May 10, 2026 | Word Out!
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READINGS
First Reading: Acts 17:22-31
22 Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely spiritual you are in every way. 23 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.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. 24 The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. 26 From one ancestor he made all peoples to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, 27 so that they would search for God and perhaps fumble about for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. 28 For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said,
’For we, too, are his offspring.’
29 “Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. 30 While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31 because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”
Second Reading: 1 Peter 3:13-22
13 Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good? 14 But even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated, 15 but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you, 16 yet do it with gentleness and respect. Maintain a good conscience so that, when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame. 17 For it is better to suffer for doing good, if suffering should be God’s will, than to suffer for doing evil. 18 For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, 19 in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, 20 who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight lives, were saved through water. 21 And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you—not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 22 who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him.
Gospel: John 14:15-21
[Jesus said to the disciples:] 15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. 17 This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him because he abides with you, and he will be in you.
18 “I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. 19 In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. 20 On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. 21 They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me, and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”
SERMON—Pastor Dan Peterson
“God Is Near”
Grace to you, and peace, from God, the Source of life, and from Jesus, the Christ, who is that life and light in the world. Amen.
Last Monday was a very special day, as some of you know. It was May the Fourth, as in, “May the fourth be with you”— Star Wars Day. Because of that, and more importantly, because in our Gospel reading the Sunday before Jesus says, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life,” I figured it would be appropriate to compare the way of the Mandalorian, which is a particular Star Wars franchise, with the Way of Jesus Christ, as given in the Gospel as well as the Book of Acts.
Here’s what we discovered. When Mandalorians say, “This is the Way,” they’re referring to a simple creed: Never let someone else see your face; Always wear your helmet; Honor tradition by wearing special armor; and do whatever you can to protect Foundlings, which is to say, young initiates into the order, to preserve its longevity.
The Way of Jesus Christ, by contrast, is a way of being there, not simply for Foundlings, but for allpeople, as men and women for others. It’s letting go of the Self and its preoccupation with itself; being crucified with Christ; dying in that regard, and being reborn to live for and serve others as a way of glorifying God.
So, while the language is similar, the what you might call quality or code of life, is very different. One is all about costumes. The other is all about one’s way of being in the world.
This morning, I would like to turn to another aspect of what it means to be a follower of the Way. According to our Second Reading for the day, 1 Peter: 15 and following, we should always be “ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and respect.”
Let me paraphrase that by way of summary: always be prepared. The author is telling his audience to give an account of the hope within you when it comes to Jesus Christ. Always be prepared to give an account of the hope within you when it comes to Jesus Christ.
Now, show of hands: How many of you in secular Seattle feel comfortable or confident telling others about your faith in Jesus or your hope in Christ?
I saw a couple hands. You are amazing! One kind of “maybe,” so, three yeses and a maybe.
Now for the rest of you who don’t feel comfortable providing reasons for why you’re a Christian to other people, let me assure you, you are not alone.
The reason for this, among others, is that we don’t live in a context like the one in which First Peter was written, where having reasons to support our faith is necessary, in some cases, even a matter of life and death.
Not only that, we don’t have a lot of examples regarding what it looks like to supply these reasons in a way that makes our faith conceptually plausible or compelling to others.
But here’s the good news; here’s the great news. Our First Reading gives us an example of what it might look like to provide an account of the hope within you to other people. So what does it say? What, in the case of Acts 17, might Paul, according to Luke, teach us about how to share our faith, or how, as First Peter says, to “give an account of the hope within us.” That’s the topic of our sermon today.
The Second Reading tells us to be prepared to give an account of the hope within us, and the First Reading provides an example of what that might look like.
