Very Religious
Acts 17:22-31

May 5, 2002

The world seems to be divided endlessly into two camps, all sorts of two camps. An important division today are those for whom the only thing that can be called good is something new; and on the other hand, those for whom the only thing good is that which is old.

The preface to Paul’s speech in the Athenian Areopagus tells you to which camp his listeners were accustomed to belong: “Now all the Athenians and the foreigners living there would spend their time in nothing but telling or hearing something new.”

“Nothing but...something new.” That’s entertainment, is it not? Paul spoke before a crowd of wizened consumers of the New who did not wish to hear something a second time. Hyde Park in London may be our analogy for this scene, but in today’s society the equivalent is how one survives speaking on TV. If one cannot deliver something new, something fresh and perhaps clever, then your show is canceled.

The papers and magazines and sometimes newscasts are referring to New Religions on the rise. The rush hour of the Gods is how one observer depicted the scene. Cults and sects crammed full of wild, eccentric ideas, distorting the truth and denigrating the established religious traditions. We must keep in mind that Paul was the one with the new religion on that day. I hope we are still a new religion.

New religion in itself sounds too vague, so an example may be helpful. When the three Vietnamese brothers arrived at our home a number of years back, we asked a lot of questions directly and through an interpreter to learn as much of their background as we could. We asked about religion: were they Buddhist or Roman Catholic? Neither, their family had been loosely involved with a syncretistic religion known as Coo Day. It combines the teachings of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism, while adding elements of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Based in Vietnam, but with members in 50 countries, I had never heard of it before then, but there are approximately three million members.

The movement was founded in 1926, six years after a government bureaucrat Ngo Ming Chieu received a revelation from Duc Cao Dai, the Supreme Being, during a table-moving seance. Institutionally, Coo Day is based on that of the Catholic Church which was the dominant Christian influence in French Indochina. Its headquarters are called the Holy See, the leader is the Pope, and there are six cardinals, 36 archbishops, 72 bishops, and 3000 priests.

Cao Dai is elaborately ritualized and symbolic, and wildly diverse: incense, candles, multi-tiered altars, yin and yang, karmic cycles, seances to communicate with the spirit world, and prayers to a pantheon of divine beings, including Jesus Christ. Its “Three Saints” are: Sun Yat-sen; a 16th-century Vietnamese poet Trang Trinh; and Victor Hugo.

What is particularly intriguing for us to know is that in its first year of existence, the Cao Dai movement gained more adherents than Catholic missionaries had attracted during the Church’s previous 300 years in Vietnam.

I do not know the specific circumstances in this case, but in general a new religion presents a fresh way of looking at the world, though frequently using institutions, ideas, and personalities from the past. What is left out is obviously that which is boring, superfluous, and oppressive.

What is injected is inevitably a charismatic personality, revelation, or activity, mostly the former. Charismatic, gifted, personalities provide a spark of electricity into life, a rare, but tangible connection between the human and divine realms. Siddharta Gautama, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Wesley drew people to their message by the power of their beings.

Inevitably, every new religion gets older and loses its original charismatic leader. The followers then have to find ways to keep that dynamic spirit alive and functioning in their communities. Through writings and scriptures, actions or sacraments, the establishment of offices of authority and wisdom, every new religion has to transform itself so that it does not fade away. After Easter, that is what Christians had to do, or we would not be singing.

It was well after Easter when Paul showed up in Athens, a city full of thinkers and idols. Paul was disturbed by the crush of statues around him, each dedicated to a endless pantheon. A wag has said that the Greeks never met a god they couldn’t worship. There was even an altar to an unknown god - maybe we might term this deity “miscellaneous god.”

They wanted to hear what Paul had been babbling about in the synagogues and open markets. They wanted something new, and they would get it.

The Greeks were masters of the rhetorical art - a well-crafted speech being a much appreciated form of art. Paul’s speech to the Athenians is a classic example of this, beginning by flattering his audience and finding some common ground.

Translations waver back and forth in how to translate Paul’s description of the Athenians: were they “superstitious” or “very religious”? The word used is ambiguous, but Paul’s speech does appear to be an attempt at convincing rather than insulting his listeners. Where he finds common ground is unusual.

Paul mentions the unknown god and from there he builds upon our common lack of knowledge. We are united finally by what we do not know. Paul knows, however, who the unknown god is.

Unlike all the statues surrounding him, this God is not made, but the Maker of all things and people. You can’t see him in marble, stone, or plaster, but now in the flesh and blood of a human being he sent named Jesus. The proof for all of this, Paul concludes, is the resurrection of Jesus.

This is indeed a new religion, a wild one, a silly one at that. Some jeered at Paul, some ignored him completely, others yawned how interesting all this was, we should do it another time, though I’ve lost my dairy.

Are we Christians still a new religion among the world religions? We are, as long as we are an Easter people, as long as we are people of the resurrection.

Things have not changed, for the world still believes in its intellectual wisdom that resurrection is nonsense, sectarian and cultic. There are lots of parts of the Christian faith which become stagnant, maybe most of it by now. Yet as long as we believe that death and suffering have no final power over how we live life to the fullest, then we remain a sect, a new religion, full of charisma and power, fresh every morning.

Many Christians themselves scoff at the idea of resurrection, considering it too fundamentalist and cult-like. Yet how do we expect the Palestinians and Israelis to find a real end to violence and prejudice and learn to live together as sisters and brothers in peace; how do we expect Belfast Catholics and Protestants to understand that one Unknown God made them all; how do we expect abused and oppressed people will ever be able to stand up as dignified and free individuals -- unless we know and experience resurrection from death?

If death is logical, then eventually you will stop working for justice, righteousness, and love. Death always wins, you know, so why keep beating your head against a wall? Only the illogical, irrational ones refuse to allow death to win - and isn’t that the sign of people captured by a cult, a new religion.

The intellectuals laugh at us and dismiss us as crackpots who know nothing about the real world they believed they have defined completely. The Greeks believed that there are an infinite number of gods which we human beings can never fully comprehend nor keep up with -- so a divine fudge factor of an unknown god or two covers the bases.

Christians then and now know that our One God is infinite and Our God knows us infinitely better than we know ourselves, and makes certain that we are today again a new religion having raised us once again from the dead.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan