BEING - A REFLECTION

The  Sixth  Sunday  of  Easter 

      ‘In him we live and move and have our being.’
          

THE PSALM

Psalm 66:7-18

7 Bless our God, you peoples; *

make the voice of his praise to be heard;

8 Who holds our souls in life, *

and will not allow our feet to slip.

9 For you, O God, have proved us; *

you have tried us just as silver is tried.

10 You brought us into the snare; *

you laid heavy burdens upon our backs.

11 You let enemies ride over our heads;

we went through fire and water; *

but you brought us out into a place of refreshment.

12 I will enter your house with burnt-offerings

and will pay you my vows, *

which I promised with my lips

and spoke with my mouth when I was in trouble.

13 I will offer you sacrifices of fat beasts

with the smoke of rams; *

I will give you oxen and goats.

14 Come and listen, all you who fear God, *

and I will tell you what he has done for me.

15 I called out to him with my mouth, *

and his praise was on my tongue.

16 If I had found evil in my heart, *

the Lord would not have heard me;

17 But in truth God has heard me; *

he has attended to the voice of my prayer.

18 Blessed be God, who has not rejected my prayer, *

nor withheld his love from me.

THE FIRST LESSON

Acts 17:22-31

Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “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.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said,

‘For we too are his offspring.’

Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”

THE SECOND LESSON

John 14:15-21

Jesus said, ”If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.

”I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”

A HOMILY

By 

Norm Wright

This is a portion of a homily I delivered on May 21, 2017 at Christ Episcopal Church. 

+In the Name of that Being in which we live, move and have our being+

It’s not every Sunday one can give a homily based on Greek legend, Geek mythology, and the New Testament. So I couldn’t pass up this opportunity to do so.

In order to fully appreciate our first lesson from Acts 17, we need to know why Paul addressed the Athenians at the Areopagus and why he quotes two poems about the Greek god, Zeus.  The author of Acts, Luke, likely assumed that everybody of his day, two thousand years ago, would have known why, but knowledge can get lost in two thousand years.  So let’s take a moment to review:

The Areopagus is a rock outcropping in Athens that was used in Paul’s time for conducting public trials.  Here the Athenians wanted to discern if Paul was introducing a new religion into their city, as Paul’s preaching about Jesus and his resurrection seemed to indicate.  Introducing a new religion was considered corruption and treated as a serious crime in ancient Athens; a charge that resulted in the death of Socrates in 399 BCE. 

On his way to the Areopagus, Paul passes an altar to “The Unknown God,” the history of which Paul uses, along with the two early Greek poems, to build his defense that he was not introducing a new religion in Athens.

The first poet quoted is Epimenides, who wrote a poem called, “Cretica.”  In "Cretica," Epimenides makes the case to his fellow Cretans that the king of the Greek gods, Zeus, was very much alive as evident in their being alive, in spite of their having built a symbolic tomb declaring Zeus dead:

                        They fashioned a tomb for you, holy and high one,

                        Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies. 

                        But you (Zeus) are not dead: you live and abide forever,

                        For in you we live and move and have our being[1]

As a side note, the line about Cretans being liars is quoted, verbatim,  in Paul’s letter to Titus (1:12) and is the basis for what is known as Epimenides’ Paradox which states that, if being a Cretan himself, Epimenides, in calling Cretans liars, is also a liar by telling a truth applicable to himself.

In fact, the altar to The Unknown God has a close connection to Epimenides.   According to legend, during the time of the great Athenian law giver, Solon, the Athenians suffered a horrendous plague attributed to an act of treachery they committed on people they granted asylum to and then killed. To rid themselves of the resulting plague, they tried appeasing their gods through sacrifice, but nothing was working. 

So they approached the Oracle at Delphi who informed them that there was a god they failed to appease.  When they asked which one, she said she didn’t know, but they should send for Epimenides, a prophet in Crete, who would help them.  So they did.

When Epimenides arrives in Athens he comments that they must be very religious because of the many gods and goddesses they have.  He told them there is a good and great unknown god who was smiling on their ignorance but was willing to be appeased. When they perform the proper rituals throughout the city, the plague is ended and they erected altars to this unknown god throughout Athens. [2]

The second “poet” Paul quotes is the philosopher Aratus, from his work Phenomenon:

… always we all have need of Zeus. For we are also his offspring…[3]

Avoiding the name Zeus, Paul infers, via his reference to the Unknown God, the philosophical idea of a Superior God whose nominal identity is simply “God” which we monotheists have adopted.   In my opinion, this is the best definition of God and our relationship to God found anywhere. God is the active force of all that is, has been, and will be, and we are the incarnate manifestations of that activity. We live because God is living, we move because God is moving, we are because God is.  This concept of everything existing in God – panentheism – is found in Paul’s understanding of the Risen Christ.  Jesus as the Risen Christ is, in Paul’s theology,  the cosmic nexus between God and humankind.

Paul’s personal encounters with Jesus occurred in his visions of the Risen Christ.  For Paul, the Resurrection was the reset point of God’s original relationship with us. The risen Jesus Christ is declared by Paul to be the first born of a new creation who, as a man was sown a physical body and, as the Christ was raised a spiritual body as stated in his first letter to the Corinthians (15).

* * * * * * * * * *

REFLECTION

Paul’s use of Epimenides’ definition of Zeus and Aratus’ conclusion that we are Zeus’ offspring found a place in Christianity where it became a definition for God.  It has remained there ever since.  We find it expressed in our prayers and in our hymns.  There is an egalitarianism in that definition which resonates with the teachings of Jesus and the whole of Scripture.  

Paul’s understanding of Epimenides’ definition worked its way into what he described as the Body of Christ.   This egalitarian understanding of the Body of Christ is expressed in Paul’s letter to the Galatians where he wrote, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Gal. 3:28).  

This truth-based fact that is supported in all of Jesus’ teaching is currently finding expression in TV commercials during this pandemic that remind us,  “We’re all in this together.”    This is the truth inherent in the poetry of Epimenides and Arastus.  It is a truth that allowed the Athenians to accept Paul’s message and allowed Paul to walk away from the Areopagus a free man.

If we can fully embrace this truth and act accordingly, we will be set free in enumerable ways.  We will be free to work with others in meeting the needs of all.  If we fully embrace this truth we will be free to put aside self interest on both a personal and a national level, and seek solutions with others around the world to the benefit of all.  

In all things, God’s will is to engage us in the reset that began with the risen Christ; to be one in God and to be caught up in that Love which pervades all things. 

O Love Divine, reset our hearts and minds in the risen Christ, that in you we may truly live, that in you we may truly move, and that in you we may truly find our being.   

AMEN

[1] Translated by Prof. J. Rendel Harris in a series of articles in the Expositor (Oct. 1906, 305–17; Apr. 1907, 332–37; Apr. 1912, 348–353;  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epimenides

[2] “To An Unknown God,” Christians in Crete, Connecting God’s Family http://christiansincrete.org/news/to-an-unknown-god/

[3] “Phenomenon” translated by G.R. Mair; http://www.theoi.com/Text/AratusPhaenomena.htm

The Bible texts of the Old Testament, Epistle and Gospel lessons are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Church of Christ in the USA, and used by permission.

The Collects, Psalms and Canticles are from the Book of Common Prayer, 1979.