10.30 Holy Communion, All Saints Oakham
Acts 7.22-31
Have you ever had a long delay in a journey? I don’t mean just one missed train connection, or one traffic jam……. but a missed flight or worse. In April 2010 I was in Argentina helping to train some doctors in Buenos Aires for a few days. My work was done I was due to fly home, but then….. the Ash Cloud came down, perhaps you remember the Ash Cloud, following a volcanic eruption in Iceland, the authorities deemed it unsafe for any passenger flights to set off. So I sat and twiddled my thumbs in Buenos Aires for 5 days – desperate to be home, getting more and more frustrated, would it be a week or a month? Until at last I managed to get a seat on the second flight out.
Paul had a similar frustrating delay and we read about it in Acts chapter 17 – 16 While Paul was waiting for Silas and Timothy in Athens, we read.
Much of Acts is a travel journal. Paul had been travelling in Turkey and Greece with Silas & Timothy. Spending a few weeks or months in each place – explaining the gospel, teaching, church planting. They’d met trouble, had some narrow escapes, been under threat. Earlier in Chapter 17 you can read how it got particularly bad in Thessalonica and Berea. Paul was whisked away for his own safety by boat to Athens, with the promise that Silas and Timothy would come and join him there as soon as they could.
And now Paul is stuck in Athens, where he has just got to wait. He has no idea if it will be weeks or months until his friends can join him. No mobile phones to get an update, no internet to make extra travel arrangements. He’s in limbo. Paul desperately wants his friends to arrive so they can travel on elsewhere and achieve more. But Paul is never one to waste time. Unlike me he did not get frustrated at being stuck there. Instead he got to grips with the real Athens .
16 While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was deeply distressed to see that the city was full of idols: statues, images of gods, temples, altars which were being worshipped. The famous Parthenon, built when the Athenian empire was its height was full of it. It broke Paul’s heart to see it – remembers being taught about Old Testament battles with idolatry – no sooner for example had the children of Israel received the Ten Commandments than we find them worshipping a golden calf, later taking on Baal worship, and worse.
Why was all this idol worship wrong?
- It was degrading God, making Him too small
- And because even if those statues were originally built as adjuncts to help to worship, they have become themselves the objects of worship
What has all this got to do with us?
The Parthenon we regard as art, so perhaps it is not a risk to our faith?
But do we get distressed in our own age, as Paul did? ….. when God is belittled, degraded: name mocked – OMG – or Christ as a cheap swear word.
Do we get distressed about other idols in people’s lives: ambition, material possessions, fashion, and more
If we are not upset, if not hurt when God’s name is hurt, then we won’t feel the need to do anything, to tell others about Christ.
17 But Paul we read …… argued in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and also in the market-place every day with those who happened to be there. The Market Place, the equivalent of Speakers Corner, Paul is engaging with anyone who is there. Athenians liked to talk philosophy and religion – and we won’t worry today about the detailed views of the Epicureans and Stoics who are mentioned.
And after debate in the Market Place. 19 So … then .. they took Paul and brought him to the Areopagus and asked him, ‘May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20 …… Areopagus, on the side of the hill just below the Parthenon was a debating chamber, no modern equivalent Now all the Athenians and the foreigners living there would spend their time in nothing but telling or hearing something new.
They liked to listen (seriously) and to debate (seriously)
Which I suggest compares unfavourably with the low quality of much of our modern debate – even on our so-called ‘serious’ news programmes on radio or TV. Brief discussions. Snap opinions ‘Does God exist?’ discuss in 30 seconds – then a commercial break.
In Athens in the Areopagus Paul is in serious discussion with serious people – they listen but they challenge.
Earlier on we are told Paul was discussing with the Jews in the synagogue, and I am sure his starting point there was Jewish scripture – i.e. our OT. He started where they were, and from there 18 he was telling the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.
But now Paul in the Areopagus finds himself speaking to those who know nothing about God and His dealings with the nation of Israel, have never read the OT.
So where does Paul start – not with OT, but he starts where his listeners are – with their times, their lives. He does not – as an opener – harangue them about their idolatry – even though it is that which upset him so much. Instead he finds common ground.
23 Athenians …..as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, “To an unknown god.” What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.
And we read what Paul tells them from that starting point…
- God created the whole world and everything in it, gave it life and breath 24
- That God is infinitely more than man-made images 29
- God wants us to worship Him 27
- There is judgment 31 so repent 30
- 31 because he ….. will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.’
And surprisingly perhaps he does not even mention the name Jesus.
And he links finally to them by closing with a line from a Greek poet
“For we too are his offspring.”
Paul gets a mixed reception –
32 When they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some scoffed;
but others said, ‘We will hear you again about this.’ ….
34 But some of them …… became believers, including a man named Dionysius ….. a woman named Damaris, and others with them.
What has all this got to say to us?
How can the example of Paul, this smart debating Jew turned Xtian – help us at all in our day to day Xtian living? Is this just a history lesson for us? One of those ‘Ah, how interesting , I never knew that’ sort of moments.
No – it’s more than that.
Paul gives us a model about how we explain about our Xtian faith. When someone sooner or later says to you – ‘why do you go to church? What is this Xtianity thing?’
Paul gives us a model about speaking to friends who are not Xtians, if they know little or nothing about Xt. Paul also gives us as a church family a model for reaching out to people who never come to church, and are mystified by it.
I am going to close by making four short points
- Paul happily was not like me
I was stuck in Buenos Aires under the ash cloud banging my head against the wall in frustration, just wanting to be home, frustrated because it had not worked out the way I wanted. Try as I might, I struggled to make good use of the time. Paul did not have that struggle, he used his unexpected time in Athens wonderfully well. We should learn from that
- Paul started where the other people were
Paul in the synagogue I am sure started with the history of the Jewish people, with the OT, and built on the familiar. But in the Areopagus there is no familiar. Those who listen seem to know nothing relevant. But Paul roots it in what they do know… an ‘unknown God’
For many, indeed most in my generation, the conversation can start with the familiar. Nearly all of us and our acquaintances learnt from the Bible in school or Sunday school. We knew about Moses, the parting of the Red Sea, the 10 commandments, we know quite a bit of Jesus’ life and death, about Good Friday and Easter Day. So we can start there.
But for younger generations we can assume nothing. We live in a largely post-Christian, Bible-free society. Many people know nothing of Jesus except as a swear word. Like Paul we must learn ways to start where they are. To speak of things from their point of view, and at the right speed take the conversation to Christ. And among other things I suggest to you that inviting such people into a strange building to services where mysterious things happen using vocabulary they have never heard before, will become a less and less effective starting point.
- Don’t change the message
The heart of the message will always be that Jesus is the Son of God, did die, did rise, is alive, reaches out to each of us personally. But we are to find ways to bring people to a point from where they start to see that… that unchanging message makes sense.
- This is slow patient work.
You will need more than just one conversation. Some believed… straight away, we read, many did not, many wanted to hear more, many needed time to process it all. Be patient, keep talking to people, pray.
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Of course we are not modern day Paul’s. You and I are not international travellers, smart debaters, unphased by large intimidating crowds, the sort of people who might today be on TV talking about our faith.
But we will all talk to someone about our Xtian faith sooner or later – over coffee, at work, at a funeral, at a family gathering, someone will ask. And we will be more likely to talk freely from the heart – if the lack of awareness of God in our society, the mocking of God, confusion about God cuts us to the heart as it did Paul.
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There is much to learn from one man’s upset travel plans in Athens.
Amen