Does Anybody Really Know What God This Is?

       I have a box where I put things that might be helpful someday for a sermon or a class.  Some things live in the box for years. 

       For example, here is a panel from an old comic strip called Robotman.  The only clue I have as to how long it’s been living in the box is the cartoon on the reverse.  It’s an old For Better or For Worse. The young children in the cartoon are now college graduates and are even married with children of their own.  Robotman is no longer with us.  But he deserved better.

       In the cartoon, Robotman is standing in a museum of modern art.  A guy dressed in overalls and wearing a red baseball cap stands in front of a picture.   He says, “Whut the..?  Shoot, Ah don’t bayleeve this stuff.”  He moves to another modern painting and says, “Heck, my little gurl could paint better than this.”  He looks at a third painting and exclaims, “Shoot, yes!  I know she could paint better’n this one!”

        Finally Robotman has had enough of this display of rural ignorance.  He says, “Um, Sir, excuse me.  Sir, while I agree that this art is hard to appreciate, I don’t think you’re being fair.  Who’s to say whether your daughter can really paint better than this?  Things aren’t always as they appear.”

       Farmer Bob looks at Robotman and says, “Heck, Ah don’t know what you’re talking ‘bout. My daughters advanced training at Yale’s Center for the Visual Arts has given her an exceptional command of neo-conceptual primitivism.”

       No, things aren’t always as they appear.  That’s also true in religious faith.  Sometimes God speaks to people in surprising ways in order to move them to greater truth.  He starts where they are in order to bring them where they need to be.  He did it with a group of Persian astrologers or Magi who followed a star to the birthplace of the Christ.  The Bible condemns astrology.  But God speaks to astrologers in their language – in a star.  And Paul says that God also wants to connect with the proud intellectuals of Athens .

       I’m sure glad Paul went to Athens .  That is because we were able to go to Athens too when we followed the Footsteps of Paul last summer in Greece and Turkey . 

       It was amazing the night of our arrival to sit in the rooftop restaurant of our hotel and gaze across the city to the floodlit Parthenon on the Acropolis. It’s an incredible sight.  What a wonderful thing it would have been to have seen it as Paul saw it. 

       Or maybe it wouldn’t have been so wonderful.  We might have been as repelled as Paul was by the life-destroying religious swamp that lay behind the architectural beauty. 

       Luke suggests that Paul didn’t plan to preach the gospel in Athens .  That’s seems strange to us.  I mean, if you go to Greece today where else would you preach?  Athens is where it’s at.   Athens is the city of Pericles , Plato, Aristotle and Socrates.  It is the birthplace of democracy, the birthplace of modern mathematics, the birthplace of philosophy, the birthplace of logic.      

       But all that birthin’ is in the past.  Corinth , Paul’s travel goal, is now the center of the action.  At the time of Paul’s visit, Athens has a population less than a third of modern Moorpark’s.  It is a beautiful relic with a handful of attendants.  

        The beauty is undeniable.  There is no shortage of art.  A Roman satirist wrote that it was easier to meet a god in Athens than a human being.  That was the literal truth.  There were 10,000 people but 30,000 statues of gods and goddesses.  They lined the streets and stood in niches on the buildings.  The most magnificent of all was the huge gold and ivory statue of Athena herself that stood glistening in the Parthenon.  

        If you go to Athens today you can still admire the art and architecture.  You can admire the statues.  But for first century pagans, those statues aren’t just art.  They are objects of worship.  They direct the lives of people as even dead objects of worship always do.   Paul sees that the city is not just full of idols.  It is “under them.”  That’s the word Luke uses.  The city is smothered in idols.  Paul’s spirit is provoked. 

       Now this is partly the innate response to a Jew raised on the second commandment.  But there is more to Paul’s response than jealousy for the uniqueness of the true God – as important as that is.  It is also that these idols represent a world view that robs people of hope and security. 

       The gods of the Greeks and Romans were flaky and inconsistent.  If you tried to please one of them, you would offend another.  Just look at how legend says the Trojan War started and why it lasted so long.  If the City of Athens is smothered in idols, so are its people. In the Greco/Roman idolatrous world, you never knew who is going to hit you with a divine thunderbolt.  Sometimes, you get clobbered, and you aren’t even sure who did it.

