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April 27, 2008
An Unknown God?
Acts 17:22-34
Last November, on a Monday, Jim and I drove all the way to Chicago to hear a lecture. Now, Jim and I are a couple of self-described church geeks, so in some ways there is nothing out of the ordinary about this. Except that this was not your ordinary lecture.
Rather than being held on a campus in an auditorium or lecture hall, the event took place at the Vic Theatre, which is ordinarily a concert venue (Crowded House, Sly and the Family Stone, and K.T. Tunstall are playing there in the next few weeks).
This lecture was not free. Tickets cost $15. And at the Vic Theatre—which has seating for 1000—it was sold out. (I should also point out that all the proceeds went to support a microfinance project in Burundi.)
Because the seats were general admission, when we arrived for the 7:00 lecture at 6:30, there was a line all the way around the block. As we made small talk during the wait, we learned that the people around us in line were from the Chicago area, Champaign-Urbana, and Wisconsin.
The crowd was primarily made up of people in their 20s, and Jim and I were some of the oldest people there.
The atmosphere was very much like a concert, the room electric with anticipation before the show began, and there was loud cheering and applause when the tall, skinny, hip yet geeky looking guy dressed in a black shirt and black jeans, with a white belt and white sneakers came out on stage. He began speaking almost immediately, and the crowd quieted down and listened intently.
Jim and I were blown away that there were that many people willing to pay to hear what was, essentially, a two hour sermon. Incredible.
The lecture—entitled “the gods aren't angry”—was given by Rob Bell, a mid-thirtyish pastor whom some have described as the next Billy Graham. This was the first stop on a 22-city tour, complete with a tour bus for Bell, his wife and their two sons.
And actually, this was Bell's second tour. In 2006, he did another tour with a lecture entitled “everything is spiritual.” The touring thing seems to be in Rob Bell's blood. Before he went to seminary, Rob Bell was in a couple of indie rock bands that had some regional success and took him on the road.
Besides going on tour occasionally, Bell is the author of two books, has developed a highly-popular DVD teaching series with a group of friends, and is the founding pastor of a Grand Rapids, Michigan church that meets in an old shopping mall and has more than 10,000 people in worship each week.
Rob Bell has connected in a huge way with young adults, the demographic that all religious groups are after. And one of the ways he makes that connection is by meeting his audience where they already are—at the concert venue, the shopping mall, the coffee shop—and then pointing out to them how God is already there.
Which is part of what Paul was doing when he preached to a gathering of Athenians at the Areopagus in our passage from today.
(And by the way, Rob Bell named his church, Mars Hill, which is the English (and Roman) name for the hill on which Paul was standing when he preached. Coincidence? I think not.)
Paul was in Athens because his teaching had stirred up interest and trouble in Thessalonica. While there were some who became believers, there were also those who believed he was turning the world upside down and wanted him gone. So in the interest of safety—theirs and his—followers of the Way had sent Paul to Athens.
Although Rome was now the center of power in the world, Athens was still a great city. It was a university town, known for learning and culture. Luke tells us that “all the Athenians and foreigners living there would spend their time in nothing but telling or hearing something new.” (Acts 17:21)
Athens was also a city full of idols. If you remember any Greek mythology, you know there are many, many Greek gods. To start with, there are the twelve gods who lived on Mt. Olympus, including Zeus, Apollo, Poseidon, Aphrodite, and Athena, after whom the city of Athens was named. But then there were many other lesser gods, and Athens seemed to have a statue or temple for every one of them, too.
This is the world in which Paul finds himself, and he finds it disturbing. As was his way in any new place, he first went to the synagogue to argue with his fellow Jews about Jesus and the resurrection. He also went to the marketplace and debated with some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers there.
His conversations elicited a reaction here, too. Some called Paul a babbler while others confused his talk about Jesus and anastasis (Greek for resurrection) as two foreign divinities (Acts 17:18). Whatever their reaction, the Athenians wanted to know more. So they took Paul to the Areopagus, which was both a hill near the Acropolis and a council of elders that met on the hill. What Luke does not make clear is whether Paul is simply engaged in further discussion with those who are curious, or if he is defending himself against a charge of preaching foreign divinities.
