Trusting God as Known and Unknown

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
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.

Salvation is coming to find that there actually is only one God who made all of us, that we actually are all children of the same God, brothers and sisters with one another.

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.

“In returning and rest we shall be saved. In quietness and confidence shall be our strength.”

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets Episcopal Church
May 14, 2023
6 Easter, Year A
Acts 17:22-31
1 Peter 3:13-22
John 14:15-21
Psalm 66:7-18

“In returning and rest we shall be saved. In quietness and confidence shall be our strength.”

Has anyone else ever found themselves worshipping an idol, or is it just me? Interesting Sunday when the priest tells you he’s been worshipping idols, but I figure I should be honest about that when the sermon topic includes idol worship. Now, in our reading from Acts, Paul was talking about what we often think of as idols, little statues of gold or wood, and no, I’ve not bowed down and prayed to a little statue made of gold or wood. 

It was bronze…kidding. 

When Paul saw all of the things the Athenians had for their various religions, he saw idols, little statues, and he saw an altar to “an unknown God.” Paul let them know that God was not actually unknown, and pointed out that God is not anything like a little statue. God is not something that we make. 

God is, in fact, beyond all of creation. As vast as the universe is, all of the universe is contained within God. Anything that we could make or do is contained within God, for as Paul said, “In God we live and move and have our being.” Rather, than something we make, God made us and all of creation so that we would search for God and perhaps grope for God and find God.

Union with God is the deepest desire of our souls, and God is always united to us. The trick of the devil is not to separate us from God; that’s impossible. The trick of the devil is to have us think that we’re separated from God and then to think that something else will fill that void. 

In the Garden of Eden in the second story of creation, we find desire for knowledge as the first idol. Remember, God told the humans not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but the serpent told them that they actually should eat it, told them that God had lied to them. The serpent tricked them into thinking that their union with God was broken and gone. Then the serpent let them think that the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, would somehow replace their union with God, would satisfy their longing for union with God. Their union with God wasn’t actually broken, but the serpent convinced them it was and then lied to them about how they could fix their longing. 

Classic marketing strategy on the serpent’s part. Here’s a problem you didn’t know you had; now you can fix it by purchasing this.

Our souls want union with God. We actually have union with God, but our hurts and fears, our anxieties and traumas often keep us from realizing the unity we have. We feel a deep longing for peace. We feel great disquiet within ourselves, and we long comfort, for soothing, for some way to know that we are ok or to stop caring that we are not. In our hurts and fears, our anxieties and traumas, we seek all sorts of things which we think will fix us or fill us. 

Some seek money and power, never having enough, even when they’ve got more than they could need in multiple lifetimes. Others simply have enough, and yet they still fret constantly, worried about the future and if there will be enough. In either case, money can become an idol when it becomes our focus in soothing all our fears and anxieties. That’s one of the kinds of idols I was talking about earlier. If only I had enough not to worry about money, well then, I’d be ok. 

We have countless idols, not statues of gold and wood, things that we think will help soothe our souls. Being right and making sure we can prove others wrong can be an idol. Hanging on to anger and resentment can be an idol. Finding fault in others to make ourselves feel better can be an idol. The what ifs of the past or the if onlys of the future can be idols. Numbing and escaping reality can be an idol. 

So, now when I ask, “has anyone else ever found themselves worshipping an idol,” maybe you get my meaning a bit more? The kinds of idols I’m talking about: money, more, being right, resentment, anger, escape, what if, if only, numbing out…these kinds of things are idols I’m guessing all of us find ourselves turning to. 

My point is not, “Oh, we’re terrible idolaters, how awful of us.” My point is that we are hurting, and we tend to seek help in ways that don’t actually help us all that much. We unwittingly believe the serpent’s lie that our union with God is broken and any number of these other things will fix it. 

The truth is, “In God we live and move and have our being.” God is with us, among us, around us, in us, and through us all the time. So, when we set our minds on other things to fix us, we ignore the life all around us. When we turn to the idols of money and more; the idols of being right, resentment, anger; the idols of escape, what if, if only, and numbing out, when we turn to those idols, we block out God in whom we live and move and have our being. When we turn to these idols, we block out the peace we can have by turning to God in whom we live and move and have our being. 

I was talking with a gentleman a while back, seeking some peace, and we talked about prayer and meditation as ways to be with God, rather than disassociate from our fears and anxieties. 

We talked about having a rhythm of prayer. Rhythm has been found to help heal trauma. Our bodies are wired for rhythm. Our breath, our heartbeats, the steps we take, all in rhythm. There are the rhythms of the sun and the moon, night and day, the rhythms of the seasons. We’ve separated ourselves from a lot of these natural rhythms in modern society, and I believe that adds to our stress. So, adding in some rhythm of prayer can help heal our bodies, spending time with God in whom we live and move and have our being. 

In the Episcopal Church, we have a rhythm of prayer. Eucharist every Sunday. We also have daily prayer: morning, noon, evening, and night. Following this rhythm of prayer helps bring rhythm back into our lives and helps bring us into constant awareness of God’s presence with, and around, and within us. 

Another way to spend time in awareness of God meditation, specifically a meditation prayer called Centering Prayer. In Centering Prayer, you spend time in silence, focusing on your breathing, simply being in the present moment, aware of God’s presence around and within you. 

The way it works is you sit in silence for a few minutes, or up to twenty minutes, and you simply breathe. Before you begin, you choose a “sacred word,” generally something related to faith: God, Jesus, Love. Mine is Peace. The sacred word is used to draw us back to the center and back to the breath. As we sit in silence, thoughts will come, as thoughts tend to do, and when thoughts come, we say our sacred word in our minds to let go of the thoughts and draw us back to the present, to the breath.  

Centering Prayer is a way of letting go of our thoughts, simply experiencing the quiet (or the noise) of the present. Simply experiencing the quiet of breathing, of life around us. Simply experiencing God in whom we live and move and have our being.

The result is peace. 

Dwelling not in the past or the future, but simply dwelling in the present, focusing on the breath, breathing God in and out, we find peace. 

Rather than disassociate because of hurt and trauma, rather than use various idols, we can seek rhythm of prayer and meditation. We can seek to know and live unity with God, for it is God in whom we live and move and have our being. Union with God is the deepest desire of our souls, and despite the devil’s lie, we are still united with God. We always have been. When we let go our idols, when we turn to rhythm of prayer and meditation, we help our bodies realize the union with God that is always there. The union with God that is always with us. The union of God that brings us peace.