Religious Questions – May 21, 2017, Graduation Sermon

This weekend at St. Peter Lutheran Church in Greene, Iowa, we celebrated the graduation of 5 seniors from our congregation. On this 6th Sunday of Easter in lectionary year A, our texts are Acts 17:22-31 and John 14:15-21, a continuation of last week’s farewell address from Jesus.

This sermon focuses on Paul’s introduction in Acts 17:22: “Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way.”

 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

How many of you consider yourselves religious? I’d imagine most of you would, since you’re in church at a worship service today. When I’m talking about “religious” today, I mean it in a good way, having faith and being active in a church, not in the sense of empty religion.

How many of you know someone you wouldn’t consider religious? I want to think today about how we define whether someone’s religious.

In today’s reading from Acts, Paul is in the city of Athens, a city filled with shrines and idols where most people are followers of Greek philosophers. Some of the Greeks invite him to share his views on philosophy with them. Paul begins by saying, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way.”

As I read that earlier this week, I’ve been wondering if it’s true of us today. Looking at our culture in 21st century Iowa, in America in 2017, can you describe it as “extremely religious in every way?” I’m not so sure.

On the one hand, we have church buildings in every city, and driving on Friday I passed a road sign saying, “In God we trust.” There are religious symbols and cross necklaces and bumper stickers all over the place.
On the other hand, some of those church buildings, like the one my mom grew up in, are now restaurants or gift shops, or just empty and falling apart. There are a lot of empty pews. And I’m not sure billboards and jewelry are very good indicators of what Christianity should be.

Right now in America, Christianity is declining. From 2007 to 2014, over just 7 years, the percentage of American adults who identify as Christian has fallen from 78% to 70% [Pew]. The percentage of Americans who describe their religion as atheist, agnostic, or “nothing in particular” has gone up by 6%. Some studies have found that 70% of Christian teenagers will leave the faith in college, and only half will later return [Lifeway].

For us as the church, these are some scary numbers. They’re something we need to care about. There’s a cultural shift going on. It’s maybe not as obvious in Greene as in many other places, but it’s happening here too.

Once upon a time, being religious looked like coming to church every week. The institution of the church was the center of culture, the place with all the programs, where everything happened.

That’s not true in the same way today. People are busier with work, sports, more ability to take vacations, and all the other things that fill our lives, and quite honestly, some of the things the church used to provide just aren’t as necessary in the same way any more.

We can debate if this is a good thing or a bad thing, and I can argue both sides. There’s a good case that the high church involvement and attendance in the 1950’s, 60’s, and 70’s was a historical anomaly and we’re actually returning to normal now, for better or worse. Churches often are healthier when there’s some opposition. And the church around the world continues to rapidly grow.

But rather than debate church attendance, I want to propose that our culture and our world is just as religious today as ever.

Paul looks at the people of Athens, and says “I see how extremely religious you are.” I believe people today are just as religious as ever before, because being religious means searching for meaning in life. If you’ve ever wondered what happens after death, that’s a religious question. Everyone who’s ever wondered about the purpose of life or why you’re here is asking religious questions.

For those graduating and going on to college, you’ll be faced with religious questions, questions about who you are, what you believe about the world, and what you believe about God and yourselves.

Allow yourselves to be challenged. You have been equipped in this community and in this church to go and engage. Give yourselves room to doubt what you’ve been taught. I promise, God can handle you doubting.
I hope and pray you’ll continue in church, but not because I’m afraid for your soul.

I hope you’ll get involved in a church wherever you go next and that you’ll stay involved here, because church is a place to ask and engage with these religious questions. For the rest of you, I hope you’ll commit to praying for all those graduating this weekend, and to being willing to walk with them and with each other to explore religious questions.

As Christians, we have answers to those questions. Not all the answers, and often not in the detail and certainty that we’d like, but as Christians, we believe in the same answer Paul proposes to the Athenians. The God who made the earth and everything in it is the one who gives life and purpose to everyone, and we know that God through Jesus Christ. In him we live and move and have our being.

Our world is still just as religious as ever, because it is still just as broken as Jesus’ world, or as Paul’s world, or as our grandparents’ world. It’s only the ways in which the world is broken that have shifted.

We are not oppressed under the Roman Empire, looking for a savior to come and free us from enemy armies. We’re not surrounded by pagans sacrificing to literal idols and false gods. We’re not in danger of being arrested for our faith.

But we are in a world where people are searching for hope and meaning. We are living in a world where from 1999 to 2013, the suicide rate among Americans has gone up by 24% [NPR]. 35% of American adults over age 45 are lonely [AARP – PDF link]. Extreme poverty around the world is going down, but by the most recent count, 767 million people around the world live on less than $1.90 a day [World Bank]. That’s too many.

We have problems with racism, climate change, war, violence against police, homelessness, and so much more that we could list. Our world is broken. And if you care about any of these issues, you care about religious questions.




When we’re faced with these questions, we have three options.

One option is to give up. We can hide in our church and in our small town and ignore the rest of the world. After all, we have problems in Greene and here in St. Peter, but not as bad as many other places in the world. Ignoring the needs of our neighbors is an option.

But that’s the opposite of what Paul does and what God calls us to do. Paul doesn’t give up on the Athenians because they don’t know about God.

The second option is to judge and condemn others. We can rail against people of other faiths or no faith. We can complain about how others don’t go to church enough. We can withdraw into ourselves and how righteous we are for being here today. We can inflict our good news on to others, telling them how wrong they are. Some very visible Christians do that.

That’s also not what Paul does, though. He doesn’t start out by going around and smashing idols and shrines and alienating his audience.

Instead, Paul takes a third option. He engages with the people around him. He sees hurting people with religious questions, and he offers them hope, the truth of Jesus Christ. “What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you,” he says.

We can engage with our neighbors, with our friends, our classmates, our brothers and our sisters, and share with them the hope we have, the purpose we know. When we’re faced with common problems, we can engage with people who disagree with us on other issues and meet each other as real human beings. We can recognize even people of different faiths or no faith as people beloved by God.

We can share the good news of God, who has come to us in the person of Jesus Christ, out of love. God has not given up and left us orphaned, but has given us the Holy Spirit to be our advocate, our friend, our helper, to be God’s presence within us still working today.

Never forget that the world wants to know its Creator. Everyone you meet is created in the image of God, made with a desire to find meaning and purpose. We know that the answer to all of these religious questions is found in Jesus Christ, the one in whom we live and move and have our being. We see the proof of God’s love on the cross and in the empty tomb.

But even knowing Jesus is the answer, you’re not going to figure it all out. One of the joys of the Lutheran tradition is that we don’t believe it’s possible to reach perfection. Until death, we remain both saint and sinner, claimed and redeemed by God, but still human and fallible. You’re not going to figure out all the right answers, and if you do, you’re not going to convince everyone else, and that’s ok.

Faith often means being willing to engage the questions, to trust that God can handle your doubts and your failures. The beauty of Jesus’ farewell speech to his disciples is this promise that God remains with us. [See last week’s sermon for more on this promise] Because God loves us, we are to keep God’s commandments, to reflect God’s love to the world, to show God’s grace to everyone we meet. Our broken world needs the good news you have.

May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.