Sermon Acts 17:22-31 Proclamation to the Gentiles

Rev. Jeffrey T. Howard

New Covenant Church

Sermon  Acts 17:22-31 Proclamation to the Gentiles

March 21, 2017

I am continuing my sermon series on the Book of Acts.  In the second chapter of Acts, Peter addressed a joyful audience of Jews who had come to Jerusalem to celebrate Pentecost.  He told them that Jesus Christ had been foreseen by the prophets of old.  Many repented and became followers of Jesus.  Then in the seventh chapter of Acts we turned to Stephen whose ministry was born in conflict.  He was called before the religious leaders.  He told them that by killing Jesus they had murdered a prophet just as prophets had been murdered throughout their history.  Both Peter and Stephen spoke to Jewish audiences and used scripture as a foundation to argue that with his resurrection Jesus had fulfilled the prophecies of old and had ushered in something new.

After Stephen’s martyrdom the church in Jerusalem was persecuted.  The church was scattered and pursued by a vicious critic named Saul of Tarsus.   But Jesus got a hold of Saul.  Saul repented and became a masterful Christian speaker and writer.  We know him by his Greek name, Paul.  And today we will accompany Paul as he brings the gospel of Jesus Christ to non-jewish, gentile audience in Athens, Greece.  We will get all this, but first let’s pray.

“Grant unto us, O Lord, to be occupied in the mysteries of thy heavenly wisdom, with true progress in piety, to thy glory and our own edification. Amen.” (John Calvin)

Acts 17:22 Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.

24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands.25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else.26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’[a] As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’[b]

29 “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed.He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”

How do we share our faith with those who know little or nothing about what it means to be a Christian?  How do God’s adopted sons and daughters speak the gospel to people for whom words like “grace” and even “sin” may sound like so much gibberish?

When Paul  arrives there, the city is past its heyday as the center of the Western world.  The Athens the apostle visits, however, still excels at philosophy.  It still has two famous schools of philosophy, the Epicureans and the Stoics.  Athens also has the Areopagus, an outcrop of rocks in the center of the city where philosophers gather daily to debate.

Athens’ philosophically savvy citizens sample from a huge buffet of gods and goddesses.  Those meddlesome deities, however, flit in and out of people's’ lives, sometimes helpfully, but often destructively.  What’s more, Athens’ panoply of gods and goddesses can be just as mean and vindictive as any human being.  So the Athenians built many, many shrines, hoping they would appease their fickle gods.

However, by the time Paul visits Athens, this belief in a multitude of different gods is beginning to shrink.  Many Athenians view it all as more myth than religion.  Skepticism is rapidly replacing religion as the chief Athenian virtue.

Doesn’t this sound familiar?  In North America we live and work in a culture that’s skeptical about virtually everything except that which it can scientifically prove.  All values, it insists, are relative, because you can’t prove any of them.

When Paul looks over the similar moral wasteland that is Athens, its splendor doesn’t impress him.  When he looks at famous things like the Parthenon, the Apollo Belvedere and the Elgin Marbles, he simply sees a “city . . . full of idols” (16).  So Paul goes from the synagogue to the Athenian marketplace “reasoning” (17), perhaps arguing with people.

That tactic, however, doesn’t convince everyone.  Some of Athens’ philosophers, after all, call him a “babbler” (18), the Greek word for anyone who didn’t speak Greek.  Essentially they call the apostle a barbarian, a country bumpkin who doesn’t know his right hand from his left.

Other Athenians, however, seem slightly more open-minded, spiritually liberal.  They say, “He seems to be advocating foreign gods” (18).  These people seem to be a lot like some of our contemporaries who are vaguely “spiritual.”

These philosophers invite Paul to speak further at the Areopagus, Athens’ philosophical heart.  It’s the place where many Athenians and tourists spent all their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the newest ideas.

So does Paul try to soothe the Athenians’ skeptical minds and hearts there?  Or does he condemn their whole religious tradition of a smorgasbord of gods and religions?  After all, this notion of fickle gods and goddesses was the dialectic opposite of the faith of the young Christian church.

Apparently Paul recognizes that denunciation seldom convinces people.  He grasps the fact that he needs some kind of entry into his audience’s thinking.  The apostle realizes that he needs a foothold from which he can open new ways of thinking for his listeners.  So it seems that Paul builds a kind of bridge to his audience.  It’s an example of what some seminaries approvingly like to call “contextualization.”

Paul “contextualizes” his witnessing in Athens’ Areopagus.  He notes that some craftsman had wished to cover all his theological bases.  Not wanting to neglectfully anger a god who had anonymously helped Athens, he had erected a shrine to this “unknown god.”

Pointing to this altar, Paul compliments the Athenians on their spirituality.  He applauds their search for something more meaningful in their lives.  The apostle then, however, notes that he has found the One for whom they’ve been searching.

Paul engages the Athenians in a bit of what we might call “natural theology.”  He points to creation’s beauty and order, suggesting that they point to some kind of higher power.  This higher power, Paul, quoting an Athenian poet, continues, is the Source, the Creator of all humanity.  People can’t, however, insists the apostle, contain such a magnificent God in something they build with their hands.  They can’t even make some kind of image of him.

