Welcome Good morning, and welcome to worship at Home Street. As we gather for worship, we acknowledge that we are on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabeg, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene Peoples and the homeland of the Métis nation. We offer this acknowledgement as a way of reminding ourselves of our ongoing commitment to reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. As we share words and songs and prayers, we pray that they will be pleasing to God, and gestures of reconciliation. Call to worship Come and celebrate! Shout joyfully to the Lord, your God! Glorify God with your praise! Everything on earth will worship you; they will sing your praises, shouting your name in joyful songs. Come and see what our God has done, what awesome things God has done for us! Let the whole world bless and sing God’s praise. For our lives are in God’s hands. God keeps our feet from stumbling. Prayer God, On this long-weekend Sunday we give you thanks for the beautiful morning. We give you thanks for the freedom we have to worship. We give you thanks for our faith community, scattered, but still united by our common worship and our desire to grow in faith. May the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing to you, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen. Gathering Song He comes to us as one unknown HWB 498 Scripture reading - Acts 17:19-31 This is God’s word to the people. Thanks be to God. Children’s Story – Listening and planting Litany affirming our faith (inspired by Psalm 66, written by Margaret McGee) O God, who made the world and everything in it, we pray with one voice, proclaiming your presence to all the earth. For skeptics and believers, for clergy high and low; For those who seek God at home, at work, in the streets, and in the pews, For all who search for life, come and listen . . . and we will tell you what our God has done for us. We are alive in the spirit. We are saved through water. Because Christ lives, we also live. For we too are God’s offspring. For presidents and prime ministers, for bosses and co-workers For friends and acquaintances; For those who set the course at home, at work, in the streets, and in the pews, For all who have influence, come and listen . . . and we will tell you what our God has done for us. We do not fear what others fear. We proclaim the hope that is in us. Because Christ lives, we also live. For we too are God’s offspring. For friends and lovers, for neighbors and strangers, For those who eat bread at home, at work, in the streets, and in the pews, For all who live in the world, come and listen . . . and we will tell you what our God has done for us. In God, we live and move and have our being. From God, we have life and breath and all things. Because Christ lives, we also live. For we too are God’s offspring. For the sick and troubled, for the fearful and alone, For those in pain at home, at work, in the streets, and in the pews, For all who suffer, come and listen . . . and we will tell you what our God has done for us. We are blessed by your presence. We are filled with the Spirit. Because Christ lives, we also live. For we too are God’s offspring. God of heaven and earth, Companion in life, Spirit of truth, to you alone we turn our eyes and lift our hearts. Amen. Offering God, it is with grateful hearts that we collect these gifts. For the people, and the place, and the ministries of Home Street we are thankful. God, it is with grateful hearts that we share some of these gifts with our wider church community. For the people and ministries of Mennonite Church Manitoba, for our camps, and for our schools, we are thankful. God, it is with grateful hearts that we open ourselves to being shaped by You. May our generosity with finances, and time, and prayer, and talents transform us and build Your kingdom. Amen. Meditation – by Marnie Klassen May only truth be spoken and only truth received. Amen. It seems that lots of people have a love/hate relationship with Paul’s Mars Hill speech. I’ve heard it used to justify colonial ways of sharing the gospel, and I’ve also heard it used as evidence for various forms of universalism. And I can see the temptation of both of these readings. If you just read the text that the lectionary gives us, it looks like Paul shows up and says, “Hey, I know this god you claim to not know! Lemme tell you about him!” Depending how you look at it, this reading can easily go in the direction of Paul trying to convert some Greek thinkers, or Paul telling some Greek thinkers that they already know God. But I’m struck by the way both of these interpretations assume that the Christian reader has done what they need to do, that the good news Paul has for the Athenians is for those other guys. I’ve been thinking a lot about touch lately, and was remembering at Camp Assiniboia last summer when I decided to practice foot washing with the campers. I recall going back and forth about whether it was a good idea. There are lots of different ideas about what the practice means and about how to do it, plus, it’s pretty awkward. Even as I hauled big blue camping jugs of water out to the front of the lodge, I was second guessing whether this was really a good idea. It was too awkward. God wouldn’t show up. We’ll come back to this shortly. If we back way up to last week’s text, Paul (AKA Saul) was throwing stones at Stephen. So between Sunday and now, (or between Acts chapter 7 and 17) Paul has experienced some big changes in order to get where he is, in Athens talking about God the creator and Jesus’ death and resurrection. So he has had a conversion experience (which I’ll let you read about for yourself in Chapter 9) and then ends up pretty far from home, in Athens. Google Maps informs me that it would take 191 hours to get to Athens from Paul’s home in Tarsus by foot and ferry, so it’s safe to say that Paul is in unfamiliar territory. But Paul is also a Roman citizen, and Athens and Tarsus both fell within Roman borders at that point. So then Paul hangs out in the market talking theology with a bunch of philosophers right before our text