One of the foundational messages of Christianity is around the focus of love.
As we flip through the pages of scripture love is dominant.
God’s love for us, our love for God and our love for others.
Our parish mission statement even reflects this;
Because of God’s amazing grace we live to love the Lord with all our being, to love others as we love ourselves and to share the Good News of Jesus Christ.
I suspect that most of wake up in the morning with the intention to love others.
However then it happens.
After hitting the snooze button on our alarm we wake up not 5 minutes later but an hour later.
We now have less than half an hour to get ready for school and work
The children are fighting.
The rains the weather man never expected came down and the clothes we left out over night are damp.
As we drive to school and work, the driver in front of us seems to have all the time in the world driving at 30 kilometres an hour.
On the way to work we see that the price of petrol is up again and someone on the radio mentions that interest rates will be going up again.
At work things are not much better someone has called in sick.
A major customer has gone to the opposition.
We finish work and when we return to the car we discover someone has accidentally scratched our bumper.
Eventually we get home.
And as we walk in the door we see our partner in tears.
But rather than give him or her a nice hug and some consoling words, we are just too warn out and say what’s wrong in a gruffy voice.
We feel too exhausted to show the love we know they need.
Ever had one of those days.
Well in our reading from Acts chapter 17 beginning at verse 22.
Paul find himself in such a situation.
Paul is now on his third missionary trip.
He has been attacked, beaten, gaoled, ignored.
You name it it has happened to Paul.
He has travelled thousand of kilometres.
And now he is in Athens.
And when he arrives in Athens he finds himself amongst people who consider themselves quite intelligent.
And yet they have an aisle full of gods.
Who here goes shopping, ever been down the cereal aisle?
You have choices and choices of cereal.
Now this is what it was like when Paul hit Athens.
There was not just one god, but multiple gods.
Now if Paul acted like some people who call themselves Christians he would have responded probably like this:
“HEY YOU IDIOTS!!!
YOU ARE ALL GOING TO HELL!!
YOU NEED TO FOLLOW THE ONE TRUE GOD!!!
But he didn’t .
And we can learn a lot from him in the way he approached such a situation,
When Paul entered Athens he saw he was amongst people who were quite religious.
And we are in a very similar situation.
To give you an idea of how religious and spiritual Australia is consider the following:
In the last census held in 2006,
just over 18% of the population indicated that they held no religious beliefs.
Now that means around 80% of Australians believe in a higher being, the divine or something beyond themselves.
Also this same census reveals that the fastest growing religion in Australia is Buddhism.
The experts have looked further into this and discovered that around have the increase in Buddhism can be attributed to what is know as pop Buddhism.
This is a situation where people see celebrities like rock stars, sporting identities and other high profile people like the Dalai Lama and because they want to believe in something beyond themselves they adopt Buddhism as their religion even though they know little about it.
Also if you were to go into any book shop selling personal development books,
and open them up
most of them will have a section on spirituality.
Or they will at least talk about having a balanced lifestyle and part of this is tending to your spiritual needs.
And when the Bible Society undertook market research relating to the ‘Jesus all about life campaign’ they discovered that many people thought Jesus was cool, was quite good, his teachings are excellent.
But they felt the church stunk.
Now that doesn’t mean as a church we don’t have a roll.
Our role is to introduce and connect ourselves and others to the teachings of Jesus.
Also many of the people I know are devoted to things in their life.
They have a number of gods.
That is they put their trust in a number of things.
Family, money, career, superannuation, particular political parties.
And yet each of these will let them down from time to time.
And so lets uncover what we can learn from Paul’s encounter with the people in Athens as we deal with people who are similar.
For a start Paul’s focus when he arrived in Athens was twofold.
It was to address the needs of the people he was interacting with.
Remember there is a difference between needs and wants.
Sometimes we know what their wants are and often how to address them.
But sometimes when it comes to our needs we have little idea of what they actually are or how to address them.
So Paul attempts to reveal to them who this unknown god is.
Secondly and most importantly Paul desires deeply that they know our loving God.
And these are the two areas of focus we need to have when dealing with people we meet and interact with:
To meet their needs, especially spiritual and to introduce them to our loving God..
And to achieve this we see Paul first approach this by looking for an opening.
Rather than screaming at them or condemning them,
Paul identifies an opening where he can introduce God to them and talk positively to them about God.
Listen again to verse 23.
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. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.
Paul sees an altar to an unknown god and sees this as an opportunity to bring God into the discussion.
Now remember he was also amongst people who wanted to know things.
Now as we interact with people we are encouraged to do the same.
To see opportunities where people need to touch base with the God we know but they do not know.
Now it is unlikely that you will walk into someone’s house and see a specific altar to an unknown god.
But there are times when people are yearning for God to touch their lives.
One of these times is when they are grieving or going through difficult times.
Whenever I have a funeral it always amazes me how easy it is to talk to many people about God and his love and how many people are open to it.
When people are grieving I encourage you to introduce the God you know to them.
By both what you and do.
Not by judging them, but by showing God’s care and love.
Give them a phone call.
Offer to help them.
Take them a meal.
Remind them that God is there for them.
Ask them would they like to be prayed for and pray for them if they say yes.
As you engage with other people look for the openings to introduce God.
There are many openings.
Secondly and importantly Paul reminds us the importance of remaining with God.
Paul walked into a culture that he easily could have adopted, but he didn’t.
It could have been easy for Paul to adopt the culture he was placed in completely and say ohh yes come and experience my God along with all your other gods but that is not what he did.
Listen again to what he said, from verse 24.
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 hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.
Paul nicely said to these learned people.
Hey this God you call unknown, our God created everything, the heavens and the earth.
In other words he was saying even if these other gods were real they are inferior to Him,
Because he created them.
And the beauty of our God is we can have a direct relationship with him.
Who would you rather relationship with the big boss or one of his underlings?
And this is something we can also share with people today.
If people are into New Age or other religions.
Often they have an idol, something that needs to be created.
If they aren’t they are often devoted to something created by God like money, superannuation, the environment, careers, family, sport, etc.
As mentioned earlier often these things will let us down.
However we need to remind ourselves and others that God has created all these things.
And it is God who we should put our total trust in rather than these created things.
This is remaining with God.
There are also two other things we can share with people.
First if God has created us and we have not created him.
As we live our lives we should allow God to influence us, rather than we look for God to please us.
That means listening to what God has to say to us through scripture.
Also Paul reminds us that God has given us and others a future.
Not a future because he looks at your checklist and sees how many good things you have done.
But a future that is the result of His son dieing and rising from the dead.
Now many people are worried about judgement day.
God’s judgement is not about how many good things you have done.
God’s judgement is about whether you have trusted to give you eternal life
or whether you have trusted yourself or other things.
This is a future based on love.
And finally.
What enabled Paul to act in the way he did and to say the things he did?
What enables us to love others even when we feel exhausted and miserable?
Paul drew on strength from God.
Remember in the Gospel reading from John 14:16, Jesus gives us his Holy Spirit.
And so as we live our lives when we don’t feel like loving or introducing our loving God to others
Lets stop and take a breath and pray for God’s strength .AMEN
