All the talk now in the church scene on both sides of the Pond is of what has become known as 'the quiet revival.'

This is sense that among Gen Z and some Millennials there may be signs of more engagement with church in the last few years, and at that particularly with churches that find themselves to have more traditional and ritualistic forms of worship, or as we would say in Britain, 'higher up the Candle'.

It's likely too early to say how large a demographic shift this is, or how significant it is in the long term, except to say that there is some evidence, and it has been widely reported in the press that there is a gentle and quiet upturn in forms of Christian worship with a more traditional aesthetic character to them.

Could it be that in a time of rampant individualism, rapid change and increasingly atomised communities, traditional churches offer an antidote of meaning beyond the self, a sense of continuity, and a community with a narrative that takes us beyond ourselves back to a communitarian ethic?

As a pastor of what is known as the High Kirk of Edinburgh I would like to think so, but then I would.

Anecdotally, I do see increasing numbers of younger adults at our high Presbyterian liturgical worship. I have no idea whether they come with a high sense of certainty about who they believe God to be, or doctrinal certainty, but somehow, I doubt it.

I get the sense through conversation, they come seeking - seeking God and seeking for meaning in the liturgy and poetry of worship, in those spaces between word and sacrament where God is present, but perhaps not overly defined. In those spaces where there is room for wonder and wondering.

Perhaps the most interesting and honest altar that Paul discovered whilst in cosmopolitan Athens was that to the 'unknown God.' Despite all our human sophistication, scientific knowledge and theological literacy there is so much we do not really know or understand.

• The cancer diagnosis we cannot explain
• The prayer that goes unanswered
• The tragedy that shakes our certainties
• The silence of God

Instinctively we are all people who crave certainty, but in truth, faith has always had an altar marked unknown.

In Athens, Paul embraces this unknown and commends the Athenians for their spiritual searching and curiosity about the divine. Amidst all their false idols (and we continue to have plenty of our own) Paul is drawn to their altar to the 'unknown God' as evidence of their earnest search for God, and for meaning. He undertook his missionary journeys on the assumption that to be human was to search for God.

In the reformed theological tradition, the reformer John Calvin shares with Paul this instinct about humanity. He wrote in his Institutes that "There is within the human mind, and indeed by natural instinct, an awareness of divinity." Calvin believed that every human heart carries an awareness — however faint — that we belong to God. He also believed that that every human heart carries an echo of God — a kind of homesickness for the One who made us.

And yet, the reformed tradition also carries within it the affirmation that at the same time as there is the human search, God is sovereign, transcendent, and beyond our comprehension. That is, if God is truly God, there will always be more about God than we can ever truly master.

This is also important because it keeps our faith humble and prevents us from making idols of our doctrinal certainties. In Christian history it has so often been a lack of humility, and the failure to acknowledge the contingency of our knowledge of God which has led to conflict and exclusion within Christian communities and churches.

At the same time, Paul does not say to the Athenians, 'let's keep God vague' but makes the bold and scandalous claim that a day has been fixed, and an assurance has been given, that God will be revealed in the one whom he raised from the dead to draw all peoples for different creed and cultures to Godself, and to bring justice and judgement at the end of time. All this through Jesus Christ our Lord.

And God is revealed in him and through him there will always be a part of God we cannot know or fully understand. There is always part of the divine that remains beyond us, yet before us. As the Psalmist puts it:

You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it.

For Paul, the Unknown God has a name. The Creator has acted. The Mystery of God has stepped into history.

Therefore, like the Athenians we have no need for and ought not to worship false idols of power, status or greed these are but idols of human creation and selfish longing. No. Our worship ought to be directed to the One who rejected all of these for the Cross, and who was then raised to life in victory over all the suffering and evil that worship of these idols brings to bear on us, on God, and on our creation.

Christian faith does not worship an abstraction or a god of human making.

Instead, it proclaims that the unknowable God has made himself known in Jesus Christ, the

One whose suffering love brings life and salvation to the world.

But even here — and this is the nuance — resurrection is not proof in a laboratory sense. Resurrection is revelation received in faith.

We might think of it like this.

In Jesus Christ God is revealed — but not reduced. God is Known — but not contained.

The risen Christ makes God known, yet God remains God.

And there is nowhere clearer than the life of Paul (who was formerly Saul) for the life and world changing power that this revelation has in human lives. It is transformative.

And yet faith is just that faith. It is not constant certainty but rather putting our trust in the unknown who has become known in Jesus Christ. Faith is trust in the Christ who is with us and is for us - who walks beside us,

and accompanies us in life by his risen presence

Faith requires trust. Trust requires that not everything is visible.

If everything in our lives were measurable, predictable, controllable, then there would be no faith, only management. But it is God, not we who is sovereign, the reformed tradition reminds us.

Our human desire for certainty and control in life is understandable, and yet like an unquenchable thirst. It can never be satisfied.

There is something important in about uncertainty within the life of spiritual search and religious practice. Humility before God is key.

We know from our human history the terrors we have brought on one another because of over confidence in certainties we have held

about God. We know the exclusion, persecution, and suffering that has been wrought on fellow human beings through a lack of humility before the sovereignty of God. It's not that we can know nothing of God, we can and do in Jesus Christ. It is simply that we cannot fool ourselves into believing that we can ever know God so much that we somehow own God or can place God in a box of our own making, one which suits us. This is in fact nothing but idolatry.

Keeping a place in our life of faith for the mystery of God, and for God to always remain partly unknown to us could not be more important than in today's world, where like ancient Athenian marketplace, is a global marketplace of pluralities, and of competing beliefs and ideologies.

Part of being Christian is to live in the knowledge of the love and presence of Christ; knowing Christ is with us, but also humbly acknowledging what we do not know and can never know in this world.

I think people, and not just young people, are rightly suspicious of Christian certainties rather Christian faith.

I understand the joy people find in worship that still has a place for wonder and wondering about that which remains always beyond us in some ways.

Part of faith is learning not only to live with mystery but to embrace it in our lives.

Be that the mystery of suffering, the mystery of providence or the mystery of grace.

God is sovereign not so that we can explain everything, but so that we can trust when we cannot explain anything.

Friends, I think there is an altar in every heart marked 'Unknown.' Some fill it with anxiety. Some with cynicism. Some with control.

Paul does not demolish the altar. He reinterprets it. The Christian claim is not that mystery disappears — but rather, that Mystery has drawn near.

We do not worship what we do not know. We worship the One who has made himself known — and whom we will never exhaust. Amen.