Wednesday of the Sixth Week of Easter
Lectionary: 293

Acts 17:15, 22—18:1
Psalm 148:1-2, 11-12, 13, 14
John 16:12-15

The past few weeks I’ve been working on a presentation at Visitation on my fave theologian, and the subject of my master’s degree, Karl Rahner. I will spare you the long list of reasons why I love Rahner. However I would be remiss if I missed an opportunity to mention Rahner’s insight into understanding God as Holy Mystery. God is the one who is “incomprehensible and impenetrable”. God is the nameless one, the infinite horizon.

Of course my ears perked up with today’s reading from Acts where Paul speaks about the Athenians’ shrine to “the unknown God”. Now I don’t want to be anachronistic in any way, but I do think there’s an interesting connection between the Athenians’ experience of the sacred as unknown and the emerging Christological sense of the sacred as mystery.

The Athenians liked gods – the major Olympian gods like Zeus and Athena and the minor gods like Pan and the Muses. They even paid homage to the titans. Athens was so inclusive and welcoming that their city boasted shrines to all kinds of deities beyond their own religious circle. They were “inherently hospitable to new gods, ideas, and interpretations” (source). The Athenians were also careful. They erected a shrine to “the unknown God” just to make sure they’d covered all their bases. For they did not wish to offend any deity, even one they did not know.

Paul rightly observes “that in every respect [they] are very religious” (Acts 17:22). What’s interesting to me is that he doesn’t make an issue of any of the shrines. He doesn’t try to bring his Christian message into dialogue with Artemis or Dionysius. Instead, he focuses on this one particular shrine to the unknown God. There’s something about the “unknownness” of this particular deity that Paul finds a connection with. He takes the opportunity to make the connection between this unknowable God, and the God whom he knows intimately. This God, he says, is in fact very much known – not “fashioned from gold, silver, or stone by human art and imagination” but a living God in whom “we live and have our being”, a God who makes Godself known through Jesus the Christ.

Some have read this passage as Paul pointing out their folly and reprimanding the Athenians for the foolishness of worshiping a deity that they did not know. But I don’t think so. Paul knew the ways of the Greek world – he spoke Greek and was well versed in Greek philosophy. There was something about the unknown God that resonated with him and compelled him to begin there, rather than with the very knowable (and rather fallible) deities of the Greek world.

Although Paul did not have the benefit 20^th century philosophical concepts or theological language of Rahner, it’s clear that he also has had a fundamental experience of God as mystery – and God as revealed, knowable. He speaks of this throughout his preaching. He is passionate about sharing this with the Greeks, to help them make the connection between the unknown and the known.

In our life today, we have many things that remain unknown to us, not just God. There’s our health, our relationship⁠s⁠ – I don’t even know what I’m having for lunch today! I’d like to be able to flip a switch – from unknown to known, from hidden to revealed, but that’s not how mystery works. It’s something we have to not only live into, but embrace. It’s in the dance of mystery that we find our creativity, our passion, and our zeal.

Perhaps we can take a page out of Paul’s playbook. To respect the places of unknown and mystery that we find ourselves in and to also begin to move around it, start to find shapes and patterns, colors and textures in the midst of the unknown. In doing so, we begin to name what has been unnamable, reveal what has been hidden.

It doesn’t mean that it’s easy nor that it wont have discomfort, suffering or pain. In today’s gospel, Jesus promises that we are not alone in this and that we do not have to bear everything alone. The Spirit is truly with us.

As we “live and have our being” today, let us be on the look out experiences of the unknown and known – and not be afraid to dance with this mystery.

Image Credit: Kamil Feczko on Unsplash