Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

 

Those of you who love hearing readings from the Old Testament each Sunday have probably been wondering why we aren't reading from the Hebrew Scriptures each Eucharist during this 50-days of Easter. Perhaps you have noticed that during the Easter season, we read from the Acts of the Apostles instead of the Old Testament for our readings before an epistle and the Gospel. This practice goes back as far as Cyril of Jerusalem and was normalized by Augustine in the fourth century. As far as traditions about readings are concerned, this practice of reading most of the Acts of the Apostles instead of the Old Testament in Easter is as old as any lectionary practices we have in Western Christianity.

 

But, you say, aren't the Hebrew Scriptures essential to our understanding of who God is and who we are as God's people? The answer is yes. But think of the Easter Vigil, during which we read together long portions from multiple books of the Old Testament. At that most sacred and ancient of our liturgies, we walked through the salvation history of the people of Israel, through the prophets, leading up to the birth of Jesus. In some churches, there are as many as twelve lessons from the Old Testament read at the Vigil, in order to open the Easter celebration and 50-day season with a review and revival of the sacred story of creation from God letting light be light, up to the voice of John the Baptist. We do not 'skip' the Old Testament during Easter. Rather, we are called through the Easter season to harken back to the Vigil, which sets the course and sets the table for the feast of joy and resurrection during Easter.

 

We read the Acts of the Apostles daily to draw us into the velocity of the first followers of Jesus in the wake of his death and resurrection. The Acts is the story of the very first Fifty Days of Easter. We hear stories of the certainty and the mystery, the bravery and the foolishness of the first followers, and we are invited to walk the road to Emmaus ourselves: to bring our hopes and fears and questions and passion into our daily walk with God in the world. We spend Easter well when we look to recognize Christ risen in the world.

 

And this week we read of St. Paul's response to Jesus, a man-made-missionary who enters a public forum in Athens with monuments to gods of the polytheistic state religion. "Men of Athens," Paul declares, "I see you are religious in every way." After crediting the Athenians for their endless statues to gods of many human ideas and actions (gods of war, love, courage, or folly), Paul points out a 'statue to an unknown god;' a tribute to the Greco-Roman idea that there may, perhaps, be divinity beyond the imagination of the ancient mind. Paul seizes this opening in the armor of arrogance of the stale state religion and dares to say that Jesus is the God unknown to the Roman Empire and to the world. Paul says to the religious, has your religion blinded you from seeing the truth of Christ?

 

Hear this question my friends. It is asked of us all in this week's reading. Is your faith in God so crowded with idols of politics or practices that you are too busy or too bored to spend intentional time at peace and at prayer with the God who made you? Is getting to church or getting to a committee meeting at church distracting you from experiencing the presence of the risen Christ in your life? In this season we are called to unclutter even the sacred spaces in our lives and souls. We are called to spend time with the God who is not unknown, but who, in Christ, has entered the suffering and entered the skin of human life. Don't be an Athenian who is "religious in every way" except in the experience of delighting in the known God who delights in you.