Acts 17:22-32

Looking back, one of the best gifts that my mom gave me were the skills to be a fully functional adult. I know that sounds like a rather obvious thing. But not all of my male cousins growing up (who we were close with) learned how to cook, clean, or do laundry. My aunt did those kinds of things, while the boys got to help my uncle with things outside – the more traditionally ‘masculine chores’. My mom had a different approach. At the time, I didn’t appreciate it. I rather loathed cleaning and laundry and enjoyed it about as much as I enjoy going to the dentist. But she was not going to let my brother and I become the stereotypical helpless men who have to rely on Sheetz for dinner because they can’t cook. After I graduated high school and moved out, I was really glad that my mom gave me those skills to not be that type of guy.

I share this, first, because it is Mother’s Day and we can give thanks for our mother and the people who were like a mother to us, and second, because our Scripture reading from Acts is a story of the Apostle Paul inviting people to be fully functional Christians. It’s one of his most famous sermons. One of the big themes that Paul’s sermon tries to help us to see is how our Christian faith interacts and relates with the people and the world around us who are not Christian.

Here is a little more of what is going on. The Apostle Paul is traveling along the Greek coastline of the Mediterranean Sea. Paul and some of his fellow Christian apostles like Silas and Timothy are visiting different Greek cities including Thessaloniki (where the New Testament first and second Thessalonians come from), Berea, and Athens (the capital of Greece). They are traveling to start new churches and visit and build up the churches and Christians in those places.

In our reading this morning, Paul’s is in the Greek city of Athens. A few verses before what Ahlea read, we learn that Paul is disturbed by what he sees in Athens. What Paul sees in Athens is a city full of idols. What this probably means is that the people of Athens were very religious and very spiritual. They cared a lot about traditions, religious holidays, shrines, and living the good life. But Paul sees underneath all of that outward religious stuff to what is going on inside. And he is disturbed because outwardly they are very religious, but inside they were missing the point of all. They were missing God Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.

Paul goes to the leaders of Athens and begins asking them about their way of life, their shrines, and debating their choices. They ask him about the strange message that he is sharing that Jesus Christ, this Jewish man from Palestine, who was crucified and raised from the dead, and that God made him Lord of all. The Athenians are skeptical, to put it mildly. Some call him a ‘babbler’ and others accuse him of being a foreigner bringing strange, foreign ideas to their city.

Paul and the city leaders eventually make their way to the Areopagus. The Areopagus was sort of like the supreme court of Athens. It was used to try homicides and assaults, and it was also used as a place of debate to resolve religious disputes. It’s at the Areopagus where the apostle Paul gives his most famous sermon.

We said earlier that one of the big themes of Paul’s sermon is how our Christian faith interacts with the people and world around us who are not Christian. That is, how are we to understand our Christian faith and our relationships with other people who may not be Christians? How are we to understand our Christian faith and our work, which is probably not at a Christian business? How are we to understand our Christian faith and how we go about our shopping, traveling, and the things we do for fun?

Let’s take a look at Paul’s sermon. He opens by trying to build a bridge with his listeners. “People of Athens,” Paul begins, “I can see you are very religious in all things.” Think here about when you are trying to persuade someone to see things your way. What is the more effective way to get someone to see things the way that you do – do you yell and belittle them and try to manipulate them to go along with you, or do you first try to find common ground and then build your argument from there? What’s more effective? Of course it’s to find common ground. That is way more effective in the long term. That is what Paul is doing here. He continues, “As I was going through your city, I saw the objects you worship. I found an altar that had these words written on it: to a god who is not known.”

Here is Paul’s basic assumption and one that we can make as Christians: every single human being needs God. That is because every human being is made in the image of God. We are all part of God’s creation, made in God’s image to reflect God’s nature and God’s glory. That’s true whether we were born in America or someone else, are rich or poor, a Christian or not a Christian. Because we are children, sons and daughters of God, we long to be in a relationship with the one true God. Put another way, every single one of us – Christian and non-Christian alike – has a God shaped hole in our heart. The Athenians seemed to know that – they built a monument to the unknown god – they just didn’t know the God who could fill that God shaped hole.

Paul works with that. He calls their attention to their religion. “You worship a god that you don’t know, and this is the God I am telling you about! The God who made the whole world and everything in it is the Lord of the land and the sky.” Paul here is drawing them into the biblical story, the gospel story, the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob from the Old Testament, the same God who is the Father of the Lord JEsus Christ.