So, let’s talk about our Second Reading first: First Peter. Unsurprisingly, scholars are divided. Some scholars maintain that First Peter was written by, or at least dictated by, the Apostle Peter during the reign of the Emperor Nero at the end of Peter’s life, approximately 67 CE, when Peter died. This might be something like his last will and testament. This was during a time where, during the reign of Nero, Christians were sporadically persecuted. Nero scapegoated them by blaming a fire that took place in Rome on the Christians and made them, you might say, targets of suspicion and even persecution during the end of his reign.
So one group of scholars believes that Peter, the disciple of Jesus, wrote or dictated this letter at the end of his life to Christians who were facing persecution under the reign of Nero.
Others, and I count myself among them here, maintain that this letter was written not by Peter, the disciple, but rather by a disciple of Peter, an elder of the church, which is mentioned or who is mentioned at the end of the text, at the beginning of Domitian’s reign, early in the 80s, after Peter died.
So here’s what you need to know. There were two emperors, apart from Caligula, who were really badin the first century. The first was Nero, who authorized the persecution of Christians by scapegoating them for a fire that took place in Rome. He reigned from about in the mid-to-late 50s to 67 AD; and the second was Domitian, who reigned from 81 to the mid 90s of that same century, who was famous for persecuting Christians, and who was in charge during the time in which the book of Revelation was most likely written.
Here are three reasons for why scholars think First Peter was written toward the end of the first century under the reign of Nero. (Listen carefully, there will be an exam after the service.) Number one: the author of this text, again, that is our Second Reading refers to Rome as Babylon. Refers to Rome as Babylon. He says, “Your sister church in Babylon, that is Rome, sends you greetings.”
Now, why would later first century Christians refer to Rome as Babylon? Because in 70 AD, the Romans did something to the Jewish temple that the Babylonians did 500 years earlier. They destroyed it. So it makes no sense to talk about Rome as Babylon until after they did the same thing Babylon did in 70 AD. This is what nerds call a “cryptogram.” The author is using “secret code” to convey to his readers what they really think about Rome without calling attention to themselves.
So one of the reasons for why scholars put this later letter rather later in the first century, is that the author refers to Rome as Babylon, and that connection wouldn’t make sense until the temple was destroyed by Rome in 70 AD.
Next, Peter, according to the Gospels, was an illiterate fisherman, even though the writer of this letter appears to have had formal education in rhetoric and philosophy, as well as an advanced knowledge of Greek. Now that’s a problem. Could it be that Peter dictated this letter to Sylvanus, who was mentioned at the end of it, and that Sylvanas sort of proofread it, corrected it, polished it, and then made it available to churches in what is now present day Turkey? That’s a possibility, but most scholars interpret Sylvanas’s role in this text, not as the one to whom Peter dictated his letter, but as the courier of the letter, one who delivered it to these various churches.
The third reason is that the form of the letter copies the letters of Paul, whose writings only began to circulate after Peter died in the late 60s of the first century.
So we have three reasons for dating it later in the first century. It references Rome as Babylon; its style reflects somebody who is learned rather than an illiterate fisherman, which we believe Peter was according to the Gospels; and the form of the letter copies those written by Paul, which were not distributed until after Peter died.
That said, whenever this letter was written, we know that Christians were suffering persecution. So it had to have been done during Nero or Domitian’s reign, even though, in my view, Domitian’s reign is more likely the time during which it was written.
So what kind of persecution then were these Christians suffering? What kind of experiences were they having with respect to their faith before the authorities of the day? Well, as one commentator puts it, while Christians are called in this letter to “suffer for the name,“ which is to say, Jesus, the abuse is mostly verbal, according to passages in chapters two and three. The positive attitude toward the state, or at least the reticence, to name it directly, indicates that there is, as yet, no overt government persecution, except perhaps for occasional arbitrary acts by subordinate officials.
In other words, again, in my opinion, this was probably written right at the beginning of Domitian’s reign, and Domitian is the one who is to be feared in the first century. He is the one who persecuted, and in some cases had murdered, Christians who refused to proclaim Him as God, rather than the God of the Jews and or the God of Jesus Christ.
