Easter is the greatest holiday that followers of Jesus celebrate.

But those of us who have been around here over the last few months have had Easter just sort of sneak up on us. Some years, we do a really good job of leading up to Easter. In some churches, following the “church year” does this well. The season of Lent prepares us for the coming of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection.

This year, though, we’ve been following the book of Acts, and just sort of fall into the celebration of Easter without much preparation at all. It’s a wonderful celebration, but we haven’t given it any context or preparation.

Why is it important? How is it important to me and the life I lead each day? Why does Easter matter?

Since we haven’t had much preparation for Easter, we thought it might be good to capitalize on the surprise.

Since it’s just sort of appeared in our sights out of nowhere, let’s take advantage of that.

So today, rather than a traditional Easter passage from the bible of the resurrection of Jesus, we’re looking at Acts 17. The heart of what we’ll look at is Paul’s words to people in Athens.

The people Paul spoke to weren’t prepared for Easter at all. They knew nothing about Jesus, and nothing, really, about the Jewish experience of God in the Old Testament.

Paul had to get right to the heart of what was important about Jesus. He had to explain, to people who knew virtually nothing, why Jesus mattered in their lives and why it was important that he came back to life.

When Paul had one chance to talk with people who would be completely surprised by Easter, what did he say was important? And what can it say to us, who have been a little surprised by Easter this year as well?

Let’s look at Acts 17, verse 16.

Imagine people who have never heard of anything about Easter. No bunnies, no candy, no new dresses. No empty tomb or stone rolled away, nothing.

If Jesus was important to you; if Jesus had changed your life, how would you connect with people who knew nothing about him?

[READ 16-17]

Paul sees the idols in Athens and he’s upset.

His spirit is “provoked within him,” it literally says. His guts are turning inside out.

Paul doesn’t have a “live and let live” philosophy. He sees people pursuing spirituality, pursuing some religious safety net, and he wants them to experience the reality of what he has found in life with Jesus.

So he goes to work. He talks to the Jews who are there. He goes into the marketplace, too, every single day, trying to bring real life to their experience. Paul wants to free them from a spirituality that is all their own creation.

[READ 18-21]

Some people simply aren’t impressed.

He’s called a know it all, a babbler. These sophisticated philosophers and brilliant Athenians seem to like sitting around and dissecting all the new theories and philosophies.

It gets Paul some attention-some of it negative, some from people simply curious for more. They’re craving something new, and Paul is smart enough to tease them into asking for more.

So the people of Athens liked to talk about the latest thing. What could be said about Oregonians? Think about the last week: what’s been the topic of conversation at work, or at the coffee shop, or in your neighborhood? [ASK]

It’s a huge question, obviously, because we talk about all sorts of things. But it’s good to think about and notice what the people around us are talking about and focused on, if we are to be like Paul and creatively build bridges of conversation and raise curiosity in the people we’re around.

Paul’s words get him an invitation to speak to the religious and philosophical authorities in the city.

He gets brought before the Areopagus, a sort of council of people in authority. They’re curious about the reports they hear of Paul. And here’s what Paul tells them: [READ 23]

You’re spiritual. You’re seeking. You have questions about things beyond what you can see and touch. Your questions are so pervasive, that you don’t want to miss anything. You’ve even got a shrine to an unknown god, in case you missed one with all the other shrines.

You don’t want to miss out on anything, and that’s great! Because I’ve got good news for you: What you worship as unknown, I know really well, and I’m here to tell you about the God who wants to be known.

Newberg doesn’t have any shrines that I’m aware of, to known or unknown gods.

But so much of what Paul says about Athens could be said about Newberg or Portland or Denver or Tallahassee. People are interested in and seeking spiritual things, and have created quite a mix of things to reach beyond what they can see. Yoga and the bible and eastern meditation and love of the earth and all sorts of things are a part of the spiritual seeking that people have.

Few people anymore have a sense of confidence that they KNOW God. Few people feel like they have all the bases covered. There’s a sense of questions and longing and seeking, but also a big sense of the unknown.

