'A'   //   Easter 6   //   4-27-08   //   Celebration of Worship, Northside Presbyterian Church

 

Scriptures      Acts of the Apostles 17:21-31       John 14:15-21

 

 

 

“To an unknown god.” Thus reads the altar the Apostle Paul encounters as he investigates the worship objects of the people of ancient Athens.

 

I think I’ve seen that altar around Ann Arbor, too. Haven’t you?

 

Perhaps we can find it closer to home than we would wish.

 

“To an unknown god.” Certainly, the God we worship often goes incognito to us. And yet, I wonder, among the morass of objects the ancient Athenians and modern Americans would have us worship, if the mystery of the transcendent is even on the table here. I wonder if worshiping the unknown conveys more a fear of the unknown – a fear that the transcendent is not as mysterious as it seems distant? And therefore we must desperately cast our bread upon waters we fear may be really an eternal void?

 

 

Psychologists and social scientists often call such a survival technique disassociation. I have heard many lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons share their experiences of having an acute awareness – beginning in their youth – that somewhere outside of their head, it was as if they were watching themselves, say, walking down the street. Always aware, monitoring themselves to do things in a certain way, lest their real identity be revealed.  Never really integrated ... never really whole. Setting up their own altar, if you will, to a strangely externalized conscience. "To an unknown god".

 

Survivors of child abuse suffer a similar travail. Some of you may know the story of the contemporary literary giant Maya Angelou. She remained mute between the ages of seven and thirteen after being raped by her mother's boyfriend. Angelou’s poem “To Beat the Child Was Bad Enough” describes the disintegration – and the consequent forced externalization – of her human soul quite poignantly:

 

            A young body, light

            As winter sunshine, a new

            Seed's bursting promise,

            Hung from a string of silence

            Above its future.

            [The chance of choice was never known.]

            Hunger, new hands, strange voices,

            Its cry came natural, tearing.

 

            Water boiled in innocence, gaily

            In a cheap pot.

            The child exchanged its

            Curiosity for terror. The skin

            Withdrew, the flesh submitted.

 

            Now, cries make shards

            Of broken air, beyond an unremembered      

            Hunger and the peace of strange hands.

 

            A young body floats.

            Silently.¹                     

While many of us do not suffer such powerful metaphorical experiences of disassociation in our lifetimes, it is not overstating the situation, I feel, to recognize that more and more in our manic, 24/7 world, we find ourselves outsourcing our faith to unknown gods. Gods so immediate, yet so distant. Gods we can readily manipulate into the trivial melodies or pious liturgies or self-protective policies and polities of our lives. All along fitting our wearied souls for their manuals of operations, rather than following with wondering hearts through our own ministries of outreach.

These unknown gods – the church calls them idols – ceaselessly beckon us to worship them. To disassociate ourselves from our daily struggles and joys – not to mention the struggles and joys of God's world as a whole. Such gods seem secure … risk-free … coping, while never confronting ... distantly safe, never mysteriously dangerous. Coaxing us not into lives joyful and whole – God forbid! They numb us, instead, into a quiescent and separate obedience.

 

So she is named: identified in John’s gospel today, a preview of Pentecost.

 

So she is named: paraklesia in the Greek, sometimes translated as Paraclete.

 

So she is named: The One, Jesus promises, who will not leave us orphaned.

 

Interesting, isn’t it, that long before this gospel had been composed, a very similar word, also of great significance, had appeared in the earliest Christian lexicon. That word was ekklesia. The word meaning Church.

 

The similarity between the Greek words for Holy Spirit and Church: is it any accident? Paraklesia – faithfully translated as Advocate or Counselor – literally means "called to the side of". Ekklesia – Church – literally means "called out".

 

A people, called out. A power, called to the Church’s side. The Advocate. The Counselor.

 

 

In other words: You are being called out from the world today as part of this ekklesia – this people called out for the world. And as you are being called out from amidst this people called out for, the power of God’s presence – the Advocate – the Counselor – will be called formally to your side.

 

Let the discipleship choice for you, then, be this: Either to embrace this guide in your walk with Jesus – a guide made known to you through the hands of the communion that will soon be laid upon you. Or, you can outsource your faith – your trust – to some unknown god promising you security but no serenity … relief, but no freedom.

 

This past week, Deb Davies shared with me a story of a group of twelve patients she and another chaplain gathered together in a psychiatric unit of a hospital. The two chaplains asked the twelve patients what they felt about God … about religion … about faith.

 

One woman’s response was especially memorable, Deb relates. Every Saturday night this patient’s father – a minister – would come into her bedroom and, let’s just say, have his way with her. The next day, she would sit in a pew and listen to the same man preaching the Word of God.

 

Did the trauma of these events cause this woman to disassociate from daily reality in order to survive? Certainly. Did she find it necessary to outsource her faith to an unknown god? So it would seem … So it would seem.

 

But apparently, the trauma did not cause her to do this. Not entirely, anyway. It did not cause her to disassociate from a God who was with her during it all. A God “not far from each of us”, in the Apostle Paul’s words today – the One, he adds, “in (whom) we live and move and have our very being?”

 

Apparently not. Indeed, as Deb shared with me, “All twelve in the group suffered things we could not imagine. Yet, all twelve remained open to the presence of God in their lives.”

 

The Advocate. The Counselor. The presence of God, called to our side.

 

 

 

¹Maya Angelou, Poems (Bantam, 1986), p. 143.

 

 

Loving God, uphold Martha and Matthew by your Holy Spirit. Daily increase in them your gifts of grace: the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the awe of you, the spirit of joy in your presence.

 

Gracious God, you have called Martha and Matthew from their individual lives of disassociation to the radical association of this covenant community. In the midst of this ekklesia, release unto them now your paraklesia. And in the midst of your paraklesia, release unto them now your freedom from the fear of ever again being alone.

 

Freed from this fear, may they made in their discipleship journey free for the fears and the tears, the joys and the jubilations, of all they would serve.

 

In Jesus’ name, and on the Advocate’s way, we pray. Amen.

*        *        *

When we are afraid, we disassociate. We hide behind external authorities – and build altars to gods unknown -- to legitimate our lives: our positions, our projects, our careers ... our causes. 

 

Sisters and brothers, hear this: Building altars to an unknown god will not faithful disciples make. What will? Jesus reminds us today what will:  Knowing God’s presence beside us, in the context of this church among us.

 

So let us go and be the ekklesia, to convey the presence of paraklesia, to those whom we would meet.

 

Let us be called out into the world in peace, to love and serve the Lord.