Sermon, "In Whom We Live, and Move, and Exist," Acts 17:22-28

Sermon 9/27/2026 

Acts 17:22-28

In Whom We Live, and Move, and Exist

I’ll admit to you that I’ve struggled with this sermon (and I understand that maybe at least one other preacher in this series struggled too!). When it comes to thinking about the Bible and thinking about creation, our relationship to God and the earth and the mutual flourishing of all that is - ourselves and all earth-others - there are a lot of texts that come to mind. Of course, there are the creation stories of Genesis themselves. There are writings from the prophets that speak to a vision of God’s people in harmony with the lands they inhabit, peace between people and the earth as a sign of a people living in right relationship with God. And there are Jesus’s teachings that are so rich in imagery related to a deep relationship with the land, and Jesus speaking of himself in metaphors grounded in the world around us - vines and sheep and bread and water. And out of so many potential images, this season of creation mini-lectionary chooses this strange text from Acts 17, an excerpt from one of Paul’s many sermons during his missionary travels. And I’ve been - baffled. It’s just not the first scripture - or the tenth scripture - that comes to my mind when I’m thinking about caring for creation. 

So, it’s been a challenge. But challenges can be good, asking us to step outside our normal ways of reading a text, paying attention to it in different ways, bringing a different pair of lenses through which we’ll read together. What happens, then, when we read this text through a green lens, on the lookout for a message about creation? 

Let’s look at the text. Our text finds the apostle Paul on one of his many journeys to spread the message of Jesus and plant communities of Jesus-followers everywhere he goes. Paul has co-workers in his ministry, and in particular in this part of Acts he is working with Silas and Timothy. Silas and Timothy are busy in other communities, though, and Paul is waiting for them in Athens. In Athens, he sees that the city is full of idols - that is, there are many statues in Athens of Greek gods and goddesses, dedicated to deities that directly conflict with Paul’s understanding that there is only One God.

Paul debates anyone and everyone he can. He debates the Jewish leaders and other devout Jews he finds in the synagogue in Athens. He debates the Greek philosophers - both Epicureans - who focused on the pursuit of happiness as the most important thing - and the Stoics - who focused on rational acceptance of everything outside of our control. And intriguingly, while Paul is upset about idols, the Athenians see Paul as the one talking about strange gods. They take him to the Areopagus - a place that was often used to examine people, hold councils, and conduct trials. They say: “tell us about this new teaching that you’re going on about.”

Paul’s response is where our reading begins. Although the idols to other gods distress Paul, he’s savvy. Instead of criticizing the Athenians, he says that he sees that they are very spiritual people, something he can see by their frequent monuments to the gods. In particular, he mentions one with the inscription: “To an unknown god.” In this inscription, Paul sees an opening. This god they don’t know, can’t describe or name? That’s God with a capital G - the God of all Creation. The One God. 

This God has created the earth and everything and everyone in it. This God can’t be contained in anything made by human hands. This God is the one who breathes the breath of life into all people. This God is the one who sets human hearts on a quest to find God, find meaning, even though, Paul says, God is never really far from them. Quoting Athenian philosophy, Paul says that this God is the one in whom we live, and move, and exist.” We, Paul says, are God’s offspring, God’s children. Offspring, children, Paul implies, can’t come from gods made of silver and gold. They can only come from the living God.  

When Paul goes on to talk about resurrection from the dead, after the end of our reading, he loses his crowd a bit. Some of them aren’t so taken with his sermon. But some - some of them want to hear more, and some of them become followers of Jesus. 

Looking through our green lenses, looking for messages about our relationship to God, each other, the earth, and its creatures, I’m struck by how it is that Paul describes God to the Athenians. Many times when Paul is preaching, he is recorded, unsurprisingly, as focusing on the person of Jesus and the work of Jesus in reconciling people to God. But Paul spends a lot of time in this sermon on the very nature of God. And what he says is: God created everything. God is not confined to shrines made by human hands. All the people of the earth are a single people, and we come from a common source even if we live across boundaries of geography. And even while we’re searching for God, God is always close to us - and that’s because we’re already in God - we exist in God. 

***

Have you ever heard someone say before (and maybe sometimes say it a bit defensively, when asked why they don’t go to church, despite proclaiming a belief in God, or a Christian identity) that they “really feel God more when they’re out in nature”? Maybe you’ve even said this, or thought this yourself. I certainly have. Many - although not all certainly - of my deepest experiences of God as a young person were “in nature” at Camp Aldersgate. I can still recall being at Aldersgate for a winter retreat with my youth group, and sitting next to the frozen, snow-covered lake, and feeling the silence like it was a tangible thing, and just feeling an overwhelming sense of God’s presence. So, when people say, “I feel God more when I’m in nature,” I get it. I do. 

