Pastor Sherry’s message for May 10, 2026

Scriptures: Acts 17:22-34; Ps 66:8-20; 1 Pet 3:13-22; Jn 14:15-21

I came across the following list on the internet this week:

“Why God Will Never Get Tenure At Any University:

1. Only published one book.

2. It was in Hebrew.

3. It had no references [footnotes or citations from other sources].

4. He did not publish it in referenced journals.

5. Some doubt He even wrote it Himself.

6. He is not known for His cooperative work.

7. Sure, He created the world, but what has He done lately?

8. He did not get permission from any review board to work with human subjects.

9. When one experiment went awry, He tried to cover it up by drowning all the subjects.

10. When sample subjects do not behave as predicted, He deletes the whole sample.

11. He rarely comes to class and just tells His students to read the Book.

12. It is rumored that He sometimes lets His Son teach the class.

13. Although He only has 10 requirements, His students often fail His tests.

14. His office hours were infrequent and usually held on a mountain top.”

(Source unknown)

I wonder if the author of this list was a believer. It doesn’t seem like it, does it? If the list is meant to be tongue-in-cheek humor, it puts us in the position of negatively judging the Great High God of the Universe! Speaking humbly, who are we to do that? What would make any human bold enough to believe we are justified in thinking we know better than our Creator and our Redeemer? Frankly, as Job learned, judging God is above our pay grade, isn’t it?

If we are going to let God be God, without our interference–which is hard for many to do—we have to allow Him to reveal Himself to us as He is, not as we might like Him to be. We have to take Him at His Word (made flesh, Jesus—the face of God the Father–and written, the Bible). My daughter and I had a friend in Pittsburgh named Mrs. Wilson. She told me that she was a Christian but she also believed in reincarnation. Like many, she thought she could pick the most appealing aspects of the world religions and decide what she liked best, thus fashioning her own religion. But if we make up our own god, and the rules through which he operates, then who is god? Reincarnation is a Hindu concept whereby if we don’t learn in one lifetime what the multitude of gods want from us, we come back after death as another life form to try again. This goes on and on until we finally get it right. She thought this idea was delightful until I asked her what she would do if she were reincarnated as a rat or a cockroach. Hinduism is a “works’ righteousness” religion, in which believers are responsible for their own salvation. She was a non-practicing Catholic who didn’t realize we can’t save ourselves—we all need a Savior to do it for us. So I gently asked her, “Mrs. Wilson, why would you want to go through all that risk and all that work when Jesus Christ has already won salvation for you?”

I think this is what Paul was getting at in our Acts 17:22-31 lesson.

He’s in Athens, at the Parthenon on the highest hill in the city, and he notices all the altars the Greeks have to their many gods. Built in 500 BC, it was originally dedicated to Athena (after whom the city was named), the goddess of wisdom, the arts, literature, and war. In Paul’s day, it contained altars to all the gods and goddesses of the Greek pantheon. It was also the place to which Greek philosophers came to debate and discuss the great ideas of their day. Paul noticed they had also included one altar to “An Unknown God.” Were they hedging their bets? Trying to appeal to any god they hadn’t yet discovered? Paul wisely went on to tell them they were “too religious”—too caught up in their own ideas about god without knowing the One True God. He identified their unknown God as Jesus Christ and tells them he both knows of Him and knows Him. He tells them, essentially, that when he came to believe in Christ, he lost many of his ideas about religion.

He wants them (and us) to let Jesus Christ be the One and Only God in their lives. He tells them that God created everything (v.24); that He meets all of His own needs and does not live in man-made temples (v.25); that, in fact, He gave us life and we are His children. He asserts that In Him we live and move and have our being (v.28). He means that we should all have a relationship with Him, as He is, as He has revealed Himself to us. He cautions them to realize that prior to Jesus’ incarnation, God(v.30)…overlooked peoples’ ignorance…but now He commands everyone everywhere to repent of their sins and turn to Him [meaning Jesus, the One He raised from the dead].

And He warns them that this God, Jesus, (v.28) is not an idol—He is real! He want us to repent of our sins and turn to Him. As the judge of all humans, He will one day return to earth to evaluate how well they (and we) have obeyed Him.

