Sermon of May 1, 2005
Presented by Rev. Chuck Ericson
Scripture lesson: Acts 17:16-31

“So Much to Say... So Little Time”

I know what time it is (after 11 a.m. – an hour after worship began!). You’re going to get this sermon briefly but concisely. There aren’t going to be any long stories about my teachers in grammar school or other inspiring things I can come up with; you’re just going to get it straight. This happens once in a while, but I really think it’s good, especially for our children, to see a baptism in our church and to see people joining our church, and participating in communion. It’s a little long once in a while, with lots of prayer concerns and lots of important announcements.

As I read and re-read this passage a few times in the past couple of weeks, I thought there are 3 points that came up that are important to us and are guides for our lives.

One has to do with how we choose the words we speak.   How we decide what we’re going to say when we open our mouths and words are about to come out. You see, speaking is prominent in this passage. At one point, the others refer to Paul as someone who’s considered a babbler; someone who’s just “blah, blah, blah…” – talking like that. That’s not what Paul’s doing, but that’s how some people are perceiving his attempts to spread the good news. In another place it says the Athenians (the citizens of Athens ) and the other foreign people living there have nothing better to do than talk about the latest things going on, in other words - to gossip.  One of the possible explanations of what that means is that people just stand around all day and gossip.  So the message I get is that one thing we should have guiding us in our Christian lives is to be careful that the words we choose are good words, are uplifting words and words of substance, not things that are considered babbling or meaningless. And certainly not things that are considered gossipy.  Gossip is a horrible thing most of the time. Once in awhile we say nice things about people, but sometimes we deteriorate into talking about things we shouldn’t be talking about behind other people’s backs. I think it’s a good reminder that in living the Christian life, we should speak about things that are positive, that lift up others, that encourage others, that guide others, that speak well of others, and not just little bits of news that can get passed on from person to person, and might not be that complimentary of the person in question, and might not make the gossiper look all that good either. So that’s one lesson here is not to be a babbler or a gossiper, but to choose words carefully that we speak about one another and let them be words of substance and let them be positive.

A second message that I get here is to remember that we all come from God. That’s the verse I get tripped up on when I try to read it, because I don’t get the punctuation, or the lack of punctuation. It says from one, from the Garden of Eden or from Adam and Eve, come all the people of creation. No matter how we’ve put people behind boundaries of nations or separated people by religious doctrines or cultures or whatever, but to remember that our faith teaches us that we all – all people on the earth – are creations of God and come from God. In this time when it seems like there is a lot of animosity between nations and when there’s trouble in the United Nations, and when religious groups can’t get along without infighting, to remember that those we get in conflict with once in a while, those who we don’t understand, or who we misunderstand – all come from God just as we do. It’s not in the world, the children of God against the children of evil. It’s not the children of light against the children of darkness. We are all of God. We are all God’s creation and we come from the same source. And we’d do well to treat each other that way. A large part of the success of this nation’s Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s was Martin Luther King’s deep belief that you don’t treat someone who hates you with hatred in return, but you treat them as a child of God and someone to be respected, even those who are doing evil to you.  He believed, at the core of his being, that we are all children of God, and to remember that as Martin Luther King taught and as Paul teaches in this passage, is something important and critical for us today, if we are ever to have peace and true justice in our world.

And the last thing is to believe that no matter where we are that God is there. It’s a simple message but it’s a good reminder. Paul says to the Athenians that this God is not in temples made of human hands or in shrines made of human hands; he doesn’t mean that he’s not in churches, and meeting houses, and synagogues and mosques and so forth. Paul is saying that this God isn’t just there – God is in those places, but in everywhere else as well. In synagogues as well, and in the marketplace in Athens , and in that altar that was inscribed with “to an unknown God.”  Every landmark, every place, every thing we behold in his creation becomes an opportunity to know that God is in our midst. God is in our midst when we seek bread and wine (or grape juice) at our communion; God is in our midst as we observe a baptism, or when new members join our church. But God is in our midst in all the places that our lives take us. As I was thinking about the trip we took a few weeks ago as mentioned in our joys and concerns, I saw God as young people and adults hiked down the Grand Canyon and observed the absolute majesty of creation. I saw God in that. I saw God in the laughter and other stuff going on in the vans as we were driving around and trying to maintain our sanity. I saw God as members of our group visited a museum at Cook College where Christ was represented on a cross, but in Native American garb. A different image than what we are used to, but one that makes us think about how the spirit and reality of Christ transcends all cultures and all people. God is in our midst everywhere we look; all we have to do is look.

And the good news today is that a powerful message can reach our hearts, even if it is very succinct once in awhile. And Paul’s brief experience, I think, gives me something to take home, and I hope you, too. The good news today is that if we believe that God is indeed everywhere, and if we believe that everyone is of God, then the words we speak will flow out of us in love, and will not be babbling. They will be words of love, words that seek to build one another up, words that seek to build peace among religious communities and among the peoples of the world.

Amen. Let us pray.

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