Paul then begins connecting their religious feelings to things that are true about God, Maker of heaven and earth. He tells them:

• God does not live in temples built by human hands.
• God is the One who gives life, breath, and everything else to people.
• God doesn’t need us to do anything, God is complete and whole as he is.

Paul then gives them the thirty second overview of the Bible: 

“God began by making one person [think here of the story of Adam and Eve], and from him came all the different people who live everywhere in the world [think Genesis].” 

Paul then tells the Athenianians an important Jewish and Christian conviction about God: that God wants to be in a relationship with us, God’s human creatures. This is not to denigrate other religions. But it is to say that the Jewish and Christian view of God is that God wants to be known, and to be known in a personal way by each of us. Paul tells the crowd this, “God wanted them to look for him and perhaps search all around for him and find him, though he is not far from any of us:  ‘By his power we live and move and exist.’ 

Paul leads his listeners to an obvious conclusion – that God is not unknown, or in created things, or in magic. “²⁹ Since we are God’s children, you must not think that God is like something that people imagine or make from gold, silver, or rock. ³⁰ In the past, people did not understand God, and he ignored this.” 

Paul ends the sermon with an invitation and a challenge – change your heart and your life and trust in God and God’s power to bring about his will on earth as in heaven. “But now,” Paul concludes, “God tells all people in the world to change their hearts and lives.  God has set a day that he will judge all the world with fairness, by the man he chose long ago. And God has proved this to everyone by raising that man from the dead!”

When God raised Jesus from the dead, God was showing the world that everything that Jesus taught and did – that is the world’s future. 

We said earlier that one of the big themes of Paul’s sermon is how we as Christians are to interact with the people and world around us who are not Christian. Here are a few things that I take away from his sermon.

First, we Christians are not better than non-Christians. That is to say the good news, the message of Jesus Christ, is not a message of arrogance but humility. The Christian message is a promise and an invitation. The promise is what Paul points out to the Athenians with their monument to an unknown god. I’m sure he thought it was rather silly that they build such a monument. He could have called them ‘fools’ or judged them and walked away. But he doesn’t do that. Instead, he works with what he has and he invites them to go deeper than a monument with an inscription to an unknown god. That God-shaped hole, those religious and spiritual feelings you have, Paul says, you don’t have to search and grope and wonder what that is about. God, the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth, the Father of Jesus of Nazareth, he is the God and Lord of all of us and the one in whom we live, move, and have our being. The Christian invitation for all of us that Paul issues is this: change your hearts and your lives. Know the one true God.

Second, God doesn’t call anyone to be a religious nut. Instead, God wants us to bear spiritual fruit. Here is what I am thinking about: there are some Christians and churches in America who think it is our job as Christians to take over the country and impose Christian values on society. Society has lost its way and its the church’s job to step in and take over. You’ll hear and read a lot of this on the internet. It sounds reasonable on its face – society has lost its way and we do believe that the church has the message of Jesus and him being the way, the truth, and the life. But it’s actually really harmful to the faith.

Think about the spirit of the Apostle Paul’s message to these non-Christian Athenians. Paul invites them to know Jesus and the God who is the Father of Jesus. And Paul puts his trust in God that God will one day judge the world and set it right. But Paul doesn’t seek to impose that on the Athenians. He shares the message and invites them to change their hearts and their lives. But he ultimately lets it up to God.  

It’s as if to say that you can’t force someone to be a Christian and to act in Christian ways. It’s like if you force or guilt someone into coming to church. You can maybe do it once and get away with it. But if you do it repeatedly, they’ll just grow to resent you and the church. Instead, the Christian message is an invitation. You can only keep inviting them in and trust that God will work on their heart. With Christian ethics, you can invite someone to turn the other cheek, you can show them how you’ve forgiven your enemies and those who’ve hurt you, but you can’t force them to do it. They have to be convicted in their heart to do it. In a similar way, we can put the 10 Commandments everywhere. But that doesn’t mean people will follow them. Instead, the gospel way of change is to show and teach people the way of Jesus. 

They’ll know us by our fruit, the Scriptures say. The world doesn’t need more religious nuts, it needs people who bear spiritual fruit. The Lord is forming us into fully functional Christians who don’t have to rely on the spiritual version of Sheetz for dinner when we’re hungry because we don’t know how to cook. In God, we live, and move, and have our being. Amen.