Lord of the Streets, Houston
May 10, 2026
6 Easter, A
Acts 17:22-31
Psalm 66:7-18
John 14:15-21
When he was in Athens, Paul commended the Athenians for being very religious, and then he pointed out that there weren’t many gods over the earth, but one God who made all of humanity. Even if we pray “to an unknown god,” he told them, we are all praying to one God who made all. Rather than thinking that some of us are the children of one god, while others are the children of another god, we are all child of one God throughout the earth.
The thought that there are different gods that we pray to is one of the reasons various tribes and nations fight with one another, because they all have their own gods whom they believe made them, and so they are better than those other people, made by another god who isn’t as good.
It’s harder to hate, and fight, and kill people who are children of the same God as you, harder to hate, and fight, and kill your brothers and sisters. So, Paul let the Athenians know that they were not children of a different god than the people of Israel. There was no coming conflict or fight between them. They were all brothers and sisters of one God.
I’d love to say that has been neatly cleared up in the couple thousand years since Paul spoke to the Athenians, but we all know it hasn’t been. People of different religions still fight with one another, and even though we may not actually believe that different gods made different people of different religions, we sure do act like it sometimes, don’t we?
Hell, we sometimes even act like people of different parts of Christianity were made by different gods. Some parts of the church try to take over or steal land and buildings from other parts of the church, and that’s here in the United States in the last 15 years. Some parts of the church say other parts of the church are going to Hell, because some parts of the church are so focused on how to avoid Hell when you die that they believe avoiding Hell is actually the point of the Gospel. It isn’t. That’s not salvation.
Many have taken that Gospel and fearfully, pridefully turned it into something awful, “Believe in Jesus or go to Hell,” but that’s not the Gospel.
God became human to share with us in every aspect of our lives, including our sin, which Jesus joined to God on the cross, and then God joined with us in death, and then God joined with us in new life after death. Nothing can separate us from God, and God calls all of us to repent, to turn from the ways that we harm one another and harm ourselves, God calls us to repent of those ways and instead follow ways of justice, peace, and love. Turn around and walk with God, and God will walk with you. God will even seek you out and call you to turn around and take a walk with him, and that’s everybody, not just those who claim the name of Christian, for we are all God’s children. That’s the Gospel.
How could we possibly take the magnificent news that we are all God’s children and turn that into threats of eternal torture along with a “get out of torture free” card? How could we possibly take the magnificent news that God is loving, gracious, and forgiving, that God does forgive us of our sins and is constantly inviting us to turn around and walk again in ways of life, rather than in ways of death, how could we possibly take that good news and turn it into threats of eternal torture along with a “get out of torture free” card?
Well, somewhere along the line we got afraid. Paul said, “Repent for God has made a day on which all people will be judged.” Jesus talked about the day of judgment in which he would judge all people based on how we treat one another. As the church, we took sin and the day of judgment seriously, and we took the need for repentance seriously, but we got afraid about how exactly that works. Rather than simply trusting in God that God’s forgiveness works, trusting that God’s judgment is good, we began trying to define it, trying to assure ourselves that we are on the good end of God’s judgment. We gave ourselves various doctrine and dogma which defined one group as definitely forgiven an so other groups had to definitely not be forgiven because they are different than this group. So, we started having in-groups and out-groups.
Those parts of the church don’t believe quite right, so they may not really be saved because they’re not really following Jesus. Well, no actually it’s these parts of the church that aren’t really gonna be saved because they aren’t believing quite right.
Well, once those fights started, we ended up again each following a bit of a tribal god, rather than the God of all creation. Sure, each group believes in the God of all creation, but each group believes in a tribal way. That group doesn’t believe in the same God we do, even though we all believe in the same God. I doubt many Christian groups would actually say that other Christians believe in a different God, and yet in our fighting amongst different groups in the Church, we’ve reverted to tribalism.
I fall into that very trap, repeatedly. I talk and think about some parts of the church like they are not quite a part of the church. Some parts of the church and their beliefs in Jesus are so different than mine that I hardly recognize the Jesus they’re talking about; it certainly seems like a different God, but even so, however differently we believe about Jesus, however differently we believe about God, we are still all children of the one God of creation.
Even those who call God by a different name, who worship a different named God, those who worship multiple gods, those who don’t worship God at all, what we here Paul reminding us is that there is one God over all of us and so we are all brothers and sisters, children of that one God. There’s something very beautiful about the inscription Paul noted on the Athenian shrine, “To an unknown god.” Yes, we know God because God has become known to us. God has been revealed to us as the human person of Jesus; God has been revealed to us through Torah; God has been revealed to us through the law and the prophets, and yet there is still a pretty huge amount of unknown to God.
When we can admit there are aspects of God that are unknown, then we can more easily see others as also being children of that one known and yet unknown God. When we can trust in God, with the unknown parts of God, rather than trust in our small, fearfully comforting, exact definitions of God, then we can remember what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians, “we are the Body of Christ and individually members of it.”
Not just those who believe similarly. We are all the Body of Christ and individually members of it, and we don’t get to say some parts of the church aren’t really parts of the church. That goes for the rest of humanity too, even those who are not part of the Church. We are members of one another, so when we spend our time and efforts condemning those who are different than we are, we truly are condemning ourselves.
There is a day when all people will be judged, and they will be judged for how they treated one another. We will be judged for how we treat one another. How exactly will that judgment work? We don’t know. How exactly will God’s forgiveness through Jesus work? We don’t know.
We’re not meant to know. We’re meant to trust. We’re meant to find that the ways of Jesus really do bring about greater justice, peace, and love in our lives, and so we’re meant to repent of ways we turn away from justice, peace, and love, and follow Jesus in ways that lead to justice, peace, and love. With repentance, cast all of your anger, hurt, and hatred on God, and let God heal you.
For those you hate, give that hate to God. Pray that God will inflict all sorts of vengeance on them, like we hear in Psalm 137. After that, maybe the next day, pray that God will bless them, as we hear Jesus teaching in Matthew 5. In this way, we’re giving the truth of our pain and hurt over to God; we’re giving our righteous anger over to God. Then, we’re also recognizing the common humanity of all people. We’re repenting of the ways we harm others, and we’re seeking to follow in God’s ways. We don’t know where that will lead, and we’re not meant to. We’re meant to trust in God who is known and who is at the same time, unknown.
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