Acts 17:22-31
22 Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, "Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. 23 For 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. 24 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, 25 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. 26 From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, 27 so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. 28 For "In him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your own poets have said, "For we too are his offspring.' 29 Since we are God's offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. 30 While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31 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."
I don’t know what possessed me to do it: maybe it was a sudden urge for attention; maybe it was the felt need to stand out; maybe it was the most recent of Garth Brooks’ NBC concert specials…whatever it was it got a hold of me and caused me to tell my third grade teacher, Mrs. MacArthur, that I could in fact play the guitar. Now, I also don’t know what possessed her: perhaps she genuinely believed that some kid in dollar store shoes had enough money to buy a guitar and take guitar lesson—IN THE THIRD GRADE; perhaps she had a great deal of faith in me and believed I could actually do it (when I look back on my childhood, it is always my teachers who stand out as those cheering me on and pointing me forward); or perhaps she thought she’d call my bluff and make me prove I could play the guitar in front of the whole class. Whatever it was, Mrs. MacArthur told me to bring my guitar to class and I could play a song for everyone.
Now, I should probably stop here and fill you in on a few things. First, I wouldn’t necessarily say I actually owned a guitar back then; what I had was really more of a toy—it was a toy. It came with a microphone and a little, red speaker so you could pretend to be a rock star (so long as you were ages eight and up). It did have six strings though. Second, I did once own a guitar, but it fell victim to the influence of one of those previously mentioned Garth Brooks specials from the ‘90s: I thought it would look cool to smash it on the brick steps of our carport (it did, by the way). Third, I cannot now, nor have I ever been able to play the guitar. But I brought my red and black plastic guitar-toy to school, put it in the same closet where we all kept our backpacks and jackets, and when the time came I went and got it out.
I remember Mrs. McArthur’s face sort of melting from an expression of anticipating joy to concern. If the quality of my instrument hadn’t given it away, my attempt at playing certainly did. I remembered that if I simply plucked the top four strings it’d sound an awful lot like the beginning of “Friends in Low Places” (obviously Garth played a pretty heavy influence in my wild, rebellious pre-teen years…). So, I plucked those four strings, looked around to see if anyone noticed what I was doing…then I did it again…and again…and again…I’m not sure what I thought was going to happen. Would I suddenly be indwelt with the power to play the guitar? Would the world end and I would be forced to stop as a meteor crashed into the playground? Would I go on playing those same four “notes” until the bell rang at three o’clock and I could go home and hide in my closet until the fourth grade? Fortunately, Mrs. MacArthur was a kind and gracious teacher; she said something like, “Well, Chris, I know it was short notice for you. Maybe you can practice a song and play one when you’re ready.” She was too kind. I was too dumb. I never did practice a song.
I felt like I blew my shot, my one chance to really impress someone, several someones. Like I had mustered up the courage to do something that would have been embarrassing to me even if I did know how to play the guitar and I fell flat on my face. You know, I wonder if maybe—just maybe—Paul felt like that after his sermon at the Areopagus.
In our text this morning we find Paul’s words in his sermon at the Areopagus. He’s been brought there by the Athenians because it seems to them he has a new teaching, and as Luke writes in verse 21 just before this morning’s text: “Now all the Athenians and the foreigners living there would spend their time in nothing but telling or hearing something new.” To them, Paul was the new daytime soap opera, the new album to drop, the latest book released; what they heard him say sounded new, so they wanted to hear it all, to see if this new thing was to their liking (there’s probably a sermon for another time in there about always liking and wanting the “new” thing). They take Paul to the Areopagus (or Mar’s Hill), an outcropping of rocks, often used as a courtroom, a place for debate, and it’s there that Paul delivers this sermon.
Now, it’s a pretty good sermon: Paul gathers his thoughts around the observations he’s made around the grand city of Athens: "Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For 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.” He’s given them the reason for his speech and prepares them for what he’s about to say, good rhetorical form. He then moves on to state his thesis: “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.” Perhaps from somewhere in the back, Paul hears a familiar voice shout, “Amen! Tell it, preacher!” So, Paul continues on, citing a common ancestry for all humankind and thus a common creator: “From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us.” Playing to a shared sense of longing for the divine…good stuff here, right? The apostle continues, using familiar, illustrative words from their own culture—a move many modern homileticians would tell you is very wise and effective: “For ‘In him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we too are his offspring.'” These are borrowed words from the ancient philosopher Epimenides (6th century BCE) and the ancient poet Aratus (3rd century BCE) respectively.[1]
Paul then brings the whole thing home as he denounces idolatry, proclaims the need for repentance and announces the coming judgement on an appointed day in the near future—a concept entirely different to what many of the ancient philosophers believed, for they saw time and existence itself as cyclical, without an “end date.” Paul nearly has the musicians coming to the front, ready to play the first stanza of “Just As I Am” when he rounds the rhetorical corner of his sermon in verse 29: “Since we are God's offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. 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."
That last line would have some folks standing in the pews of a church shouting: “and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” Those words make me think of what I heard Otis Moss III say this past week, words I read in his book Blue Note Preaching in a Post-Soul World; he said, “There is no shouting like the shouting in a Black church about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. As a matter of fact, you can say the same thing every week. ‘They hung Him high. They stretched Him wide, and then He died. But early on Sunday morning…’”[2] To talk of Christ’s resurrection—that ought to move some people, stir some folks up.
