longer content with the prevailing consensus that there is no God.
 
Even avowed atheists, whom Brierley has invited on his show, admit that a world without God leaves people spiritually exhausted, morally disoriented, and starving for transcendence.
 
The shift he sensed led him to write a book. In The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God: Why New Atheism Grew Old and Secular Thinkers are Considering Christianity Again (2023), Brierley describes a renewed conversation about whether God helps us make sense of science, culture, history, and our search for meaning today.
 
This is not only confined to Great Britain. A recent Barna survey reports that young men (14-29) in the United States are returning to church in increasing numbers.
 
They are fed up with a virtual world run by algorithms and dating apps and are seeking something real.
 
Bible sales among Gen Z surged by 22 per cent last year and Bible reading increased by 20 per cent. Gen Alpha is following a similar pattern, longing for roots, community, and spiritual truth.
 
This longing is real. It can be denied and suppressed only for so long before it re-emerges. That is why the Apostle Paul's visit to Athens, featured in our first lesson today, still resonates with us.
 
The purpose of Paul's visit is to preach the gospel. He is a man on a mission. It has always been his sole ambition to preach the gospel where Christ has not been known (Rom. 15:22).
 
Paul's an effective missionary, not least because he is attuned to that longing within the human heart.
 
And as a skilled communicator, he knows how to tap into it. He wants to name it and then show the people where it leads, where it finds rest.
 
To be specific, he wants to convince them that it is really pointing them to the God revealed in Jesus Christ.
 
This strategy becomes apparent in the opening of his sermon.
 
Let us listen again to what he says:
 
"My dear Athenians, 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.'"
 
“Extremely spiritual.” The choice of phrase is worth highlighting. How many of our contemporaries would describe themselves as "extremely spiritual?" This is not at all uncommon among us today.
 
But if one asks them further about a church or a religious community to which they belong, they often reply that they are "spiritual, but not religious." At least, that has been my experience.
 
The "spiritual but not religious" person is, in effect, standing before their own altar to an unknown god.
 
They are registering a real signal — their longing for transcendence is real — but the receiver has no name for the source.
 
The deity, if they acknowledge one, is kept deliberately vague. They call it force, energy, the universe, or even "the man upstairs."
 
To name it more precisely than this feels like a constraint that they are unwilling to accept.
 
This is similar to the Athenian situation as Paul finds it. The altar with the inscription to the unknown god is not cynical; it is honest.
 
It acknowledges that something is there, something or someone that deserves devotion, but it stops short of naming it.
 
And that is precisely the opening that Paul needs. He doesn't criticize them for their vagueness; on the contrary, he compliments them for their spiritual sensitivity.
 
Paul honors the longing while refusing to let it remain formless. "What you worship as unknown, I am about to make known to you."
 
Then Paul gives the Athenians a basic outline: God is the creator. He is the Lord of the heavens and the earth.
 
He has made all nations, determining the times of their existence and the places of their habitation.
 
He did not make them to abandon them. He remained near so that people might search for him and perhaps find him. God wants to be known.
 
Ultimately, that is why he appointed a man, in whom divine truth, God's truth, is embodied.
 
"I am the way, the truth, and the life" as we heard him declare last Sunday.
 
And he will be the arbiter of truth on the last day, when he will judge the peoples of the earth impartially and with all fairness.
 
And, as Paul concludes, God confirmed this appointment of this man by raising him from the dead.
 
Jesus Christ, crucified and raised from the dead. That in a nutshell is the gospel that God entrusted to Paul, that God has entrusted to the church today.
 
So what does Paul ask of the Athenians — and what does he ask of us?
 
He doesn't ask that we abandon the longing. The longing is not the problem; it is, in fact, the evidence of grace.
 
It's the heart's acknowledgement that it was made for more than this world alone can offer.
 
In this regard, C.S. Lewis remarked that "if I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world."
 
For Lewis, the intensity of the longing is itself a kind of evidence for the existence of God and of the world to come. We do not ache for what does not exist.
 
So what Paul — and C.S. Lewis — do ask is that we follow the longing to its proper end. This is implied in his call that people everywhere repent.
 
What does it mean to repent?
 
This is one of those "church words" that church people use often, but rarely stop to examine. It comes from a word in the original that means literally "to change one's mind."
 
This certainly applies here. Paul is asking us to abandon the idea that the deity is vague, distant, unknowable and therefore undemanding and accept the claim that God has made himself known in Jesus Christ.
 
In Jesus Christ, God has spoken and acted. In him, God has entered the world that he has made and has reclaimed it. God has appointed him as the one to whom all people are accountable. He confirmed this by raising him from the dead.
 
That is our first lesson. Paul tells the Athenians that God is near — near enough to be found by those who reach for him.
 
But in our Gospel lesson, Jesus speaks the language of closeness in a different register altogether.
 
