Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year A

²² Paul stood in the middle of the Areopagus, and said, “You men of Athens, I perceive that you are very religious in all things. ²³ For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription: ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ What therefore you worship in ignorance, I announce to you. ²⁴ The God who made the world and all things in it, he, being Lord of heaven and earth, doesn’t dwell in temples made with hands. ²⁵ He isn’t served by men’s hands, as though he needed anything, seeing he himself gives to all life and breath, and all things. ²⁶ He made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the surface of the earth, having determined appointed seasons, and the boundaries of their dwellings, ²⁷ that they should seek the Lord, if perhaps they might reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. ²⁸ ‘For in him we live, move, and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also his offspring.’ ²⁹ Being then the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold, or silver, or stone, engraved by art and design of man. ³⁰ The times of ignorance therefore God overlooked. But now he commands that all people everywhere should repent, ³¹ because he has appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he has ordained; of which he has given assurance to all men, in that he has raised him from the dead.”

⁸ Praise our God, you peoples! Make the sound of his praise heard, ⁹ who preserves our life among the living, and doesn’t allow our feet to be moved. ¹⁰ For you, God, have tested us. You have refined us, as silver is refined. ¹¹ You brought us into prison. You laid a burden on our backs. ¹² You allowed men to ride over our heads. We went through fire and through water, but you brought us to the place of abundance. ¹³ I will come into your temple with burnt offerings. I will pay my vows to you, ¹⁴ which my lips promised, and my mouth spoke, when I was in distress. ¹⁵ I will offer to you burnt offerings of fat animals, with the offering of rams, I will offer bulls with goats. ¹⁶ Come and hear, all you who fear God. I will declare what he has done for my soul. ¹⁷ I cried to him with my mouth. He was extolled with my tongue. ¹⁸ If I cherished sin in my heart, the Lord wouldn’t have listened. ¹⁹ But most certainly, God has listened. He has heard the voice of my prayer. ²⁰ Blessed be God, who has not turned away my prayer, nor his loving kindness from me.

¹³ Now who will harm you if you become imitators of that which is good? ¹⁴ But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you are blessed. “Don’t fear what they fear, neither be troubled.” ¹⁵ But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts. Always be ready to give an answer to everyone who asks you a reason concerning the hope that is in you, with humility and fear, ¹⁶ having a good conscience. Thus, while you are spoken against as evildoers, they may be disappointed who curse your good way of life in Christ. ¹⁷ For it is better, if it is God’s will, that you suffer for doing well than for doing evil. ¹⁸ Because Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring you to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the Spirit, ¹⁹ in whom he also went and preached to the spirits in prison, ²⁰ who before were disobedient, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, while the ship was being built. In it, few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water. ²¹ This is a symbol of baptism, which now saves you—not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, ²² who is at the right hand of God, having gone into heaven, angels and authorities and powers being made subject to him.