But I also, I will confess, roll my eyes sometimes when people say this. I roll my eyes because sometimes I’m suspicious that the person saying this just doesn’t want the bother of coming to a worship service, the discipline of it. I roll my eyes because I’m suspicious not because I question encountering God in nature, but because I want to know if that encounter with God has changed anything. What do you do with your one-on-one encounter with God?  

Here’s another thing I hear folks say sometimes, a thing I’m sure I’ve also said myself. “That’s between me and God.” It’s something people say when there’s a part of their pain, part of their struggle, part of the sometimes one-step-forward-two-steps-back nature of our journeys of faith that they’re not ready to share with anyone else, not ready to bring out of the shadows. It’s “Just between me and God.” 

But I would argue - I would argue with myself - that God’s intention is always to have something between us and God: our neighbors. Jesus teaches that the greatest commandment is to love God with all our hearts, minds, soul, and strength, and the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. Loving our neighbors is like loving God. We can’t fully love God unless we love one another. We can’t be in a relationship with God that’s vibrant and growing unless we’re also working on our relationships with each other. We’re in this together. We’re accountable to each other, to challenge each other, help each other grow in faith, and lift each other up. 

All this to say, sometimes when people talk about finding God in nature, I think: That’s great. But where’s your neighbor? Our faith is not meant to be solitary. We live within the communion of saints, in Christian community. We are not isolated in our private relationship with God. To have a relationship with God, we’re accountable to other people. 

*** 

I hold these sentiments, though, next to Paul’s words from our text today. “The God who made the world and everything in it … does not live in temples made with human hands.” Although we often refer to our sacred and beloved spaces of worship as “God’s house,” Paul is reminding us that the inside of church buildings is not God’s permanent address. God is here. But God doesn’t live here, at least not only here, or even especially here. 

Increasingly, I think, the people of earth are “inside” people. And I mean this both literally and figuratively. We’re inside people because we’ve made the outside uninhabitable. I think, sometimes, about air conditioning. Although in the summer we may dream of the day when this particular space is air conditioned(!), many of you of a certain age probably reflect back on your younger years and think, “We didn’t need to have air conditioning when I was a kid.” I mean, we certainly never had such a thing in our house when I was growing up. And we mostly didn’t need it. But the earth is changing, thanks to our careless attention. Some people die when they don’t have air conditioned spaces to live in. And so, while the planet heats and heats, we retreat inside, where we can condition the air, manufacture it into a livable climate. We’ve had to become inside people. 

Sometimes we also become inside people by turning our hearts, our attention, our love inward. Sure, we’re learned that it isn’t just between us and God, so we include a close-knit community in our circle of attention. But then instead of “just between me and God,” it is “just between this small set of people and God.” Despite our intentions, most of us - and I am always including myself here - spend most of our time - especially most of our non-working time, with people who are basically like us. We’re inside people - we tend to turn inwards, to our own interests, to the communities of people we consider like us. 

***

The God Paul describes to the Athenians is radically different. This God is not an inside God. This God, who made the world and everything in is not contained to the spaces where we sometimes insist on looking for God. And this God who gives life and breath to all creatures  is not contained in one kind of people, in one community, in one tradition. Instead, as Paul reminds us, we all come from the same source. We are one people, despite any boundaries we erect between us. And this God, whom we seek and search out is not far. In fact, we carry God’s breath within us. Not only is God in the air that we breathe, but God is the air we breathe. Our breath is God’s breath. God’s hand has touched every life that we see. 

What all that means is that we are radically interdependent. Our independence is an illusion. We’re entangled, and we cannot be unraveled from one another anymore than we can unravel ourselves from God, thanks be to God. And our interdependence, our entanglement includes the whole web of creation. We are bound up with each earth-other - humans, animals, the trees and plants who breathe out what we breathe in, the soil that cultivates the nutrients, the biodiversity that allows things to grow, the living water upon which our existence depends. Not only is it not just between me and God, not only is it not just between me and my selected set of neighbors - it also isn’t just between me and the rest of humanity. Bound up in our ability to draw close to God is nothing more and nothing less than the whole of creation. In God, we, and all the earth with us, live, and move, and exist. What would it mean if we reoriented our lives to that radical truth? 

As we spend our lives seeking after God, reaching out for God, longing for God, here is the good news: God is not far from us. God is within us. And within our neighbors. And within those we have forgotten are neighbors. And within every being and every thing created. May we have the vision to see the delicate web of creation in which we are entangled, every strand a gift from God. Amen.