The word used in the original language here for “unknown god” is the root word from which we get the term “agnostic”. The questions and the uncertainty of whether God exists and if so, what God could possibly be like…this is the question Paul is now going to speak with certainty! That’s pretty gutsy, wouldn’t you say?

[READ 24-26]

See, Paul says, this unknown god you’re seeking is actually much more than you ever imagined.

God created everything and keeps it all going. God doesn’t need you at all; God’s greater than that, the one who created the world and all of us, the one who is so in charge of everything that he decided when and where we would all be.

God’s bigger than what you seek and think you know! God doesn’t need you…you need God!

[READ 27-28]

This is the absolute heart of Paul’s message, and I think it’s at the heart of what everyone in our culture needs to hear today, too.

God created everything, including us, so that we would seek God. We were born and created to seek him and to find him. With all your questions, all your fears, all your striving to know something beyond what you can see and touch…the truth is that God really isn’t far away from us at all.

God can be found! And when we find God…when we align our lives with God…that is when we really LIVE. That is when we have the power to be who we really are, who we were created to be.

THIS is what we believe, with Paul, to be most important about life with Christ!

God can be found. We are his children. And when we align our lives with God, we live life as it was meant to be lived! We can be who we really are!

All by itself, it isn’t proof that we’re right. Simply saying that we believe this is true doesn’t make anyone else suddenly believe it. But it’s good to be clear and confident about what we are saying is important about life with God.

Because we believe God created everything, because God calls us his children, we believe that we have found our purpose in life. That’s the promise of life with God.

Now Paul moves on to the resurrection, and to more difficult stuff. [READ 29-31]

All of your efforts to control and manipulate God…your idols to every god everywhere…your choices to pick and choose spirituality around your needs and your likes and dislikes…it’s all something that God doesn’t like.

And God is now asking us to repent of it. To turn away from our old system of controlling god, of making god to be what we want god to be.

I said earlier that our culture doesn’t really have idols or shrines in a physical sense. But we do have things which show our desire to make god what we want god to be, don’t we?

What things around us show our desire to control God, to make religion or spirituality something we can control?

In our culture, what things are evidence that people want a god they can control? [ASK]

The message of Jesus Christ is that God is greater than our thoughts, and beyond our control. The hard word that Paul gives to the Athenians comes to us, as well.

We must turn away from the thought that spirituality, religion, the pursuit of God is about what I like and I need and I want and I can control. There is judgment coming for those who make spirituality what they want it to be, instead of following the true creator.

And it’s here that Easter comes in, in a surprising way.

What’s important about Jesus being raised from the dead is that it is God’s proof that Jesus is the one who will judge us all fairly.

It’s Jesus, the living one, who will fairly decide if we have pursued God for God’s sake, or for our own gain.

Easter means Jesus is God’s chosen one to judge us fairly. I don’t think I’ve ever talked about Jesus that way around Easter. It’s not even language I really like. But it’s there in what Paul says.

One way we can celebrate Easter today is to decide what we will do with Paul’s strong words to turn around.

Paul is asking us to repent. Stop seeking to control God and make him in our own, human image. Instead, find the God who wants to be found, and find out how to live as we were really meant to live.

This call to turn around and repent is for all of us. It’s for the people, like those in Athens, who enjoy pursuing spirituality, but want the power to pick and choose what works for us.

God is a real God, who wants to be known, and who is above our likes and our dislikes.

But this call to repent is also to people who claim to follow Jesus but who want to control God. It’s for us who follow God because of what God can do for us.

It’s time to be who we were born to be.

Today, we can celebrate Easter by letting God be God in our lives. If we’re already following God, we can let Jesus give us the power to live, to be who we are.

If you’ve heard in Paul’s words, if you’ve felt the nudge of the Spirit this morning that something in how you’re following God needs to change…take this chance to turn away from a God you’ve wanted to control and shape, and follow the true God who is our creator.