'The unknown God'

Acts 17:16-34

            You may have read this before but I lived for almost fifty years with a void in my life. That's not to say I did not love. It's not t say I was not loved. It is not to say I did not live life to the full, as best I could. Still, there was a void in my life and I did not know what it was.  I tried to fill that void with my search and longing for God. I was truly blessed my entire life but I do recall one specific weekend away that particularly insightful. It was a Cursillo weekend. On that weekend when I was about 16 I came to know in my heart and every fiber of my being that God loves me.  The journey to find my void was still there but I knew that God was with me always. I knew God loves me. I know that Jesus willingly died for me.

             After my ordination, one of the fruits was the growing awareness that I was gay. Even though I still could not really put my finger on it the awareness was coming into my consciousness. Friends helped, prayers helped and most of all, a good therapist helped.  I cannot express in words the joy and sense of wholeness I felt when I uttered the words to myself  (out loud ) "I am gay". Fantastic. Wonderful. Blessed.  Being gay is a gift, it is a lens with which I see the world. It is a way in which I love the world and other people, not in sexual way but my gayness is a part of my expression of love for everyone.  Is it emotional? Sensitive? Empathetic? Perhaps all and more but it is an integral part of who I am and I am blessed all the more for it.

          That void of 50 years was filled. For many and even myself, it could have been "the unknown God". In truth though, while the magnitude of realizing I am gay was life changing, it is simply a part of who I am. It is not the end of the journey. Being gay does not say it all about me or anyone else.  It is integral but not a total description of who I am. Considering the magnitude of the discovery, I could have easily thought it was that "unknown God".  The unknown God to me is still God, the God of Abraham and Mohammed, the God who gave his son to us as a willing sacrifice for our sins, Jesus the Christ.  

         In the never ending revelation and discovery of God's infinite love, being gay is merely a part of the gift that God imparts to me and to us.  The revelations and extent of God's love for us is so pervasive and so boundless, so infinite, the unknown God is the mystery of the love we still have to live and discover, the growth we have yet to live and grow from. God is present, God is mystery, God is love and always a bit unknown. But thank God for that part of me that is revealed in my gayness and the expression of His infinite love in me. 

While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was deeply distressed to see that the city was full of idols. So he argued in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and also in the market-place every day with those who happened to be there. Also some Epicurean and Stoic philosophers debated with him. Some said, ‘What does this babbler want to say?’ Others said, ‘He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign divinities.’ (This was because he was telling the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.) So they took him and brought him to the Areopagus and asked him, ‘May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? It sounds rather strange to us, so we would like to know what it means.’ Now all the Athenians and the foreigners living there would spend their time in nothing but telling or hearing something new.

Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, ‘Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. 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. 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. From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. 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.”
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. 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.’

When they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some scoffed; but others said, ‘We will hear you again about this.’ At that point Paul left them. But some of them joined him and became believers, including Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.