Whatever the case, Paul delivers a memorable argument, custom fit for his audience. He begins by flattering the Athenians for being so religious, and points out that they have so thoroughly covered their bases as to have an altar inscribed “to an unknown god.” This is the opening Paul needs to proclaim the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.
The Stoics and the Epicureans had almost polar opposite ideas about the relationship between the divine, creation, and human beings, but Paul manages to address both of groups:
The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. (Acts 17:24-25)
The Stoics believed that the universe was created and held together by divine Logos, and that the divine was present in everything, even human beings. So Paul's description of a creator God who gives life and breath to all living things would have appealed to the Stoics.
The Epicureans, on the other hand, believed the gods were far away from humankind and had little or nothing to do with the world. For them, Paul's assertion that God does not need religious gifts or to be served by human hands would have made perfect sense.
Paul describes the benevolent, loving God who has lordship over all things in a way that might appeal to both constituencies in his audience.
Paul agrees with the Epicureans that God and the world are not the same thing. But while this God is transcendent, beyond human limitations and understanding, Israel's God is also imminent, as the Stoics believed. “Indeed he is not far from each one of us,” Paul says. And “in him we live and move and have our being.”
We are all God's offspring, Paul says, and it is inherent in us to grope and search for God, and sometimes to find him.
Then Paul goes on: While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which 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. (Acts 17:30-31)
At the conclusion of Paul's argument, some scoff and some want to hear from him again. But there were also some who became believers, including Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus court, a woman named Damaris, and others who go unnamed. Paul had tried to tell about God in ways the people of Athens would understand and for some, they came to recognize the God who until then had been unknown. Paul met the people of Athens where they were, and pointed out to them the God who was already there.
Naturally, there are many differences between our world today and that of ancient Athens. But in some ways we are the same. We may not have statues and temples to various gods in our cities, but we have many things, many (what we might truthfully call) idols that distract us and take God's rightful place in our lives. These are the idols that try to tell us who we are, what is most important, what our priorities should be, how we should define ourselves and others. Their loud, insistent clamoring can drown out the still, small voice of God. It can seem, on the surface, that in such a world as this, God is difficult to find, difficult to know.
And yet, God remains the same as Paul described in Athens: God is not far from any of us; God is the one in whom we live and move and have our being.
Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist and influential thinker in the 21 st Century, famously had a saying hanging over his doorway and eventually, over his tomb. It was in Latin, and he found in the writings of Erasmus who attributed it to an ancient Spartan proverb. One translation into English is, Bidden or not bidden, God is present.
This is, I believe, one of the things the life of faith is about: trusting in the belief that God is always with us, and learning to recognize the ways that God is already there.
Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk, once said, “Life is this simple. We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent, and God is shining through it all the time. This is not just a fable or a nice story. It is true. If we abandon ourselves to God and forget ourselves, we see it sometimes, and we see it maybe frequently. God shows Himself everywhere, in everything—in people and in things and in nature and in events. It becomes very obvious that God is everywhere and in everything and we cannot be without Him. It's impossible. The only thing is that we don't see it.” 1
It has been said that whatever we look for, we will find. Whether we look for reasons to be optimistic or pessimistic, confident or fearful, we will find plenty of evidence.
I know this is true for me. Last Thursday, I had what I decided was a bad day. It seemed to me that nothing went right. But as I look back on that day, I recognize that there were just as many moments of grace as there were moments of frustration. For whatever reason, I had chosen to focus on the negative. The choice had been mine.
This week, I have decided to keep my eyes peeled to the good in the world, for the places and situations where God shows up. And, my friends, I invite you to join me.
Let us go out into the world this week, trusting in the God in whom we live and move and have our being, watching and waiting for the God of creation who gives us life and breath, and who is shining through our world already.
And maybe, just maybe, if we live our lives believing and trusting in this God reality, we, too, may with our living point the way to the God who is already there. Amen.
1 Borg, Marcus, The Heart of Christianity . P. 155
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