God's Restless Heart

Text: Acts 17:22-31

Standing on Mars Hill, called in Greek Areopagus—meaning the rock of the war god Ares—Paul is impatient. He has been driven out of Philippi and Thessalonica and the city of Berorea, and has been spirited away by his friends to cool his heels in Athens. But Paul, who cannot sit still for long, starts to chatter away in the market square about one thing and another, where one thing is Jesus and the other thing is God. He makes an impression: the Greeks, it says in the book of Acts from which this story comes, call him a babbler. The word in Greek describes the noisy chattering of flocks of small birds. So that’s how some saw Paul. But others think it’s worth a listen, and they gather on Mars Hill to hear him.

There is something about Paul and his words that draw them in. Why would these learned Greeks bother to listen to this noisy Jewish/Roman/Palestinian bird, aside, as it may be, from idle curiosity about some new idea? It may be that they, as Paul later says, are fumbling in the dark, as we all are, looking to touch God with their own hands. They wish to fill, as someone described it, an existential abyss. There is a emptiness that we all feel, a cosmic longing for something that completes us. Saint Augustine, who so strongly influenced Martin Luther, said of God: “You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” This restlessness, plus I’m sure Paul’s charisma and his way with words, open their ears to him.

Unlike Peter’s speech at Pentecost, which we’ll hear in a couple of weeks, Paul’s cannot call on the salvation history of the Jews to convince the Athenians. It is not their history. He cannot use jargon. He cannot assume sympathy. Instead, he gives a speech that lays down the fundamentals of his faith. This is a tiny treatise on monotheism—a foreign concept to the Greeks. Paul describes a single, timeless God, cosmic and intimate at the same time. He tells them three things about his God: who God is, what God does, and what we do in response to God.

Who Paul says God is.

God is creator of the universe. All things were made by him. Without him there is nothing made. God is very large. All the substance of the universe, all those stars and all that energy, all that knowledge that is embodied in the heavens—God made all that. God spoke the world into being: let there be light. God took chaos and made some things out of it. The order of the universe and the laws that govern it are embodiments of God.

But more than creator of the universe, God is an enthusiast. God is a fan of the universe. After creating each part, it says in Genesis—a word that means birth—God pronounced it good. We exist in a universe which at its core, in its DNA, in its essence, is goodness.

God does not live, Paul says, in shrines made by humans. God does not live in little boxes like temples or churches. God does not reside in idols or in symbols or even in words. These things can lead us to God and remind us of God, but they are not God. We do not worship them. By the same token, we do not need to maintain God, to feed God, to bring offerings to God, to appease God. We do not have to please God—as though he needed anything, Paul says.

Yet even though God is big and old and self-sufficient, God is at the same time small and spirited and intimately connected with the lives of people. God is not far from each of us, Paul says. God is neither standoffish nor condescending. God is as close to us as our parents, our family. We are, it says, we are God’s offspring.

What Paul says God does.

God gives life and all things. God takes creation and animates it with life. God organizes substance and energy into biology and consciousness. God takes time and organizes it into history. In other words, God takes things and organizes them into stories. Jordan Mueller, a member of Faith, did a research project a few months ago in which he counted the occurrence of each word in various Bible versions. In all cases, the most common word was—no surprise here—God (or Lord, or Jehovah). And the second most common word was “says.” God said, the Lord spoke. God, as Paul notes, allots times and boundaries by talking about them.

What Paul says we do in the face of this creating, speaking God.

We try to find God. We search for God. We try to fill the abyss, the empty space inside of us that seems to belong to God. It is as if we were created with this spot in us just so that God could fill it, reside in us. We search for God, Paul says, and we grope for God. A word that is perhaps better translated by other versions of the Bible as “feel after” or “reach out for.” As someone who is blind might reach ahead, generally and imperfectly seeking something specific and necessary.

And in the end, finding it. Finding God. For all the mystery and majesty, God can be found. This is a radical notion, meaning that it is at the root of our faith. This God, who is big and little, far and near, awesome and intimate. This God, who organizes existence, and creates patterns out of chaos and stories out of moments. This God to whom we owe our existence and our breath. This God wants to be found. God likes us, and God wants us to be near. God longs for us to be near as much as we long for it.

We live and move and have our being in God, Paul quotes a Greek poet to the Athenians. The Athenians agree with that much. But it is more than being like some mortal fish swimming in a Godly sea. In the experience that changed his life, that made him an apostle and missionary, Paul learned that God and humans desire each other fervently. God may be unbounded by space and time, but God is not without passion. It is as if God also knows an emptiness which is filled only by God’s creatures, and that God and creation, God and we, live in each other. Our reaching out is matched by God’s.

I am in my father and you in me and I in you, Jesus says to his disciples. We dwell in each other. Perhaps God’s presence among us means that God’s heart is restless, too.