Something New -- Sixth Sunday of Easter

Acts 17:16-31

May 10, 2026

            When Brent and I were planning our wedding, we talked about backup plans. We chose a venue in a state park, and we planned for the ceremony to be outside and the reception to be inside. Having an outdoor ceremony meant that we had to consider the possibility of rain, but we knew that we could move the ceremony inside if we needed to. We also knew that because our wedding was in August, it would be hot. So we made sure to have a large cooler with bottles of water for all our guests that would keep everyone hydrated until we went inside where it was air conditioned and it would be nice and cool. What we didn’t think about was that the air conditioning would not be able to keep up with the heat. We also did not reckon with the fact that the venue would not let us turn on the ceiling fans. Had we thought about a backup plan for that, we would have brought our own fans and put them all over the place to help keep people cool. That was a contingency we didn’t plan for. Thank goodness we had our wedding programs printed on hand fans, so folks could keep up with the ceremony as well as fan themselves both outside and inside. But even with the lack of that one backup plan, we were married, which was the best and most important event of the day.

            I’ve learned through experience that backup plans are important to have when you’re planning events like weddings or parties or retreats. You want to have something outdoors, but rain happens so you need to have a backup plan. When I went to Montreat the week after Easter, the conference planners wanted to have a nightly hearth time around an outdoor campfire, but the weather had been so dry there was a burn ban. So, we had hearth time in a large gathering room, and we sat in a large circle as we might have sat around a fire. It was a backup plan.

            Some folks will make backup plans for life. Two friends decide that if they aren’t married by the time they reach a certain age, then they will marry each other. Folks think that they might never have the resources on their own to buy a house, so they pool together with others and buy a house together. These are backup plans. If the original plan doesn’t pan out, then we have a backup plan to use instead.

            I wonder if the people of Athens were also looking for a backup plan when it came to the divine. Our text from Acts begins with Paul waiting for Silas and Timothy to rejoin him in Athens. In the passages before ours, Paul has been driven out of both Thessalonica and Beroea for preaching the gospel in the synagogues there. Now his supporters have gotten him safely to Athens, and it is in Athens that he waits for Silas and Timothy.

            While Paul is waiting, he walks around the city and is distressed to see how full of idols it is. There must have been a humanmade tribute to every possible deity under the sun. So, Paul argued with the folks in the synagogues there as well. And he debated with people in the marketplace, the Plaka, which was the center of Athens. Paul even debated with both Epicureans and Stoics – these were two different groups of people who centered their lives around two distinct philosophies of thought.

            Some of the people who encountered Paul thought he was a “babbler”; just this guy going on and on about this person named Jesus. Other people thought he was a proclaimer of foreign divinities – some other gods from another culture. But this was Athens. Athens was not a seat of military power like Rome, but it was a great city of learning, of philosophy, and a desire for new ideas and understandings. The privileged of Athens wanted to learn about something new. They were eager for new ideas and new trains of thought and Paul seemed to be offering that. Paul is brought to the Areopagus.

            As I understand it, the Areopagus was a setting, just below the Parthenon, where people were allowed to present new ideas for discussion and debate. Paul was not on trial. But he was brought there to account for this new divinity he was proclaiming. I have my own issues with Paul at times, I have to give him this: what Paul says next is a masterclass in rhetoric.

            He stands before the Athenians and says,

            “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’”

            Paul does not insult them. He does not wag his finger at them and scold them. He recognizes their religious tendencies and builds on them. Paul tells the people that what they worship as an “unknown god,” is actually the one Lord, the God of heaven and earth. And this God does not live in shrines made with human hands. This God, the one God, is not captured or held within structures of human design. This God cannot be contained within any object, even within the finest objects of silver and gold. This God, the God, the Lord of heaven and earth, gives life to all mortals, life to all things. This God, the God created all the earth and every living thing within it.

            And Paul goes on to tell them, it is the Lord, the one true God, who mortals search for, even if they don’t realize it. It is the Lord that they grope for. It is the Lord who they long for. Then once again, Paul meets them where they are. He quotes one of their Greek poets,

            “For, ‘In him we live and move and have our being.’”

