The God We Yearn For
Acts 17:22-28
May 3, 2026
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley
Photo by Dns Dgn at Unsplash.com
Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyjyGMpO2YM
Athens was just a rest-stop for Paul. He escaped to this big city after crowds of protesters were stirred up in response to his preaching in smaller towns. He was only supposed to be waiting for his traveling companions Silas and Timothy to catch up. But Paul rarely passed up the opportunity to argue theology, so we are not surprised to find him at the Mars Hill, the most popular place in the city for public debate.
Paul has been in Athens for some days and he has taken in all the sights, which would have included numerous shrines and sculptures to all kinds of gods. There are statues and spaces for the gods of beauty and youth, the gods of agriculture, wine, sea and fire, the gods of war and of the hearth. Most of what Paul can see had been built centuries earlier by the Greeks and is currently being inhabited by the Romans, who renamed them for their own corresponding gods. So, even Paul’s time, the city feels religious in an ancient way.
He credits them for being religious, although that probably isn’t actually intended as a compliment. Looking over the city, he says, one altar stood out from the rest. It was the one intended for “an unknown god”.
I have been wondering about this all week. I have been wondering how a god comes to be unknown. I wonder if a god becomes unknown when the majority of one generation fails to tell the next generation about that god.
I’ve been seeing video clips of a small number of people raising their voices to say that Never Again is for everyone. The expression Never Again emerged after World War II as an affirmation that the world should never allow the atrocities of the Holocaust to be repeated. It was a weighty moral imperative based on the understanding that all humanity is created in the image of God. But, now, as we bear witness to systemic genocide in the Gaza strip, Never Again is a controversial minority report offered by some rabbis and a few people who learned it from their grandmothers who survived the Holocaust. The idea that all people have sacred worth is a faint echo, an almost forgotten, inconvenient memory.
And so, I wonder what else we have forgotten or are in danger of forgetting about God.
There are a number of churches, some well-known and some not, that take their name from this story. Mars Hill Church is a name probably intended to signal a congregation poised to engage with its culture, but within that name is another name. Paul was speaking in a public place dedicated to the gods of war. The place was called Mars Hill by the Romans. The god Mars represented military power as a way to secure peace. The Greeks called this place the Areopagus, or the place of the god Ares. Ares embodied the physical strength necessary for success in war, but can also personify sheer brutality and bloodlust. On one hand, I have to think that people did not intend to honor the gods of war when they chose the name of their church. On the other hand, these gods are still too much with us, currently being evoked loudly and often to create “Christian” soldiers for wars in Iran and Venezuela.
It seems that the God of compassion, the God of mercy and lovingkindness, the God who prioritizes the foreigner, the widow and the orphan, that God is unknown to many in the public square, while the gods of war are rarely forgotten and often worshipped.
I wonder if we need to remember the multicultural, multi-ethnic God who speaks all languages, the God represented more often as a black woman than a white grandfather. Can we still hear the echo of the song taught to us so long ago – Jesus loves all the children of the world, red and yellow, black and white are precious in his sight.
The unknown God we need to remember may be the one represented in the Bible as wild and mysterious, the daytime cloud and the nighttime fire that guided the people through the wilderness. We may have settled for a God who fits within our concepts and structures, forgetting that God cannot be housebroken or domesticated.
You might remember that in the Chronicles of Narnia stories, Aslan is the lion who represents God. When Lucy learns that Aslan is a lion, she asks “Is he safe?” Mr. Beaver says “Safe? Who said anything about safe? ‘ Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.” Another character says “He’s wild, you know. Not a tame lion.” [1]
You can probably add many other ideas about the God we are in danger of forgetting. But I also have to ask -- what compels someone to create an altar to a god who is unknown? Why is this unknown God worthy of a public tribute?
In Paul’s time, there was a frieze on the Parthenon depicting the king of Athens sacrificing his daughters. It was the price the gods required of him in order to save the city of Athens. Greek writings of the time were full of the sentiment that just as boys go to war, girls go to sacrifice, both for the good of the nation.[2] It was the civil religion of the day. We might suppose that the altar to an unknown God was created by someone who longed for a different normal.
Perhaps the altar to an unknown God indicates a small openness to something else, something forgotten or never known. Even in the midst of the pantheon of the worlds’ gods, there remains an aching human need.
This week I met an Episcopal priest. She has served her current church in a southern state for 3 years. She said that in the last two months, she has preached twice on the gospel to love our neighbors and resist empire. She received more positive feedback on those two sermons than on all her previous sermons there added together. There is, in our time, a yearning for the God of the Bible who is epitomized by loving-kindness.
One of my favorite Advent anthems is called The Yearning. It begins
There is a yearning in hearts weighed down by ancient grief and centuries of sorrow.
There is a yearning in hearts that in the darkness hide and in the shades of death abide, a yearning for tomorrow
There is a yearning, a yearning for the promised One, the Firstborn of creation.[3]
I wonder about the God we yearn for and how we might recover what we are in danger of forgetting. You might want to take some time to name that specifically for yourself.
I am aware of my own longing for a God I miss. The God I remember from young adulthood who felt like energy and courage inside me, the God whose existence permeated every aspect of my daily life, the One who was close and could be felt and was not the abstract, intellectual god I may have created in my own image.
There is a yearning in me and in many of us, I believe. A yearning for connection with the Holy. I wonder how many people are out there building altars to unknown gods, because not enough of us are telling the next generation about the God in whom we live and move and have our being.
There is growing number of people who may just barely remember being taught about a God of love and truth and hope and righteousness and life. Or maybe they never learned it at all. They still yearn for that. Micah Murray is representative of some of those folks, a spiritual seeker and guide. Some years ago, he said, “I want a community where we can sit on a couch together and swear about how badly we want to be loved by a god we’re not even sure we believe in anymore.”[4]
There is a longing for a faith that is authentic, that is found in community, that lends us courage when we are afraid and helps us to trust when we doubt. It is a yearning that so many people are feeling. What they want, what we want, is Jesus’ alternative to the culture of enmity and fear at work in the world. It is what can happen when we remember who God is really, when we accept God’s radical, untamed love ourselves, and let it flow through us to those who are desperate for it. May it be so for you and me. Amen.
[1] C. S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, (New York: MacMillan Publishing, 1950).
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/1995/07/04/science/new-analysis-of-the-parthenon-s-frieze-finds-it-depicts-a-horrifying-legend.html
[3] The Yearning by Susan Bentall Boersma and Craig Courtney https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1gqDXx8CCM&t=6s
[4] https://www.facebook.com/micahjmurray/photos/a.10150997569992820/10153648604412820/?type=3&theater