But Luke says, in the verses following our text this morning, “When they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some scoffed; but others said, ‘We will hear you again about this.’ At that point Paul left them. But some of them joined him and became believers, including Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.” This isn’t the type of evangelistic response one would hope for from such an event. This is Athens, the Areopagus, the “big show,” a mainstage in a big city, where someone like Billy Graham would sell out the arena and have hundreds of folks flooding down the aisles. But Paul—all Paul could muster was a couple of women (which would have been seen as a pitiful response indeed in the first century) and a few nameless others. There’s no church left to grow in Athens, no chapter of the Jesus movement meeting in the home of Dionysius, nothing more than a sort of nod to Paul’s eloquence as they say, “I guess we could listen to this one more time…”
What happened? Was Paul off his mark that day? Were his references not relevant enough? Was his delivery not formal enough? Not casual enough? Did he forget to wear a tie? Were his skinny jeans clashing with his sneakers? Was he not loud enough for the folks in the back who refused the hearing devices? Did he preach too long or was his sermon too short? Was the air too cold in the Areopagus, or were people too distracted with fanning themselves in the heat? Was he too political? Not political enough? Were his references obscure or too folksy for the audience? Maybe; I know those are certainly some of the reasons me and my preaching colleagues often hear, but what was it, really? Why didn’t Paul’s message cause a massive upheaval and revival right then and there?
Now, some will say it’s because the message Paul preached was so radically different from the kinds of things the Athenians were used to hearing. Maybe. Maybe the notion of time being less cyclical and more linear messed them up. Maybe the very idea of a person dying and not staying dead was just too much for them to wrap their heads around. Maybe.
Of course, others will say it’s because Paul left out two very important items in his sermon. I remember the first time I heard this idea (one, frankly, I like a lot): it was in the chapel at Truett Seminary and Dr. Gardner C. Taylor was the guest preacher. Dr. Taylor was a giant among preachers, and still immensely influential after his death. Dr. Taylor pointed out that Paul left Athens and travelled to Corinth, and in his correspondence with the church there, Paul reveals his shortcomings at Athens. You see, in his sermon at the Areopagus, Paul mentions God creating the world, appointing a day of consummation, and raising “a man” from the dead, but he never mentions Jesus by name, nor does he mention the cross, which is why (Dr. Taylor suggests) Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:1-2, “When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” It’s a convincing argument, but I don’t think it’s the whole story. You see, I have another idea, one that is also grounded in Paul’s response in Corinth, after his perceived failure at Athens.
At the Areopagus, Paul engaged in a public display of rhetoric, a free debate with those who loved to sit around and discuss politics and philosophy. There was no shortcoming in Paul’s approach; it’s often cited as an exemplary model of apologetics. There is no short-sightedness in his theology (save that which we’ve already covered with Dr. Taylor’s observations). In fact, I would argue that Paul could have been right on cue with everything from the pace, pitch, and projection of his voice to the use of metaphor and narrative language, right down to how he dressed and his posture. Paul could have gotten everything right with his presentation before the people at the Areopagus and still had the exact same response. He could have framed his argument perfectly, presented the facts as they were, connected the dots and left every possible question answered—and still would have left Athens in no different shape. Why do I believe this? Well, maybe my thoughts are best summed up in words attributed to author Philip Yancey: “No one ever converted to Christianity because they lost the argument.” Yet how so many of us think our chief charge in the faith is to argue!
Paul gives a perfectly framed argument, but it doesn’t amount to a hill of beans! And I think Paul realized it when he arrived in Corinth. You see, not only does Paul decide to know nothing among the Corinthians but “Jesus Christ and him crucified,” Paul also realizes what it truly takes to communicate the full-orbed truth of the gospel. It isn’t carefully crafted sermons; it isn’t thoroughly rehearsed apologetic strategies; it isn’t the memorization and regurgitation of Bible verses; it isn’t even well-timed sermons with three alliterative points, a joke, and a poem at the end. It’s none of that. It’s not political ideologies we place upon our favored politicians to carry into legislative sessions on our behalf. It isn’t bumper stickers or “Jesus fish” emblems on our cars. It isn’t faith-based production companies or “family friendly” radio stations. It isn’t anything that’s called a “worldview,” doctrine, or dogma, and it sure isn’t drawing an uncrossable line! While not all of these things are bad (in fact, many of them are good, right things), none of them can fully communicate the whole-truth of the gospel, and Paul knew that way back when, in the shadow of his shortcomings at Athens.
Yes, he says in 1 Corinthians 2:2: “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified,” but what he says further on into that reflective letter says more about the lesson he learned at the Areopagus, for after standing in the midst of those who loved lofty words, academic debates, political posturing, and ideological demonstrations, Paul writes to the sisters and brothers at Corinth and says (likely with Mar’s Hill on his mind): “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.” In the words of Michael Curry, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, “If it’s not about love, it’s not about God!” I think he got that from Paul, and I think Paul may have gotten that from Jesus.
You see, Paul came to learn that all the fancy words in the world will never move the needle on the dial of one’s soul without love. All the posturing about what makes one a true Christian doesn’t mean a thing if one isn’t willing to cross over the lines we draw in order to love a neighbor, a stranger. Paul came to learn what we’re still learning, that this Christian faith is not a philosophy upon which to ponder, nor is it an ideology to defend and debate. Why Id’ even go so far as to say it’s so much more than a view with which to see the world. If this faith we have in Christ is anything, it is an embodied ethic of selfless, life-giving love. If faith in Christ is anything, it is life, breath, bread, and water; it’s room at the tale for everyone; it’s dirty feet and unwashed hands; it’s grace and forgiveness, peace in the midst of trouble, laughter in the midst of pain, hope when there’s absolutely nothing left in which to hope. If faith in Christ is anything, it’s life, a life lived in the reckless pursuit of perfect love, for without love (as Paul came to understand, and I hope we do too), without love, we’re nothing. Amen.
[1] See Matt Skinner’s commentary on workingpreacher.org: https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=886
[2] Blue Note Preaching in a Post-Soul World (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2015). p.35.
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