The Benefit of the Doubt

If you will, join me on a walk through the neighborhood. When we get to Lancaster Avenue, we’ll turn right. Walk a few blocks east, and you will see them. On the right, there’s the tanning salon, where disdained personal images are transfigured into more acceptable hues. On the left, there’s the bar where crowds drink away their fears and try to fill the gaping holes in their lives with fleeting glimpses of fellowship. Further ahead, on the right, is the spa, where after a long day’s work, for a small fortune, the bodily tensions of your punishing commute can be massaged into relaxation.

Just a few doors down is the overpriced ice cream shop that will undo everything you accomplished in the weight loss center nearby. Purchasing ten-dollar ice cream with bizarre toppings will elevate you to the cool crowd.

Keep looking, though, because there’s more. On the south side of the street, you will find the upscale clothing stores that offer you myriad choices of apparel to demonstrate that you are well off, respectable, and earning a decent living, just in case you need to cover up your insecurity. There’s a smoke shop and a place to relax the back that will ease your tense nerves and hopefully calm some of your anxiety, because these days, everyone is anxious. For a monthly fee, the fitness center will enable you to firm up your abs and work off your anger at your boss. And we’ve only gone a few blocks east on Lancaster Avenue.

Venture off into side streets and a bit further afield and you will see the parks filled with joggers and sports players, yes, especially on Sunday mornings. You might see a cycling club race by, yes, again on a Sunday morning. Baseball and soccer teams perfect their plays, on Saturday, and yes, on Sunday mornings, too. There’s the school full of overachievers who are stressed to the max, with inflated GPAs and ballooning hopes of getting into that Ivy League school. And this is only the tip of the iceberg.

On my worst days, I tend towards despair when I see the crowds in these human-made shrines but vacant pews in churches. I lament the fact that church can no longer compete with extracurricular activities, and marathons scheduled on Sunday mornings give people one more excuse to sleep in rather than go to church. I look hungrily at all the people in the barre studio and fitness center and wonder if they have a church home or know the love of God.

But on my best days, when I’m less cynical and more generous in spirit, I remember the apostle Paul in chapter seventeen of the Acts of the Apostles. He has just walked through Athens, a major cultural center, teeming with erudite philosophers debating the most novel ideas, spinning complex theories like a spider weaving a web to catch those who just can’t cut it in the highest intellectual echelons. Paul has seen the human-made shrines everywhere, and he’s taken the time to read the inscriptions. He has paid great attention to the objects of worship zealously manufactured by the Athenians.

But he was distressed to see so many idols. And so, he preached about Jesus, and people were intrigued. They found his teachings strange; they’d never heard them before. Some wanted to know more, so they brought him to the Areopagus, and this is where today’s speech begins.

But Paul in Athens is having a good day, unlike me on my worst days walking my dog through the streets of our neighborhood and seeing the shrines made with human hands that so easily become idols. These places are not bad or evil; they’ve simply fostered an unholy obsession from those who are seeking meaning in their lives. But Paul doesn’t chastise the Athenians. It’s not us versus them. He stands in the midst of a city proliferating with idols, unafraid of them, and he says something remarkable.

Paul doesn’t point the finger at the Athenians. He points a finger towards Christ. Paul doesn’t scold the Athenians, he gives them the benefit of the doubt. He has found his inspiration in one peculiar statue with a peculiar inscription, “To an unknown god.” This is a gift to Paul. It’s the hinge point for a conversation starter. It’s a window into the Gospel. And Paul goes for it. He preaches the good news, and he offers his Gospel gift to the Athenians.

The great hunger he sees among the Athenians and their real proclivity towards religiosity are simply directed towards the wrong things. Or perhaps—again, giving them the benefit of the doubt—they are inadvertently grasping towards the God we know as the living God, the One who made the heavens and the earth and who gives life to all and sustains all things. The Athenians are after something, they just don’t know what. Contrary to the Stoics, some of the Athenians aren’t apathetic. They aren’t mired in malaise or ossified by the status quo. Some of them have great aspirations to know something beyond their understanding. They’re so very hungry.

They’re famished, just like so many among us, too. I suspect that many of us here today are hungry. Unless you were forced here by a parent, you have come to this church because you were drawn by something. You must want to be found.

And so, on my better days, when I’m less cynical and try to be more like Paul in the Areopagus, I walk through our neighborhood. It’s not us versus them, I recall. And so I see not just idols to wealth, power, self-image, children’s successes, or worldly affirmation but I see a deep desire. People are full of longing. And I’m moved to pity.

So many people have put their hope in things that are not intrinsically harmful; they just implicitly promise something that will never satisfy. And then I look inside myself. What about you? Are our inner worlds so cluttered, confused, and unhappy that an idol is required to worship, whether our jobs or success? What about investments in purchases that will tell a superficial story of our lives while the secrets of our lives fester into open wounds?

More than we might imagine, you and I have much in common with the patrons of the businesses and crowds on the sports fields, even though we may be here on Sunday morning and they are elsewhere. We all share a longing for something that will fill the giant hole in our lives. But what makes our gathering here today so different is that we have some inkling that the only one who will fill that hole is God.

Doesn’t it make you want to run out into the streets and to share this good news? Don’t you want to announce to others that you know the temptation to fill the gap in your life with human creations, but that you’ve come to see that the only true fulfillment is God? Evangelism isn’t knocking on doors or thumping Bibles in people’s faces. It’s announcing the unshakeable truth that has been revealed in Christ, the One who has made God known in a particular time and place.

And before Paul stood in the Areopagus, Jesus came to earth and stood in our midst to tell us that we have no need to fill the emptiness of our lives with status or power or wealth. The God who gives us far more than we can ask or imagine is nearer to us than we are to ourselves. Jesus tells us that our broken self images which are consistently destroyed by human cruelty are made in God’s image. God loves us unconditionally, with no strings attached. Jesus comes to tell us that rather than building up our person security through affirmation and worldly success, we are better off putting our trust in God, who will never let us go. Jesus comes to tell us that in our loneliest moments when we grope after fellowship with others in all the wrong places, we will find our greatest companionship in his presence and in the fellowship of the Body of Christ. Jesus comes to tell us that everything we long for is already in front of our eyes. We have been feeding unknown gods when the God known in Christ is closer to us than we can comprehend.

On the day we come to understand this, nothing else will matter—not our self image, not our kids’ college portfolios, not the affirmation of shallow people, and not even the financial security that has us in its grip of total fear. All that matters is that we are loved and cared for by a God who is indeed known to us. This God requires not statues or shrines. This God does not need fancy inscriptions or money in order to give us what we need. This God is simply always present, always on the scene before we get there in the most unexpected of places. And most of all, this God is so compassionate and merciful that we are always given the benefit of the doubt. God loves our desire and our hunger and hopes it will draw us to him. And the moment we turn to him is our moment of repentance. And it’s so extraordinary and beautiful, that we can never turn away again.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Sixth Sunday of Easter
May 14, 2023