            I imagine you have heard that phrase before, and I would also say that those words are foundational to our faith. But they are a quote from a Greek poet. Paul builds on their own understanding and proclaims to them that the true God is the very foundation of all life. What they think of as an unknown God is the God, the true God who became incarnate in Jesus the Christ. As one of my friends said in our lectionary group, “the backup plan was the real plan after all.”

            Early in our text we learn that Paul was debating with Epicureans and Stoics. We need to understand that these groups of people were not atheists or without belief. Both groups believed in deities. But the Epicureans, formed around the teachings of Epicurus, were hedonists, which is not what we think of as hedonists. They believed that the only intrinsic good in life was that which gave pleasure. What was intrinsically bad gave pain. So they tried to live in a way that caused more pleasure than pain. Unlike what we might believe from movies, that meant lives that were simple, peaceful, and not based on material goods or wealth. The Epicureans believed that there were two kinds of mental pain: fear of the gods and fear of death. While the Epicureans believed in the gods, they did not believe that they intervened in human existence. They existed in a separate plane far from human life. So, there was not point in fearing the gods.

And the Epicureans were materialists, meaning that they believed that every living thing was made of matter, down to the smallest atom. But once matter died, it ceased to exist. They did not have a belief in an afterlife. So, why fear death when there was nothing beyond death? And why fear the gods, when the gods didn’t bother with humans?

The Stoics based their life and their beliefs on reason. They believed that the universe was designed on reason and logic, so to be stoic was to recognize that whatever happened in life happened because of a reasonable and logical design, even if they did not understand what that design was in the moment. Even if something seemed illogical or unreasonable to their human perspective, if the universe was both logical and rational then there must be some purpose in what was happening. To resist it was to resist the logic of the universe and that caused pain. To accept life as it came was to follow along with the rational design of the larger world.

Both groups of thinkers, along with the other people of Athens, would have been at least confused by what Paul was telling them. Paul proclaimed a God that was the only true God. And this God was involved in the lives of the humans he created. This God was so involved that he became human like them. Not only did he become human in life, but he also became human in death. That must have blown their minds. A god that could die?! A god that died and then lived again?! Talk about something new! As so often happened, the resurrection was the wall that some of the people listening to Paul could not get over. The privileged people of Athens may have longed for new ideas to discuss and deliberate upon, but this must have been newer and stranger than anything they could have possibly imagined.

If were to keep reading, we learn that some people dismissed Paul, They scoffed at him and this idea of one true God who became human, died, and was resurrected. But some folks were intrigued and wanted to know more. But Paul understood that to reach them, he had to speak to them in a way that they could hear. He had to speak to them in their own context. And Paul realized from his observations and his discussions and even his debates, that people were groping for something more than any idol could fulfill. The people were searching for something beyond the gods they thought they knew. Maybe they believed in backup plans, or maybe they knew that there was something in them that was unfulfilled, that there was a space within them that needed a God they did not yet know.

Paul spoke to that space within them. Paul preached to their seeking. Paul proclaimed that their backup plan was the true plan after all.

I don’t think much has changed since Paul preached the good news to the Athenians and now. We are all still searching, still groping for meaning and truth beyond what our senses might tell us. We still live in a world of idols. We make idols of people, of ideas, of things, of hopes and fears. We can even make idols out of religion. We still build our golden calves because we long for security and certainty and a guarantee. We try to create  backup plans for our backup plans, but if we can be still for just a moment, if we can let the voice of God find its way through the din of noise around us, if we can feel God’s presence in both our hearts and our heads, we can make the leap of faith that Paul called for. We put our trust not in gods we make in our own image, but in the God who cannot be contained in boxes of our own making. We can know what was previously unknown. And when we do, our searching hearts find what we have been longing for – the peace of Christ, the something new that God is doing in the midst of us. God is here. God is with us. God is known not unknown. We can lay our backup plans to rest. Thanks be to God.

Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia.”

Amen.