Let me read this kind of persecution they experienced to you again: The positive attitude toward the state indicates that there is, as yet, no overt government persecution, except perhaps for occasional arbitrary acts by subordinate officials.
Now this, in many ways, is like our situation today. None of us, as far as I know, and thanks be to God, have been physically persecuted because of our faith. But I bet some, perhaps many of us, have been ridiculed or criticized for having it. Perhaps members of our own family feel that faith is nothing more than a superstition. Perhaps friends at school see the Christian faith as intolerant. Or perhaps critics of the atheist persuasion believe it’s nothing more than a relationship with an invisible friend.
In each of these cases, we experience the kind of verbal persecution that Christians, according to First Peter’s perspective, were experiencing in the first century.
Before I came to Queen Anne Lutheran Church as your pastor, most of you know I was a professor at Seattle University. One of the experiences I had was being kicked out of a coffee shop for talking about faith with my students. The owner of the coffee shop said to me, “We don’t want your kind here.” So persecution, however mild, is real, and especially in secular Seattle. We have people who no longer attend this church because their family didn’t appreciate them being part of a faith community.
That’s the kind of persecution, perhaps, First Peter has in mind, and that is why First Peter says, “always be ready to give an account of the hope within you.” Always be ready to defend your faith. Always be ready to supply conceptually plausible reasons for why you believe what you believe, and why you hope in what you hope in.
Thankfully, none of us are being brought before government officials to give an account of these things. But we have many opportunities, as in the case of family, relatives, friends, co-workers, to widen their perspectives, so long as we do so, First Peter says, with gentleness.
Obviously, this letter was written long before the Internet. But as you can see, it raises the bar. There’s a reason why on social media, I often refrain from getting into arguments about religion or faith. It’s because I know myself well enough to know that I can get a little nasty; that I can condemn people, and that in so doing, I am going against what First Peter says here. “Always be prepared to give an account of the hope within you, but to do so in a gentle, loving, reverent way.”
Now, that’s great, you say. Sure, I should be able to give reasons for why I believe I what I believe, or why I hope and what I hope in to other people. But how on earth, Pastor Dan, am I supposed to do this?
Well, for an example, let’s turn to our First Reading, which is taken from the 17th chapter from the Book of Acts. Now some of you know from a forum I gave a couple weeks ago, our First Reading of the day, which features Paul speaking to a group of Greek philosophers in Athens is the subject of a chapter that is in my forthcoming book Lost Gods of the Bible. That chapter took me four months to research and write on ten verses, four months. Because of that, there is absolutely no human way that I can summarize what I learned, even in a more than a few minutes here in today’s sermon. You’ll have to buy the book, which is available for pre-order beginning in September.
However, short of that, let me share three reasons for how this speech gives us a great example of what it looks like to give an account of the hope within us to other people who are not Christian or here even Jewish.
Number one, Paul addresses a group of Greek philosophers in Athens who had the responsibility of determining, as a Council, which objects of worship could be admitted in terms of paying tribute to a god in Athens. So Athens was famous for harboring more altars to gods than there were even gods. So the task of this Council was not only to hear new ideas, but to determine which idols or which objects of worship could be included in this vast proliferation of idols or objects of worship.
So, Paul addresses this group of Greek philosophers in Athens by meeting them at the Areopagus. Now, that’s a famous place; the Latin translation is Mars Hill. Areopagus. Ares is the Greek god for war. pagus is hill. Hill of Ares, or for the Romans, Hill of Mars. So Paul meets these Greek philosophers at the “Hill of War.” And he does something that we often forget to do when we share our faith. He meets them on their own terms, and that’s the first thing to remember. Instead of citing passages from what we now call the Old Testament, which would have made sense to Jews at one of the synagogues, Paul quotes Greek poets and philosophers. These are the people who had authority for the group gathered at the foot of the Areopagus in Athens.
