Preached at Prince of Peace, Wasaga Beach, and Good Shepherd, Stayner, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, on the Sixth Sunday of Easter, 10 May, 2026.
Text for this Sunday: Acts 17:22-31; Psalm 66:7-18; 1 Peter 3:13-22; John 14:15-21
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.’ (Acts 17:22-23)
Last Monday was May 4, and I’m wondering, on that day did anyone say “May the Fourth” be with you? Or, did you notice that people on social media were talking a lot about Star Wars?
May the Fourth in popular culture has now become known by those in the know as Star Wars Day, because when you say the date, it sounds a lot like the famous phrase from the Star Wars movies, “May the Force be with you”. In the imaginary universe of Star Wars, the Force is a kind of living energy that animates the galaxy.
The Force can be used for good, especially by practitioners called The Jedi who vaguely resemble Buddhist monks, who say “May the Force be with you” as a kind of blessing. (Fun fact, when an Anglican Jedi says this, everyone else has to say “And also with you”. But the power of the force can also be used for evil purposes, most famously by the arch-villain of the Star Wars films, Darth Vader. So even though the Star Wars franchise seems to be about spaceships, cute aliens, and selling toys, it’s also a spiritual story about the battle between good and evil, and it asks questions about morality. Seemingly good characters can be corrupted, but can also be redeemed.
Star Wars as a cultural phenomenon shows how people are willing to believe all sorts of things. As people in North America and the West become less Christian, they still find ways to form and practice spiritual beliefs.
For decades some people have indicated their belief on census forms as Jedi and have sought, perhaps not always seriously, to have Jediism recognized as an official religion. And they’re not alone. Some people, mostly in the millenial and post-millenial cohorts, find deep meaning and morality in online computer games such as Mass Effect. What these beliefs and spiritualites have in common is that they are not linked to ancient religious traditions. They are what social scientists call New Religions.
Scientology as a belief system and even as a religion has existed for decades. More recently, some advocates of Artificial Intelligence have started expressing their faith in the promise of AI in deeply spiritual ways. Transhumanism, for example, is the hope that human consciousness can exist and evolve in digital form, free from the limits of the human body, and thus attain a kind of immortality. Other AI super-believers imagine a future where humans live in a kind of technological paradise. Either way, say scholars, there is a religious dimension to many attitudes about AI.
For those of us who are baby boomers, we’ve seen amazing changes in religion and spirituality in our lifetimes. When we were growing up, Canada was a Christian country. Over the decades, as we became a multicultural country, we became more familiar with Islam, Hinduism, and other world religions because they were our neighbours and coworkers. Then, as our adult children fell away from church, we became a more secular country. And now we’re in a strange, pluralistic kind of landscape where people are more likely to say they are spiritual than they are to say that they’re religious.
In some ways, if you took St Paul out of our first reading from Acts and dropped him down in 21st century Ontario, I think he would find himself at home. Our world, at least spiritually, has similarities to the ancient world, and the way that Paul speaks to the Greeks in Athens gives us some clues as to how we as Christians can dialogue with people today who don’t share our beliefs but who do have beliefs of their own. Let’s dive into Acts and see how it might help us today.
By this point in the book of Acts, Paul has travelled to the Greek city of Athens, which was famous as a place of learning and philosophy, but was also a place of spirituality. Besides the Greek gods that we might all remember from mythology books, Paul finds an altar dedicated to “an unknown God”. Perhaps the Athenians were hedging their bets. We can imagine the Athenians thinking, “if there are gods out there who haven’t introduced themselves, it’s a good idea to worship them, just so we don’t miss out on any blessings or benefits”.
Paul’s attitude is respectul but perhaps there’s a little humour when he says, basically, “Wow, you guys are super religious”. But he doesn’t condemn the Greeks for being pagans. He finds some common ground between their beliefs and his, specifically the shared belief that God/gods created the earth and “gives to all mortals life and breath and all things” (Acts . He also points out that there is a common impulse among people to “search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him” (Acts 17:
But there is a key difference that Paul wants to make, and that is the difference between unknown and known. Paul knows God personally. He encountered Jesus when he was still Saul, persecuting Jesus’ followers, and he became Paul, a messenger of Jesus. As a Jew and a Pharisee, Paul also knows that Jesus’ father has always wanted to be known, and has revealed over and over again: to Abraham, to Moses, to the prophets. and finally God sent his son, “a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:31).
Paul could have started with Jesus, and condemned the Greeks right off the bat, but he respectfully looked for common ground, got to know the Greeks by looking around their city, and refused to condemn them. But Paul knows Jesus and he knows what he believes, and he isn’t ashamed of his message. And, we are told, he doesn’t convince all the Greeks (some “scoffed”), but others are curious and want to learn more.
Last Sunday, in the Gospel reading from John, we heard Jesus say that "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (Jn 14: ). In our bible study at All Saints, we had a lively discussion about this verse and how it is often used by some Christians in a very exclusivist way, to invalidate all other forms of belief as being false and untrue. We agreed that for us as followers of Jesus, we do believe that he speaks truth, that he is the way that we know God, and he is worth following. So how do we communicate our belief to others in a respectful and non-judgemental way?
In my own experience as a military chaplain, working with believers from other world religions, like Jews and Muslims, it was clear to me that they respected the truth of my beliefs, but they were equally committed to their truths and beliefs. Recognizing that we both held a truth was enough. We didn’t try to convert one another.
But what if you are talking to a friend or neighbour who believes that certain crystals or sounds have healing powers, or who puts statues of angels in their garden for protection? What if the person believes that trees are sacred, or that Mother Earth is a goddess? What if the other person finds their spirituality through yoga, or through cheering for the Leafs (now that would be a person of faith!).
Again, the story of Paul in Acts is I think helpful. It shows us that most people are searching and groping for something, some higher meaning. It teaches us to be respectful and to learn about others’ beliefs. And it teaches us for our part to be true to what we believe, that Jesus is our truth, our life, and our way to God. We believe in Jesus, because we know Jesus and we know that Jesus has always believed in us.