       In fact, about six hundred years before Paul’s visit, Athens was struck by a severe plague.  A poet from Crete named Epimenides came up with a scientific way to find out which god or goddess was honked off this time.  He ordered that a flock of sheep be let loose in the city.  Whenever a sheep stopped to lie down, it was sacrificed to whatever deity owed the nearest temple.   Minerva, Neptune, Athena and Apollo all got their sheepy snacks.  But some sheep laid down where no gods lived.  So the Athenians slaughtered the sheep anyway and erected shrines to the unknown gods – “We don’t know which god is here but the sheep says there’s a god here and sheep know best so, whoever you are, this baas for you.”

       Paul is fed up with this kind of thing.  He comes to the agora -- the central marketplace.  This large area is lined with shops and public buildings.  It is filled with fountains, statues and also with teachers from different Athenian schools of philosophy.  As Luke notes in verse 21, the Athenians and the visitors to the city used to spend all their time telling or hearing something new.    Paul decides to give them something really new and life-changing – the good news of God’s love in Jesus Christ.

        Two rival groups of philosophers dominate the local action.  First there are the Stoics -- followers of philosopher Zeno who used to teach on the painted stoa or porch in the agora.  So they are the stoa-ics.  The Stoics believe that there is a god but that this god is not personal.  He is without feeling or a-pathetic.  The Stoics taught that if you can make someone feel, you can control them and no one should be able to control god.  The goal of the Stoics was to be like god -- emotionally detached from tragedy or celebration -- kind of like the Vulcan’s in Star Trek or some forms of Buddhism.   So you can imagine how they felt about Paul’s words about a God who is love – a God who is passionately involved in human life. 

        The second group is the Epicureans.  They don’t believe in the gods at all.  They don’t believe in an afterlife.  They don’t believe in personal accountability.  They are here for the pleasure.  Their motto is “eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.” 

        Some of the listeners in the Agora call Paul an Athenian slang term which means a seed picker.  They call him a peddler of scraps of second hand philosophy that he’s picked up off the ground.  Others, more insightful, believe that he is teaching two new gods – one named Jesus and the other named resurrection or Anastasis. 

       Paul is taken before the city assembly called the Aeropagus or Hill of Mars.  That sounds serious.  Once upon a time this assembly had the power of life and death. It sentenced Socrates to death.  But by the first century it functions more as a kind of philosophical review board to govern the intellectual life of the city.  Before anyone can teach in Athens , this assembly has to pass on their credentials.

       When we were in Athens last summer, my friend Dale Ridenour stood right below Mar’s Hill and read Paul’s speech to us.  It’s a great speech in a great forum – right at the base of the Acropolis itself.  

       Now Paul makes two key points in his speech that are important for us to remember as we relate to the followers of non-Christian religions in our own place and day.

       First, there is the element of respect.  As C.S. Lewis points out in Mere Christianity, as Christians we are allowed to be more open-minded about religion than an atheist can be.  Lewis writes, “If you are a Christian, you do not have to believe that all other religions are simply wrong all through.  If you are an atheist you do have to believe that the main point of all the religions of the whole world in simply one huge mistake.  If you are a Christian, you are free to think that all these religions, even the queerest ones, contain at least some hint of the truth.”

        Paul shows us that while people may be wrong in what they believe their instinct to worship is still from God.  So Paul starts out by connecting where he can.  He honors what the people already know and are already seeking. 

       That’s important for our own witness.  People we think are wrong need to be set straight.  People who are  lost need to be found and brought home.  If you were not a Christian, whom would you rather have share the faith with you -- someone determined to set you straight or someone who wants to help bring you home?

       So Paul freely acknowledges the seriousness of their religious search.  They are very religious.  Look at how many gods they have. But he also acknowledges that they know their religious search has not brought them final knowledge of the truth.  “On the way up here I actually passed a shrine dedicated to the unknown god.”  He says, “I’m here to complete the picture, fill in the gaps and tell you what you admit you don’t know.” 

       Paul tells them he is there as the representative of the one God who is the God of all people everywhere.  This God isn’t man made. He is the maker of man.  This God gives all people their life and breath and everything else.  From one man, Paul says, God made every nation.  As God’s creation they already have intrinsic worth.  So they shouldn’t cheapen their lives with idolatry. 

       The great thing is that they already know that.  God has been telling them that.  Paul’s says that God speaks to all people everywhere to bring them to some level of truth.  He quotes two Greek poets to prove his point.   The first, “In him we live and move and have our being” is from the same Epimenides who sent their ancestors in search of the unknown god.  The second, “We are all his offspring” is from a poem by a poet from Paul’s home city of Tarsus .