takes place. And there’s a whole range of responses – some of them are curious, some of them are very argumentative. Which gets us to today’s story; our text is essentially Paul’s response to the local philosophers’ demand: So tell us what you really think. Spending time with this passage over the last little while really made me question some assumptions. Frankly, it made me reimagine Paul. Because even though Paul gets put on trial, he doesn’t get defensive-aggressive; he actually treats the people of Athens with great respect. First he pays them a compliment; “I can see that you are very religious.” I imagine Paul looking around at the various statues and altars in admiration both of the beautiful craftsmanship and the seriousness with which the people obviously take their search for truth. But his respect doesn’t just take the form of a compliment. Paul sees the statue dedicated to AN UNKNOWN GOD and says, “Hey, I know that one!” and proceeds to tell those gathered about her. To call out the good in someone (or in this case, in a whole way of thinking) and then also be able to see where they’re missing the point is a bold act of respect and trust. Paul is trusting those gathered to be able to take it, because he knows they’re smart folks. It’s an expression of respect that comes honestly from someone who has been wrong, and who has changed. At this point know that Paul is far from home but also shares citizenship with the people he’s talking with; he’s been conversing with some Athenian thinkers over the course of several days and now has been brought to the Areopagus to give a more complete account, presumably in front of more people at once. And, we have to remember that Paul never claimed to be a systematic theologian; he was an evangelist, or one whose work is to pass along good news. I can’t help but imagine that if what Paul had to say was good news in Athens, it’s probably good news in Winnipeg, too. If we read this as good news rather than a conversion effort or a commentary on universalism, we have to read actively. And here’s what Paul says: “You know your statue dedicated to AN UNKNOWN GOD? I know him! He’s knowable. And while you try to make gods out of stone, he made you out of dust and love.” I see two invitations that these assertions have for us right now: 1. Step forward. 2. Step back. While Paul admires the Athenian’s search for truth, he sees the tribute to AN UNKNOWN GOD as a sort of insurance policy (“did we miss anyone? Just in case, let’s build one more…”), and thinks the Athenians can do better. I love the way the writer describes the character of the town: “All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.” These are curious folk we’re dealing with, and they’re capable of grappling with a lot of ideas. Paul is calling them out on this lazy approach to mystery. Now I don’t believe that Paul is saying that we can completely figure out God, or that not knowing is bad. Not at all. But on the other end, mystery can be a compelling cop-out. I know I fall into that trap sometimes, and use Welp, we just can’t know, can we? As an excuse to get out of wrestling. Most of us probably aren’t needing to confront the insurance-policy idol in our living room, but we might have other things in our context that we’ve slapped an UNKNOWABLE or UNFIXABLE or TOO HARD label on. Things we’ve been avoiding. Maybe it’s an issue that matters a lot to someone in your life that you haven’t felt up to learning about. Or a family member you’ve been avoiding phoning because oh gosh its’ gonna be awkward. Paul really trusts the people of Athens to be able to put some more language to the God they’re coming to know. And he assures them that God wants them to “seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.” The onus doesn’t fall all on us, but neither does it fall all on God. Nazarene minister John Demuth raises the question: “Do we, as the church, continue to seek out God, or are we convinced that we have found God?” As we step forward into our context and into the pursuit of God, where might we encounter the resurrected Christ? What new life might we find in and amongst the wrestling and seeking we’ve been avoiding? The second invitation is to step back. Paul adamantly tells the Athenian people that God is the giver of life. “In him we live and move and have our being.” When life is unpredictable and the ground we stand on feels unsure, we get scared. Which is natural. But Paul has some good and hard news for us; it's actually not up to us. I wonder what kind of consolation we might find if we were to give control of our days to God rather than experiencing the fear that comes with vague powerlessness. I think of the opening scene of one of my favorite movies, the Milagro Beanfield War, in which an extraordinarily old man hauls himself out of bed, wheezing, and looks in the mirror, only to say: “Thank you God, for letting me have another day.” How might our days look different if we were to step back and let go of our needs for control? So that first week of camp in July, we sat in the late afternoon sun, noisy kiddos and uncomfortable staff, and we washed each other’s feet and hands and we said kind things and blessed each other. And God showed up. We stepped forward into an unknown and awkward space, and then we stepped back and let God give us a gift. The people of Athens in our story want to know God. And Paul says to them: I know God. My God made you and me out of dust and love. So step forward! Step forward into knowing God. And step back. Step back from your desire to make god, because you are made by God. Amen. Sending Song Be Thou my vision HWB 545 Benediction Receive these words of benediction from Paul’s letter to the church in Rome. Now to God who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but is now disclosed, and through the prophetic writings is made known to all the Gentiles, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith—to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever! Amen. Thanks to those who shared their gifts this morning: Meditation – Marnie Klassen Worship leader – Phil Campbell-Enns |