He is not speaking to seekers standing before an altar to an unknown god.
 
He is speaking to those who have found — or rather, have been found.
 
He is speaking to those whom he has already known by name, who have heard his voice and followed him.
 
And to them he speaks of an intimacy that goes much deeper than anything Paul describes in Athens.
 
Listen again to his words: "If you love me, you will keep my commandments."
 
We should be careful not to hear this as emotional blackmail. It’s not the voice of an exasperated mother saying, "If you truly loved me, you would prove it by cleaning your room!"
 
Rather, it’s the voice of one who is making a statement of fact: if you love me, you will, as a matter of course, keep my commandments.
 
It is as if Jesus is saying:
 
“If you open yourself to the mystery of my person, if you respond to the love I have come to reveal, then you will enter a new world.
 
Everything will appear changed. You will see people as I see them. You will not injure, betray, defraud, or kill one another, but you will help, receive, bless, and build up one another.
 
When you enter this new world, you will find that you are already keeping my commandments, which can be summed up in one: you are to love one another. "Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another" (John 13:34).
 
One author helpfully interpreted these words of Jesus: "To keep the commandments is to put into action what already flows from the love of a heart that knows that it is loved."
 
Jesus will sustain his disciples in this life of love. They will not live it in their own strength. He promises to give them the Spirit of truth, who will be with them and in them.
 
He speaks of the Holy Spirit, anticipating Pentecost, which we will be celebrating in two weeks. He calls the Spirit another advocate.
 
It is an intriguing word. In a court of law, it refers to a legal adviser. The Spirit speaks on behalf of the defense. That is why it has also sometimes been translated as "counselor." The counselor advises and guides and helps his client in building a defense.
 
Some English translations have "comforter." Others translate the word as "helper."
 
The meaning of the word is certainly hard to define, not because it is vague, but because it is rich and manifold.
 
The word in the original literally means: "the one who has been called to the side of."
 
As advocate, comforter, helper, and more, the Spirit encourages us in our struggles, consoles us in our sorrows, and helps us in our weaknesses.
 
He enters the deep places of our souls, bringing to us the presence of the risen and exalted Son of God, Jesus Christ, who is our peace, our comfort.
 
Even though the Spirit is "another" comforter, which implies a distinction between Jesus and the Spirit, the Spirit nevertheless stands proxy for Jesus.
 
Jesus has already assured the disciples that if he goes, it is only to prepare a place for them. For in his Father's house are many mansions. He goes to prepare a place for them there, so that they may be where he is.
 
But that future is not what Jesus is speaking of here. Jesus assures the disciples that he will be with them in the Holy Spirit now, in the present.
 
That is why Jesus can say that he will not leave his disciples as orphans.
 
To be an orphan is to be without a name, without a place, without someone whose face lights up when you walk into the room.
 
Jesus is promising his disciples — and us — that they will never know that desolation.
 
The Spirit will come. He will make his home with them. No one is meant to be alone in the family of God. No one is meant to feel abandoned.
 
The Holy Spirit whom the Father will give them is filled with the very presence of Jesus himself.
 
He is not a force that moves through us. He is a presence that dwells within us — one who knows us, accompanies us, and intercedes for us.
 
And he does even more than this: he establishes us in a new relationship with God altogether.
 
This is what the Apostle Paul means when he says that God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts — the Spirit by whom we are emboldened to call God "Father."
 
Think of what that means. The intimacy that Jesus enjoys with the Father — that eternal, overflowing love — is now opened to us.
 
We are not merely forgiven. We are welcomed into the family.
 
Jesus hints at a mystery here that exceeds what words can fully express.
 
On the day the Spirit comes, the disciples will understand something they could not grasp before: that they are related Jesus, and Jesus is related to the Father, in a communion of love that now includes them.
 
They are not spectators of the life of God. They are participants in it.
 
Let us say it again: In Jesus Christ, God has made himself known.
 
And he has given us the Spirit of truth. Later, Jesus will explain that this same Spirit will guide us into all truth.
 
This is the movement the two lessons together trace:  
 
In Athens, Paul speaks of a God who is near to all — near enough to be found by those who reach for him, near enough that no longing is accidental and no altar, however anonymous, is raised entirely in the wrong place.
 
In the upper room, Jesus speaks of a God who comes closer still — to be with us and in us. Near to all, but present in those who receive the gospel of his Son, present in you and in me.
 
This is the God the restless heart has always been seeking. This is the name the altar to the unknown god was always waiting to receive.
 
We are not left to find our way to God on our own — groping in the dark, reaching toward an unknown and unnamable deity.
 
We have the Word of God addressed to us and the Spirit of God living within us.
 
By the Word and the Spirit, we know God — not merely know about him, but known by him, and to call him Father.
 
May we grow in the grace and knowledge of God, and of his Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.

​