Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

²² So Paul, standing before them at the Mars Hill forum, addressed them as follows:

“Men of Athens, I notice that you are very religious, ²³ for as I was out walking I saw your many altars, and one of them had this inscription on it—‘To the Unknown God.’ You have been worshiping him without knowing who he is, and now I wish to tell you about him.

²⁴ “He made the world and everything in it, and since he is Lord of heaven and earth, he doesn’t live in man-made temples; ²⁵ and human hands can’t minister to his needs—for he has no needs! He himself gives life and breath to everything, and satisfies every need there is. ²⁶ He created all the people of the world from one man, Adam,^[a] and scattered the nations across the face of the earth. He decided beforehand which should rise and fall, and when. He determined their boundaries.

²⁷ “His purpose in all of this is that they should seek after God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him—though he is not far from any one of us. ²⁸ For in him we live and move and are! As one of your own poets says it, ‘We are the sons of God.’ ²⁹ If this is true, we shouldn’t think of God as an idol made by men from gold or silver or chipped from stone. ³⁰ God tolerated man’s past ignorance about these things, but now he commands everyone to put away idols and worship only him. ³¹ For he has set a day for justly judging the world by the man he has appointed, and has pointed him out by bringing him back to life again.”

⁸ Let everyone bless God and sing his praises; ⁹ for he holds our lives in his hands, and he holds our feet to the path. ¹⁰ You have purified us with fire,^[a] O Lord, like silver in a crucible. ¹¹ You captured us in your net and laid great burdens on our backs. ¹² You sent troops to ride across our broken bodies.^[b] We went through fire and flood. But in the end, you brought us into wealth and great abundance.

¹³ Now I have come to your Temple with burnt offerings to pay my vows. ¹⁴ For when I was in trouble, I promised you many offerings. ¹⁵ That is why I am bringing you these fat male goats, rams, and calves. The smoke of their sacrifice shall rise before you.

¹⁶ Come and hear, all of you who reverence the Lord, and I will tell you what he did for me: ¹⁷ For I cried to him for help with praises ready on my tongue. ¹⁸ He would not have listened if I had not confessed my sins. ¹⁹ But he listened! He heard my prayer! He paid attention to it!

²⁰ Blessed be God, who didn’t turn away when I was praying and didn’t refuse me his kindness and love.

¹³ Usually no one will hurt you for wanting to do good. ¹⁴ But even if they should, you are to be envied, for God will reward you for it. ¹⁵ Quietly trust yourself to Christ your Lord, and if anybody asks why you believe as you do, be ready to tell him, and do it in a gentle and respectful way.

¹⁶ Do what is right; then if men speak against you, calling you evil names, they will become ashamed of themselves for falsely accusing you when you have only done what is good. ¹⁷ Remember, if God wants you to suffer, it is better to suffer for doing good than for doing wrong!

¹⁸ Christ also suffered. He died once for the sins of all us guilty sinners although he himself was innocent of any sin at any time, that he might bring us safely home to God. But though his body died, his spirit lived on, ¹⁹ and it was in the spirit that he visited the spirits in prison and preached to them— ²⁰ spirits of those who, long before in the days of Noah, had refused to listen to God, though he waited patiently for them while Noah was building the ark. Yet only eight persons were saved from drowning in that terrible flood. ²¹ (That, by the way, is what baptism pictures for us: In baptism we show that we have been saved from death and doom by the resurrection of Christ;^[a] not because our bodies are washed clean by the water but because in being baptized we are turning to God and asking him to cleanse our hearts from sin.) ²² And now Christ is in heaven, sitting in the place of honor next to God the Father, with all the angels and powers of heaven bowing before him and obeying him.

^15-16 “If you love me, obey me; and I will ask the Father and he will give you another Comforter, and he will never leave you. ¹⁷ He is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit who leads into all truth. The world at large cannot receive him, for it isn’t looking for him and doesn’t recognize him. But you do, for he lives with you now and some day shall be in you. ¹⁸ No, I will not abandon you or leave you as orphans in the storm—I will come to you. ¹⁹ In just a little while I will be gone from the world, but I will still be present with you. For I will live again—and you will too. ²⁰ When I come back to life again, you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. ²¹ The one who obeys me is the one who loves me; and because he loves me, my Father will love him; and I will too, and I will reveal myself to him.”