Worship Leader: Paul Whiteley, LLWL Music Director: Tim Hallman, B.Mus., B.Ed.
Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 10, 2026
“God with Us”
Welcome / Announcements / Celebrations
Land Acknowledgement
Call To Worship
One: Creator, parent of the human family,
All: we gather to worship you.
One: In baptism, we are called beloved children of God, as such,
All: we gather to worship you.
One: Friends, neighbours, siblings in faith,
All: we gather to worship in song, in prayer, in readings from your story/our story,
in thoughts and reflections. Let us worship God.
-Kin to One Another, United Church of Canada, 2018
Opening Hymn: MV 79 “Spirit, Open my Heart”
Passing Of The Peace
Opening Prayer:
God, creator of us all, we gather to worship you.
We come as individuals, we come in family units, we come as neighbours and friends.
We come here where we are known by name, welcomed with all our fragilities and strengths.
We gather with kindred spirits who long to live faithful to your calling.
Guide us, inspire us, challenge us, comfort us, and nurture us in this time of worship
so that we might be enabled to return to our daily lives ready to engage fully
with all of your creation. We pray. Amen.
-Kin to One Another, United Church of Canada, 2018
Learning Together
Hymn: Then Let Us Sing! 91 “In Life, In Death”
Scripture:
Acts 17:22–28: “The Unknown God”
John 14:15–21: “The Spirit of Truth”
Reflection: “God with Us”
The Apostle Paul held both Jewish faith and Roman culture, but he was also clearly fluent in Gree; he inhabited the Greek culture of his time. He has been called the “Apostle to the Gentiles”, but in reality he might be better understood as the Apostle for Greek-speaking people – setting aside the final, half-mythical journey to Rome, all of the letters were written in Greek, sent to and from Greek-speaking cities. And today’s story from Acts is set in Athens, which in Paul’s day was already the heart of Greek culture and philosophy, a cosmopolitan city whose many faiths ranged from traditional civic temples to Zeus and Aphrodite to magical mystery cults from Asia, along with everything in between.
Before I started to prepare this reflection, I knew that the pagan altars “to the unknown god or gods” were real, but wasn’t really aware why the Athenians built them or what they were for. And I understood Paul’s key rhetorical move towards the Greeks – convincing them that the God of Love was already part of their worldview, hidden in plain sight – but without much sense of the nuances or deeper meanings of his claims.
So it turns out that the altars to unknown Gods in Athens – and there were many of them – were built on the advice of Epimenides the seer. Having been summoned Crete to bring an end to an outbreak of plague, Epimenides used sheep for a kind of divination, to identify places in an around the city where unknown, angry gods might be seeking revenge on Athenians for neglecting them.
At the time, many different kinds of gods were known around the ancient mediterranean; one important difference was between major, named Gods like Ba’al of Caanan and Apollo of Greece, and minor, unnamed local gods. The way I’ve seen them described, these local gods connected directly to life and death, from the fertility and creation at the beginning of our stories to restful or restless death at our end. Pestilence, famine and other suffering could be put at a distance by making sacrifices to these unknown Gods, and peace and prosperity could be restored. And so, long after the plague Epimenides helpt bring to an end, Athenians would still leave offerings and make prayers to unknown gods.
And so when Paul connects the God of our faith to the “unknown gods” of Athens, he is actually doing something quite unexpected. Rather than connecting our God in Christ to the powers of the official pantheon – all-powerful like Zeus, all-knowing like Apollo – Paul likens our God to the small gods: the little ones, the obscure ones, but the ones who seem to get things done. He connects the creating presence we know in faith to the very local presence of the divine found in the fields, along the pathways, and in the grazing flocks all around. Paul points to the abundance of creation since the beginning and tells the people of Athens that they recognized this force and even lived in awe of God’s abundance, while offering a new relationship with the divine through Christian worship.
Meanwhile, the Gospel of John offers us a path towards this same reality using different words. Like the Athenians’ unknown God, the spirit of trugh is already with us – is already in us – but we will come to truly know and experience this reality in the fullness of time. In John’s gospel, Jesus promises that God will send in Greek a “paraclete” – this can mean a helper or an advocate but also a counsellor or a comforter. In our tradition, this promise is fulfilled in the Holy Spirit, the third person of God who comes into our lives as a companion and sustaining presence. We are not alone, and in addition to the enduring gift of God’s creation and the visionary life of Jesus, the Human One, we also can count on the divine spirit every day to hold us, to heal us, and to nudge us into unknown directions where wisdom, growth and truth set waiting for us.
Over the last 2,000 years and more, our ancestors in faith have oriented their lives around deep truths found in the stories of our tradition. At different times, in different places, different images and aspects of our varied stories have offered hope, solace and grounding to Christians as we face the trials and challenges of our lives, as individuals and in community. But a constant connecting people of faith in all these places and times is God’s place in our lives. The unending process of creation, the unmerited gift of love in our lives, and the lifelong presence of our divine spirit in our lives are always there, just at our fingertips, for us to make lives of meaning in the face of suffering, and evil, and entropy. And for this we, like our ancestors in faith throughout the generations, give God our praise and thanks. Amen, and Amen.
Invitation For Offering
Offering Hymn: VU 541 “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow”
Offering Prayer
Anthem: “Little Jimmy Brown”
Time Of Gratitude: Dedication Of The Bell Pull
Prayers of The People
God of Moses, Aaron, and Miriam; God of Mary, Martha, and Lazurus; God of siblings who cared for one another, offered support and challenge, celebrated together, worked together, argued together, and grieved together. We are thankful for their witness. As they have done, may we also seek to live in life-giving relationships with those we would name as siblings.
God of Ruth and Naomi, who embraced each other despite differences of race and cultural traditions and chose to be family for one another. For all who choose to be family, may your love and hope be sustained day by day.
God of Simon and Andrew and James and John, who left the familiar to build new community with Jesus and his followers. Though faithful, they had moments of doubt, of fear, of denial. In our moments of doubt, fear, and denial, may we remember to trust and to take one step at a time.
God of Hagar, Abraham, and Ishmael; God of Sarah, Abraham, and Isaac; God of the complicated, and the jealous, and the broken, remind us that this too is real and that you walk with us through these troubling times.
God of Mary and John, called to relationships that stretch beyond blood, to care for one another. You invite us too to reach out in welcome, support, and care for one another. God of the past, God of the present, God of tomorrow, help us to live in relationships that seek justice, love kindness, and ground ourselves in your love for us.
And we continue in prayer together, sharing in a paraphrase of the prayer Jesus taught the disciples.
-Kin to One Another, United Church of Canada, 2018, lightly edited.
Lord’s Prayer
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name;
thy kingdom come;
thy will be done;
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation;
but deliver us from the evil one.
For thine is the kingdom,
the power and the glory,
for ever and ever. Amen.
Hymn: VU 644 “I Was There to Hear Your Borning Cry”
Benediction
Choral Blessing: MV 97 “Listen, God is Calling” (2x)
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