Year A Easter VI Acts 17:22-31 John 14:15-21

Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, "Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way.”

Paul has a wonderful way with words, and often he can say something that sounds like one thing but means another. In today’s lesson it sounds like he is complimenting the Athenians for their piety, when, in truth, he saying that he finds them to be superstitious.

As he has traveled through the city, he has found altar after altar, each one dedicated to a different god, until, at last, he has come up on one `To an unknown god,' and he quickly takes advantage of this to begin preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

What do we worship today? I doubt any of us would say we worship pagan gods, and in this country there are no little roadside altars where we stop for a moment to pray. But is this true? Driving down any highway in our modern world we are confronted by endless billboards displaying things we want and covet. To us these aren’t altars, we call them advertising, but seeing the frenzy bordering on religious fervor that can result from our desire to possess some of the things these billboards display, I think Paul might easily have taken them for pagan icons.

We have a dangerous situation going on in our society. We don’t pass off our fanatical devotion to the material world as religion, so we don’t worry about our addiction to things. We don’t acknowledge as superstition the fear we have of not having enough cash, enough property, enough stuff, so we aren’t concerned when anxiety over whether or not we’ll be able to afford this or that creeps into our life.

We’re missing the point. For us, “stuff” has become as magical and as necessary as their multiple gods were to the Athenians of Paul’s time. Between their fears and insecurities, the Greeks had established a pantheon of gods who would protect them. In our society, between our fears and insecurities, we have established a hierarchy of goods, some are better, some are best, and we want to have them all. Where the Athenians built their idols out of gold, we have skipped the necessity of statuary and we worship only the gold itself and what it can provide.

Paul need not preach to us the Good News of Jesus. We’ve heard it, and while we listen on Sunday, we go out into the week and succumb to the allure of our society’s pagan gods and we worship at their altars.

Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good? But even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed.

What in this society do we fear? In a word, “suffering”. And interestingly, along with suffering being very unpleasant, if we closely examine ourselves, we will also find that to us suffering represents some sort of failure. Discounting the results of war, famine, pandemics, natural disasters, and such, when we see the suffering of others, we wonder, what did this person do wrong? We ask the same question if we must suffer, usually accompanied by the second query, “Why me?” We take a dim view of suffering, and are often so confused by it that books have been published to help us understand. Thus, the success of Rabbi Kushner’s book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People.

How many people have become angry with God when misfortune has appeared in their lives? I personally know people who have left the Church because they felt that the suffering they and their family had endured was proof that there was no God or that, if there was, they wanted no part of such a Being. Somehow, they had never heard the news that suffering is an intrinsic part of the Christian faith, and that while we might wish to avoid it, its presence is only another sign of God’s love.

Mother Teresa once told a suffering woman that her suffering came from Jesus loving her so much. “Jesus,” said the Mother Teresa, “is reaching down from the cross and kissing you.” To which the woman responded, “Please ask Him to stop.”

The reassurance that suffering is a blessing doesn’t hold much water with anyone, and especially not in a society like ours, where comfort is prized above all things.

Jesus said to his disciples, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.

Today is Mother’s Day. For most people the word “mother” means comfort and protection from suffering and from all the pains and afflictions the world can fling at us. When we think of “mother”, we think of love, so it can be something of a jolt when we realize Jesus, who we know loves us deeply, never said that He would keep us free from suffering; in fact, for His followers, which includes us, His death on the cross has sanctified suffering for all time. What Jesus tells us in John’s Gospel, is that He will give us an Advocate, a companion, who will stick with us through all suffering, through the bad and the good times, and will abide with us until Jesus Himself returns. And Jesus says something to which we all need to pay particular attention:

This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him

In order to receive this great gift, the Advocate, we need to be less of the world and more of Christ. That’s always the challenge, because we have so many “gods”, and to be less of them, to stop clinging to them, makes us very uncomfortable.

That trying to do “without” causes us deep anxiety can be seen easily when we do not ourselves make the choice to have “less”, but when, through circumstance, “having less” is thrust upon us. Some of us may have experienced or heard of such situations. We have said, or heard others say:

We have no money.

My child is sick.

My best friend died.

I just feel like life is worthless right now.

Court date in May

Really feeling hopeless

Who do we worship, God or mammon? Do we trust in Jesus and His promises to us, or are we anxious for the morrow? Faced with suffering, with loss of job, loss of income, loss of our health or of a loved one, loss of any kind, we tend to become filled with fear. And we justify this because we firmly believe that feeling this way is normal for anyone who is suffering, no matter what the cause. This is the time when, as people of God, as Jesus’ followers, we need to take a deep breath, and remember His promise.

I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live.

When suffering comes, we need to get it together. To look at what we value and at what we hold most dear. We are deeply loved by our Lord and wanted by Him, but if you listen closely to what Jesus says in today’s Gospel, He begins with the word “If”. “If you love me . ..” The choice of who we worship, what we long for, whom we love, is totally ours, and we each need to examine our hearts to see clearly what choice we have made.

They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.

Nowhere in today’s world do we find an altar to the “unknown god”, because we already know His Name, and we know that He loves us. What is required of us is that we love and worship Him in return. The Advocate has arrived as Jesus promised He would, and that Advocate, the Holy Spirit, will help us to be people of faith - but we must choose. For that Spirit to work in us, we must ask for help, help to make our faith strong, and we must willingly surrender ourselves to the Love of God.

Let us Pray:

Lord Jesus we love You and we surrender to Your will. Take all that we are and all that we have and use them according to Your holy purpose. We give ourselves freely and wholly to You. Come Lord Jesus and dwell in our hearts. Amen.