In other words, Paul implies, when sharing your faith, use language that makes sense to your conversation partner; use language that makes sense to your conversation partner. He doesn’t quote Jewish scripture. He quotes their poets and philosophers.
Let me give you a quick example. If somebody asks you why you are a Lutheran Christian, you could say, “Because I subscribe to the doctrine that we are justified by grace, through faith, according to Ephesians 2:8-9. Nobody on earth is going to understand what you’re talking about.
But if you speak to people on their terms, you translate this language in a way that would be meaningful to them, so that you can say, “I am a Lutheran Christian, because I believe that I am accepted despite my faults, without conditions, and set free in Christ to love others as an expression of gratitude.”
Now, who doesn’t want to be accepted by those around them? For those of you who are in school, especially if you’re a high-schooler, you know exactly what I’m talking about. You want to be accepted by your friends, by your peers. The message of the Christian faith, then, in translation, is not simply that you were justified by grace, but that God, the Source and Ground of everything, accepts you without conditions. In Jesus, Christ loves you, embraces you and sets you free in gratitude; then you serve others because God first loved you.
That’s translation, and that’s a way of making the faith meaningful to others, by meeting them, as Paul does, on their terms.
Number two: When it comes to giving an account of the hope within you, emphasize points of agreement. Emphasize points of agreement. For example, the Stoics, that is, the group of philosophers, one of two to whom Paul is speaking, did not see God as an entity “out there somewhere,” but rather understood God as being present in things, as their Source. So God, you might say, is the “withinness” of mind in matter, not over matter, constantly generating matter according to the dictates of reason. This is why Paul quotes a Stoic poet who says, ‘We are God’s offspring. We come from the being that God generates each moment, from within all beings.”
The Stoics also believe that God was not only the source within things, but the totality of all things, that encompassed all things and contained them, you might say, within the body of God. This is why Paul quotes another philosopher or a Greek poet who says, “In Him, we live, move and have our being.”
Now listen closely. What that says is not that God is a being out there, but rather we are beings in God, like cells in a body or stars in a universe. This view, which the Stoics held, is one that Paul highlights to emphasize a commonality. It would have made the Stoics happy. Paul is using their language by affirming that God is near. As Paul says, “God is not far from each of us. “Any Stoic in that audience would have been a nodding his or her head in agreement. “God is not far from each of us.” This was Paul’s way, quoting their poets, of finding common ground.
Now, once you’ve met someone on their own terms and found common ground, the last tip or strategy Paul gives us is to provide a reason for why you think, in this case, God is near—and that reason is Jesus. Jesus confirms the nearness of God. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is called Emmanuel, which means “God is with us.” God is with us. His incarnation, and especially, his resurrection, confirm what the Stoics believe, that God is not far from one of us. As one commentator observes, and I’ve quoted him before, “Against the backdrop of the Old Testament, one reads in the first four books of the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke and, John—the four Gospels—a story in which, after centuries of hiddenness, God manifests God’s presence in human form. God, perceived once to be far off, has come close. God is near. God is not far from each of us, and that, in the Christian faith, is confirmed by the incarnation of Jesus Christ. This is no longer an abstract concept, but a concrete reality in history. “
And this is good news. This is amazing news. In a world like ours, where it often seems that God is distant. In a world like ours, where it often seems that God is far off. In a world like ours, where God’s presence is anything but obvious, in a world, as we saw this last week, where hard-won civil rights of racial minorities is being overturned; or in a world like ours, where the gap between tech bros and poor people is widening at an alarming rate— the Christian message is: In spite of all these injustices, God is near.
And the basis for this message is Jesus Christ. God has and will continue to accompany us in these troubled times. God will see us through as we continue to help the needy, which we did last week in the boxing of the quilts, and as we continue to push back against injustice. God, in Christ, will always be with us, empowering us, assuring us, strengthening us and preserving us.
The simple message I want you to hear this day is this: God is near, and Christ confirms it.
