Open the Doors...It’s Time to Celebrate!

Altar to the Unknown God
Acts 17: 22-28
Chris McCurdy

1. Matt and I have been focusing on why the people have been not coming to church and we have had some very good discussion on why that might be.

   1. The truth is that there is no one reason that people do not come…

      1. Judgmental

      2. Oppressive… females and homosexuals

      3. Claims all other religions are wrong

      4. Control… all of these measures of control

   2. There is no quick fix, there is no change on the horizon that will revolutionize the church because there are too many ways that people experience God!

      1. Presbyterian

      2. Methodist

      3. Catholic

      4. Pentecostal

2. Post-modern

   1. And so here we come… full circle and I will now give you the very definition of the term post-modern

      1. The definition is… yes… and no

         1. Christian

         2. Political

         3. Environmentalist

         4. traditional or new age

      2. it isn’t that we threw out the old terms to define ourselves people still use them everyday!

      3. We seek escape from the things that hold us to certain actions or places while still claiming everything about them

         1. we have become ultimately aware of the past while we seek out the future

         2. the only thing that is certain in all of this is that we seek…

3. So… friends… I tell you this day… I have seen

   1. How religious we are in every way

      1. Work so hard at everything we do

         1. Mom working at hospice

   2. For I went through our cities and looked carefully at the objects of worship

      1. Places of commerce, social clubs, the Internet!

         1. where better to see our base compunction for reaching out to others

   3. And I found among all these things an inscription to an unknown God…

      1. God is in everything and everywhere that we are

         1. God looks down on the people who gather together in a house of worship and smiles on them…

         2. When I was a child I sat in the balcony and shot paper clips at my dad while he preached… not giving any ideas… but I think God sees all this and laughs!

         3. God watches thousands gather to watch Notre Dame pulverize Michigan and raises his arms to signal the touchdown

         4. God sees the people who come to the coffee house and share a cup of coffee with each other and the end of a long day

         5. God delights in our exchanges because that is what God made us to be…. Relational

   4. What therefore you worship as unknown, I proclaim to you is the God who made everything in it, the Lord of Heaven and earth does not live in shrines of human hands…

      1. But dwells in shrines made of our hearts and walks beside us all in this journey we call life.

4. What is post-modern?

   1. Post-modern is that the people are hungry

   2. Post-modern is that we have built all of this to be together and now is not the time to teach… but now is the time to learn!

   3. I can teach you who God is as well as I can teach you the feeling that you get when you sit with your family in the dark looking at the Christmas Tree as it is first lit.

      1. Or maybe a hundred other traditions that mean something to someone but I have no understanding of it

   4. I cannot teach you these things… but I can hear what it was like from you and share that experience…

      1. We have so much to learn from one another but it requires us to listen as much as we speak…

5. If God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son… then isn’t it time I listened to the rest of the world and how they have experienced the wonder of God and God’s beautiful creation?

   1. The world is hungry… the world is primed to share its experience with us and would love to hear ours. Part of our story is the redemptive power of Jesus Christ… as we share may we be open enough to hear the story of others. Amen.