Leave or Draw Near
"The idol is a collective self-deception."
2026-30
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Rev. Joseph Peters-Mathews
The Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 10, 2026
Acts 17:22-31; Psalm 66:7-18; 1 Peter 3:13-22; John 14:15-21
Willie James Jennings says, “This is speech that evokes a decision: either laugh at it or listen to it, either leave or draw near to this body. It is his body or your stones.”
Last Sunday we heard about the stoning of Stephen. I reminded you that by virtue of our baptisms — by putting our faith and trust in Jesus, by being joined to his death in baptism and joined to Jesus’ resurrection as we come out of the water, we too know victory over death. We signed up to be martyrs, though most of us will not receive a call to that vocation.
At the end of last week’s passage, those who stoned Stephen lay their cloaks in front of a man named Saul. This Saul is a Roman citizen living under imperial oppression and the life of Jewish people in diaspora. As we have gone from last week to this we have zoomed right past Saul being struck blind and called to stop persecuting followers of Jesus but to preach Jesus’ Good News. The Paul we hear making a lecture in Athens is the Saul who witnessed Stephen’s martyrdom in Jerusalem. Through the book of Acts — from Stephen’s recounting salvation history to Peter’s vision about what is clean and unclean to Paul today reiterating that God desires humanity — the story is the expanding of what is saved.
John the Baptizer has previously said, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the cosmos.” Today we have Paul telling Athenian gentiles, “With this altar to an unknown God, you didn’t know what you were worshipping, but I’m here to tell you. What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. 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, 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.”
A scandal of the gospel —one that we struggle to accept even today — is how different God is than we are, especially God who has been made known to us in Jesus the Resurrected Christ. What kind of all-powerful God lets himself be killed by his own creations? That doesn’t seem especially all-powerful! That true power comes from love, self-giving, and self-sacrifice is counterintuitive. The draw of humanity to a pantheon of deities is depicted extremely well in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess. The draw is that the gods are just like us — but more! More petty, more powerful, more terrible. While they muck about in our lives in ways we can’t control, they are just as messy as we are.
More academically, Willie James Jennings says this about idols: “The idol is a collective self-deception, a point of facilitation where human fantasy and wish, circulating around material realities, generate distorted hope. The idol facilitates a hope of control of both my life and the life of the gods, that is, to draw the gods into common cause with me for sustaining my life. The production of the idol is the production of the human, because through its creation a self is also created, and through its worship and devotion that same fabricated self is sustained.” This is the antithesis of the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob, the God who has made themself known to us in Jesus.
Paul tells the Athenians not that they have some secret wisdom where through their good religion they were getting at something they couldn’t name. The message of Christianity is not how awesome we are but that any awesomeness we have comes from God. Paul goes to Gentiles. In a turn of phrase that’s too good to skip, Jennings says, “The man who agreed to the stoning of Stephen now stands surrounded by stones that evoke his righteous fury, yet he must yield to the Spirit who now calls him to a new word.” The fashioning of these idols by people completely disconnected from God’s covenantal relationship with Israel is out of ignorance. Jesus has come to humanity to share with us God’s desire for us. The Spirit sends Paul to Athens and the gentiles to share with them God’s desire even for them.
Paul’s invitation to the Athenians concludes, “While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 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.”
“This is speech that evokes a decision: either laugh at it or listen to it, either leave, or draw near to this body. It is his body or your stones.” Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life. Jesus has been raised from the dead, and through that raising, death has been defeated.
We are presented with this choice as we wonder about the idols that block our true communion with God. Jesus’ death itself is a challenge to his deity for those who’ve made the idols that surround Paul. His resurrection? Someone coming back from the dead, the true dead, truly being raised — that is beyond the pale for the wisdom of the wisest of Greeks. Nevertheless, God is pursuing us. God’s love for us is so big that our killing God doesn’t stopper it. Jesus stands between life and death, having defeated death, and calls us all to repentance for when we didn’t know any better.
This call to repentance is out of love, not fear for punishment. Jennings emphasizes “This new time of repentance is rooted in the resurrection, not death, gift and grace, not subjugation and imperialism.” As we continue to celebrate Easter, we’re offered this same choice. “This is speech that evokes a decision: either laugh at it or listen to it, either leave, or draw near to this body. It is his body [— gathered together in prayer, tenderly offered to us in Bread and Wine —] or [our] stones.” Amen.