        As a side note, let me observe how Paul shows the extent of his knowledge.  Although Paul is a Jew, he is well-trained in much more than the Old Testament.  He is prepared to speak to all kinds people in their own language.  He’s in touch with the culture and he is prepared to use the elements of culture to help people connect with God.

        That’s a model for us.  The Holy Spirit is not the spirit of ignorance.  He uses everything Paul had ever read and learned – everything Paul has stored in the box.  One reason the church was so successful in its witness to the pagan world in that it not only outlived and out loved the world. It also out thought it.

       As Christians we are called to love the Lord with our minds as well as our heart, soul and strength.    Our culture doesn’t always think of the mind when it thinks of love and devotion.  Drugstores don’t sell chocolate brains of Valentine’s Day.  But the Bible is emphatic that our mind in one of the key elements we can use to love God and a key element in reaching people in His name.

        Okay.  The second key point for us today is about diversity and its limits.

       As Christians we need to learn to celebrate what Paul calls in Ephesians 3:10 the “many colored wisdom of God.”  God delights in diversity.  Scripture celebrates the colorful mosaic of human cultures.  It even declares that the New Jerusalem, the heavenly city, will be enriched by their diversity since the “kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it, and the glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it.” 

        However, the biblical celebration of diversity is not absolute.  Celebration of diversity of cultures does not imply an equal celebration or acceptance of the diversity of religions.  Yes, the Athenians have been on the right track in their religious instincts.  But there are some things they need to know and, above all, do to bring their search for God to the proper end. 

      Paul refuses to go along with the religious pluralism of Athens or applaud it as a living museum of religious faiths.  Instead, he calls on the people to turn from their idols to the living God – the God who has revealed Himself once and for all in Jesus Christ.   Not all roads finally lead to God – even though they may take us a portion of the way. 

      Jesus isn’t one among the lords.  He is the Lord.   Jesus is the final truth the Athenians have been looking for.  Jesus is the final truth the Muslims are looking for.  Jesus is the final truth the Jews are looking for. Jesus is the final truth the Buddhists and Hindus are looking for.  God has spoken finally and fully through Him.  He is the Savior who died and rose again and will one day come to be the world’s judge. 

       This confronting call for decision is not what most of Paul’s hearers are looking for. 

       A Spanish philosopher, poet and essayist Miguel de Unamuno comments about this passage from Acts:  “This admirable account how far Greek tolerance goes and where the patience of the intellectual ends.  They all listen to you, calmly and smilingly, and at times they encourage you saying, ‘That’s strange!’ or “He has brains!’ or “That is suggestive!’ or “How fine!’ or “Pity that a thing so beautiful should not be true!’ or ‘This makes one think!’  But as soon as you speak to them of resurrection and life after death they lose their patience and cut short their remarks and exclaim, ‘Enough of this!’”

       That’s the reaction Paul gets from all but handful of his hearers.  We will have the same experience. Everything goes fine as long as we remain theoretical about the nature of God.  But when we get specific about who God is and what God wants, people begin to shift their posture and look at their watches.   Seeing their true accountability to the true God makes many uncomfortable. 

        But ultimately people have to choose.  That’s the word Paul has from God.  God does not want us to die with an open mind.

        Writer Frederick Buechner recognized this need to chose when he was teaching comparative religion courses in New Hampshire .  He writes in his book Now and Then, “Finally, lest students of comparative religions be tempted to believe  that to compare them is to discover that at their hearts all religions are finally one and that it makes little difference which one you choose, you have only to place side by side Buddha and Christ themselves.”

       Buechner writes, “Buddha sits enthroned beneath the Bo-tree in the lotus position. His lips are faintly parted in the smile of one who has passed beyond every power of earth and heaven to touch him.  “He who loves fifty has fifty woes, he who loves ten has ten woes, he who loves none has no woes,” he has said.  His eyes are closed.

       “Christ on the other hand stands in the Garden of Gethsemane , angular, beleaguered.  His face is lost in shadows so you cannot even see His lips, and before all the powers in earth or heaven he is powerless.   ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you,’ He has said.  His eyes are also closed.”

       Buechner concludes:  “The difference seems to me this.  The suffering that Buddha’s eyes close out is the suffering of the world Christ’s eyes close in and hallow. It is an extraordinary difference, and even in a bare classroom on Exeter , New Hampshire , I think it was as apparent to every one as it was to me, that before you’re done, you have to make a crucial and extraordinary choice.” 

        That choice, what God you serve, whatever choice you make, will set the direction of your life and your eternity.