"Yearning for the Unknown" May 21, 2017

John 14: 15-21 Acts 17: 14-32 This week our Associate Pastor came to me with a question from his readings “What is the difference between Pantheism and Panantheism?” Only Presbyterian Ministers would have a conversation like this, right?!! Pantheism was the Religion of the Greeks, who believed in another reality populated by gods. It is said that the streets of Athens were so filled with statues to different gods, that you had to constantly twist and turn to get around all the monuments. Pantheism is a plethora of different gods, with as many gods on Mt Olympus as earth is populated with people. Panantheism, was also Greek, but instead of anthropomorphizing gods, Panantheism believed that God is in all things, god is an ideal, a philosophical belief in beauty being in all things. But if God is in all things, then in nothing specific. Our Christian Faith has elements of Judaism, and Greek Philosophy, and Roman Religion, and Western European Ideals, and American Enlightenment, and our cultural norms. What is at stake in this is, What is the nature of God? What has set the Abrahamic faiths apart, from all the Pantheistic and Panatheistic religions of the world, has been Monotheism. Judaism, Christianity and Islam each believe that there is one God. The difference between the three, being that Judasim knows God to be named YHWH, Adonai, Jehovah or Elohim and the way to God is through the Law of Moses. Islam believes the name of God to be Allah, that Moses, Jesus and Mohammed were prophets, and the way to God is the Law of Koran. Our Scripture lessons today describe that defining Christianity is hard, because Jesus was fully human and fully divine, who himself described God as Father, of the same substance but separate; and while Jesus of Nazareth lived and died and rose again, providing a new Command, everything Jesus said or did fulfills God’s Law. Accordingly, Jesus was in Creation, and God in Christ. To love Christ is to keep Christ’s Command. All too often people try to make this into an if /then clause: If you love me, THEN You will keep my commandments. Meaning if you do not keep Jesus’ Commandments, you are not loving him. Horsepucky! Jesus here is giving them his Commandment, straight forward, without being watered down, Love God and Love One Another, which he then repeats again at the Great Commission. The Unity being that if you truly love God and one another you will fulfill all that is the Law in Jewish Torah and Islamic Koran. Except, Jesus is a realist! For thousands of years human beings have not been able to fulfill the Law. So even if we make it so simple as to replace the LAWs with LOVE, on our own, we still are not able to follow God, so Jesus promises he will not leave us “ORPHANOS.” This is the Greek word from which English gets “Orphaned” but which literally means “yearning for to most basic relationship of normalcy.” I do not think Jesus could have chosen a more ideal word, because when “orphaned” be it by the loss of a parent, or loss of a child, loss of a mentor, teacher, or dream, bereft yearning is what it feels like. You ache for: an intangible, a relationship, an unknown. When a nursing mother hears her infant cry, her body reacts, even among a hundred infants she knows her child’s cry. It is that searching look of a child for their father’s approval and pride, of a father for their child’s accomplishment, relationship, fulfillment. Being left Orphanos, is the Father standing at the end of the dock or the top of the drive willing their Prodigal to return home. Orphanos describes our feeling of in-completion, our need for God. What has been confused throughout centuries is we do not believe in Duality as God, we believe in a Trinity. We do not talk a great deal about the Third Person of the Trinity. The Holy Spirit is what connects God and Christ, so that Jesus can declare God is in him, and Jesus is in God, and can be in us. After the Ascension, Jesus returned to sit at the right hand of God, and the two are One. If God is identified as the Creator and Liberator; Jesus as the Redeemer who suffered and died and rose again; The Holy Spirit is “the Go-Between God” who when Jesus is with God, is the Divine connection with us. As wire is the link between power source and lightbulb; as pipe links the source of water with dry land; as the radar wave unites the transmitter to the receiver; as invisible electronic emissions link a wireless network to a laptop computer; so connects the Holy Spirit between God and us in order that you and I can be Christ’s presence in the world. When describing Christianity, people routinely identify the incarnation of John 3:16: “God so loved the world God gave God’s only begotten Son, not to condemn the world but to redeem the world.” Or, we describe the Crucifixion and Resurrection, in Romans that “No height nor depth, nor angels nor principalities, could keep us from the love of God.” What Jesus is saying here, is the giving of a New Commandment that fulfills all the rest: Love God and Love one another. But also, you will have the Holy Spirit, supporting and guiding, connecting you to God. Not only does Jesus say this in the Gospel of John, but Paul did so to the Greek Philosophers at Athens. The passage begins, that Paul was waiting for others at Athens. However, this waiting is a heavily nuanced passage. If the translator is being negative, Paul was “Distressed because they were so superstitious.” If Positive, the translator describes Paul as “Intrigued because they were so very religious.” Neutral would be to say, Paul was “Keyed Up…” The passage could mean either one. But addressing this, Paul describes having witnessed a monument to an “Unknown God,” this, he claims to be the Holy Spirit, True God. Don Richardson was a Missionary who described that in the 6th Century BC Athens was being decimated by a horrible mysterious plague. After trying everything else, the culture assumed it must be that one of the Greek Gods was angry, but which one as Athens was “the God Capital of the World,” where new Ideas deserved hearing. When all efforts had failed, they hired an outside consultant from the Island of Cyprus, whose name was Epimenides. Epimenides discerned that it was none of the known gods of Athens that were offended. Setting out to find a remedy, Epimenides took a flock of choice sheep, of various colors, deprived of food until they were hungry. Then at the appointed morning, they released the hungry sheep atop Mars Hill, a succulent green pasture. For sheep to not eat, would have been beyond understanding. So Epimenides watched, and to his amazement, several of the sheep did not eat, but lay down in green pastures, beside still waters. Altars were erected where the sheep had lain, dedicated to an Unknown God, and the sheep who had laid there were sacrificed. Immediately the plague stopped. Over the Centuries, these altars and the plague were forgotten, but in a time of reformation one of these altars to an Unknown God was resurrected by Paul as identifying the True God we yearn to know.