“I will not leave you orphaned,” he says in today’s Gospel. That’s his promise, and that’s our reality.
“I will not leave you orphaned.” That is the good news in the first century for Christians, and I would argue that is the good news in the 21st Century for Christians.
Okay, let’s step back for a moment and summarize what we’ve discussed. As Christians, according to First Peter, we should always be ready to give an account of the hope within us.
How do we do that? We find an example in Paul’s speech, where he offers us three ways we can share our faith with others. Number one: meet others on their own terms. Use their language, not ours. Instead of talking about justification, you can talk about being accepted, which, incidentally, is on the early books of the Lutheran confessional tradition; Martin Luther’s right-hand man, a guy named Philip Melanchthon, used the word for grace “acceptance” over 10 times in his defense of the Oxford Confession. So, meet others on their own terms. Melanchthon did that 500 years ago. We can do that today.
Number two, find, as Paul did, points of agreement or common ground he and the Stoics, for different reasons, could find common ground in the conviction that God is not far off. God is near. As even Martin Luther says, “God is the inmost reality of all things,” as even Saint Augustine says, “God is closer to you than you are to yourself.” And if you want to leave our tradition and go to Islam, even as the 50th chapter of the Quran says, “God is closer to you than you are to your jugular vein.” God is near; the inmost reality of all things. In the case of Paul, finding points of agreement are common ground with his Gentile audience.
And number three, after meeting the conversation partner on their own terms, and finding points of agreement, give clear reasons for why you hope what you hope.
God is near, we believe; Jesus confirms it. “I will not leave you orphaned,” he says. What better expression of the Gospel, is that, than just about any other verse I can think of at the moment in all of Scripture.
Now to those three points, I’m going to add a fourth. You ready? Don’t expect success. Let go of that idol. Remember that Paul only persuaded a minority of the audience when he started about talking about the resurrection. The Epicureans and the Stoics, it says, scoffed. Why? Because they didn’t believe in an afterlife, and yet, here Paul is talking about how God raised a man from the dead to confirm this man’s authority.
So remember, as was the case for Paul, only a handful of people were persuaded by his message. But then imagine, and this is the important thing, imagine how Paul’s message changed the lives of those few people; how it touched even those who otherwise would have never heard this message. That’s the risk we must take. We can’t expect, without the Spirit, especially, to convert or persuade people simply by the power of reason. Having said that, there may always be a minority of people who are at the right place and the right time to hear your reasons for why you believe and the good news with it. You and I, in other words, are called to take the same risk that Paul did, knowing that we will often fall short.
Now that brings me to my final point this morning. What if, after all of my persuasive reasoning, you are still not comfortable sharing or talking about your faith with others? What if, in other words, you remain Lutheran: still not comfortable talking to a colleague at work, or a friend at school saying, “Have you met Jesus?” What if you are still not comfortable doing anything like that?
Well, maybe the best way to “give an account of the hope within you” is not actually words. It’s by the way you live your life. In our Gospel Reading for today, Jesus says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” If you love me, you will keep my commandments. So what are the commandments of Jesus? Well, if you turn back to John 13, a chapter earlier, Jesus says, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. You should love one another and by this everyone will know you are my disciples if you have love for one another.
So the best argument for your faith, the best way to give an account of the hope within you, is by how you live your life by how you treat other people, not only here at church, but out there in the world. Reasons are good sometimes, as was the case with Paul, even necessary. But perhaps the best way to give an account of the hope within you is by the way you live your life. You know the hymn “They will know we are Christians by our love.”
Let’s pray.
God of love, we come before you this morning and ask that you keep us mindful of the good news that you are near, as confirmed in the incarnation of your Son, Jesus Christ, and that you will never leave us. You will never abandon us. You will always accompany us. When words fail, help us give an account of the hope within us by the way we live, loving others as you first loved us.
In Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.
Amen.