Let’s think about somehow similarly relating to those who don’t yet know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.  We might ask ourselves about the unknown gods whom they worship, even if they don’t realize it.

For some people the twentieth century’s two world wars, Holocaust and atomic bomb mortally wounded, if not killed, their god.  So what are the twenty-first century’s surviving “unknown” gods?

For some, it’s just the matter of faith itself.  It doesn’t matter what you believe, many of our contemporaries reason, as long as you really believe in something.  Some of our co-workers, friends and neighbors have made faith itself as the object of their religion.

Another of those unknown gods might be the “spirituality” that is the subject of so many modern conversations.  Though it’s hard to define, spirituality seems to be a vague notion that there’s something intangible beyond us, that material reality isn’t the only reality.  Instead, however, of relating to the living God, people engage in meditation and other relaxation techniques to connect with this higher power.

We understand the longings of people whose gods are unknown.  We, after all, recognize that God created us with those longings.  So when we share our faith, we try to understand those longings even more deeply.  You and I try to build bridges, to form relationships with these people who worship their own gods.

But!!!  To use the bridge analogy, we can build bridges to connect with those who don’t yet believe.  But even our eloquence, even our relationships with them can’t alone convince people to cross that bridge to faith in Jesus Christ.

Look, after all, at what happens to Paul in our text.  After so eloquently relating to things the Athenians understand, he says, “In the past God overlooked such ignorance” (30).  Now, however, God, the apostle adds, has set a day when God will judge us by something higher than our own thinking.  God has proved this just judgment by raising Jesus Christ from the dead.

At this point we can almost hear his audience gasp.  “Whoa!!  You hold on there just a minute, young whippersnapper,” the philosophically savvy Athenians may have snorted.  After all, Paul’s sophisticated Greek audience was right with him while he talked about creation’s beauty and order.  But when his talk turns to this Jesus, a Jew whom people crucified but God raised from the dead, he leaves part of his audience behind.

“When,” after all, “they heard about the resurrection of the dead,” as verse 32 reports, “some sneered.”  Earlier some Athenians had referred to Paul as a country bumpkin.  Now other members of his audience jeer him for talking about a resurrection of the dead.  So, as one biblical scholar notes, one of the greatest speeches in all of the Scriptures ends in mockery.

Paul has spoken to the Athenians about something they can’t naturally even begin to comprehend.  They like to think of themselves as open-minded intellectuals.  Yet the apostle’s audience can’t get beyond what it has experienced and already knows.  It judges his new ideas on the basis of its old ideas.

Here Paul challenges skeptics of all ages to think beyond what some have called “our flattened world.”  Many of our contemporaries believe that only that which we can prove exists.  Since we can only prove that whatever lives eventually dies, talk of resurrection is sheer nonsense to them.

What we have to say to the world, our witnessing, and our confession of Jesus’ name goes beyond our cause-and-effect thinking.  We work hard to relate to, to build bridges with those with whom we share our faith.  Yet you and I must always remember that what we say about Jesus Christ goes beyond common sense.

Our culture tends to caricature Christians as narrow-minded, bigoted ignoramuses who can’t think in complex ways.  That assumption, however, more accurately reflects not the church, but our world.  The gospel, after all, invites us to think about things in a deeper way.

That doesn’t mean that Christianity is irrational, illogical or anti-scientific.  It does mean that our faith doesn’t rely on rationality, logic or scientific proof.  It relies, instead, on God’s revelation of himself to us through his Word and the work of his Holy Spirit.  Only God’s Holy Spirit can graciously convince us of the gospel’s truth.

So as we go out into our world, sharing our faith, just as Jesus calls us to do.  You and I go out into our society confessing Jesus’ name, just as we profess.  Christians build relationships with unbelievers, building bridges of trust and common ground.

Yet we always remember that this opens us up to the same kind of mockery Paul experienced.  Our witnessing always makes us vulnerable to the possibility of experiencing the kind of rejection Jesus endured.

What’s more, even the most eloquent preachers and teachers never rely on our eloquence to draw people to the Lord.  You and I never even rely on the bridges and relationships we build with those who don’t yet believe.  We’re faithful in sharing our faith, but rely on the work of the Holy Spirit to turn our conversations into faith,

I once heard a story about a man named Marv.  By God’s grace and the work of the Spirit, he could eventually turn nearly any ordinary conversation into a discussion of faith.

He always said a key to that was understanding that most people  read three sections of the newspaper first: the comics, the business section and the sports section.  By reading those sections first, my friend could talk to nearly anyone about something that interested him.  That then provided a good bridge to eventually talking with him about the Christian faith.

Let’s pray.  Lord Jesus, every day we encounter people who do not believe.  Many believe faith is foolishness.  Help us to be both courageous and persistent in our witnessing.  And send your Holy Spirit to bring people to faith.  In your precious name we pray.  Amen.

Adapted from:  http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/sermon-starters/easter-6a/?type=old_testament_lectionary#sthash.DQPCQFyo.dpuf