The Greeks of Paul’s day did not believe in a resurrection—this was a critical tenet of their religion. So some of them laughed at Paul, rejecting what did not agree with their religious notions. But others, including Dionysius, an influential man, and Damaris, a woman, believed him, and accepted Jesus then and there as their Lord and Savior. These two, and hopefully others, were willing to let God be God. This means letting go of what they (and we) may have held as treasured human concepts (like Mrs. Wilson’s fascination with reincarnation), and taking our God as He is, as He has revealed Himself to be.

Our Psalm (66:8-20) is one of thanksgiving, both as a community of faith and as individual believers. We thank God for historically protecting His people, testing us, purifying us, ransoming us from slavery in Egypt (or bondage to sin), and for showing us the way forward. We also individually thank Him for hearing our prayers and for answering us.

Even in Old Testament times, this psalmist knew God answers the prayers of those who confess their sins. If we don’t experience God answering our prayers, it could be because we come to Him as unrepentant sinners. I was in my early 40’s before I realized that the Lord had answered one of my prayers. He had not saved a baby I lost at 5.5 months into the pregnancy; nor did He put my damaged marriage back together. But as my mother lay dying in the ICU from cirrhosis of the liver (she had been a long term alcoholic), I began to pray at her bedside that the Lord would forgive her of her sins and take her home to be with Him. I asked the nursing staff if a Catholic priest had been called, as she had converted to Catholicism back when I was a teen. They called for an anonymous fellow from the Orlando phone book. When he arrived and began to ready himself to pray over her and anoint her, he asked me where I lived (Tallahassee, Florida, at the time), and shocked me when he said he had daughters who lived there. It turns out he was an Episcopal priest who had been accepted into the Roman Catholic religion and was able to remain married to his wife and connected to his children. He said at that time (1988), he was one of only 7 such priests in the country! I realized shortly thereafter that the Lord had sent an Episcopalian for me (my denomination then) who was a Catholic for my mother. She died about 45 minutes after he ministered to her. Prior to 1988, I had not lived a very Christian life style. I was not in the habit of keeping short sin accounts with the Lord. But I had learned to do so by then. If we are going to let God be God, we might want to preface all our prayers with an admission of and repentance for the ways we have offended God.

The Gospel lesson this morning is from John 14:15-21. In this particular passage, Jesus teaches His disciples about the Holy Spirit. (V.16) He is our Advocate, like a defense attorney who will always be there for us. (V.17) Another of His jobs is to lead us into all truth. If you don’t know how to interpret a passage of Scripture, ask the Holy Spirit to open up its meaning for you. If you don’t know who to believe when the news differs from reporter to reporter, ask the Holy Spirit to help you discern who is speaking the truth. The Holy Spirit is God’s still, small voice, speaking wisdom to us in any situation. Jesus wants us to know, however, that our ability to hear from the Holy Spirit depends on our being obedient to His commandments. Just as with Psalm 66, if we are letting God be God, we demonstrate our love for Him by our obedience to Him.

Finally, in our New Testament reading from 1 Peter 3:13-22, the Apostle wants us to remember our Christian lives will not always be smooth—and he should know! As with Peter, the Lord tests us through trials and hard times. He is present with us during our suffering, but He never agrees to always protect us from it-→someone has wisely said, “He invites us to a banquet, not a picnic.”

(J. Vernon McGee, Through the Bible Commentary on 1st Peter, Thomas Nelson, 1991, p.16.)

Peter wants us to (v.15)-→worship Christ as Lord of your life….if people speak against you, they will be ashamed when they see what a good life you live because you belong to Christ. Remember It is better to suffer for doing good, if that is what God wants, then to suffer for doing wrong! Someone else has opined, “The answer is yes, Lord; now what’s the question?”.

(J. Fairless and D. Chilton, The Lectionary Lab Commentary, Year A, 2013, p.120.)

May we always let God be God, and trust in Him, even when things are not going well in our lives. May we also frequently confess our sins and remain in right relationship with Him. Amen, may it be so!

©️2026 Rev. Dr. Sherry Adams