Brothers and sisters in Christ and guests welcome to Christ’s Church in the Park.
As most of you know I am a graduate student. Whenever I travel to school at KCC in Kentucky, I realize immediately that their world is different than mine. Immediately as I depart Blue Grass field in Lexington I begin to see wide-open fields, I think they call them pastures. They line Man O’ War road and Versailles Road as I travel to KCC. The wide open spaces impress me and free me especially as we are becoming increasingly crowded here in the Tampa Bay area with a population exceeding 2,000,000 and growing in a geometric progression daily. I find it is easy to tune into a Christian radio station as I travel that 102 miles to the campus and there is no shortage of Country or Blue grass music either. AND yet as much as they are different we are similar because within any geographic area in the United States there exists 1000’s of differing worldviews. We are not in Kansas anymore Toto, the world has changed!
May I explain what I mean? The Enlightenment or pre-modern era that ended in the 1500’s believed that truth was based on God- much like many of you who are maturing as Christians. But listen to me now and please do not be threatened and do not think that postmodern thinkers are your enemy they are not. My prayer for this message is that it will help us in our maturation process as Christians as we try to understand the world in which we live today and gain a more clear understanding of our neighbors who are also hungry for a spiritual journey and searching for the truth.. Secondly, I pray that those in our presence today who are seeking to know more about Christianity and spirituality will consider Jesus in their journey for truth. I want you to clearly understand that the Bible teaches us about a spiritual journey with Christ that begins by faith and baptism, but never ends while we are on this earth. In a very real way we are all seeking God’s transcendent holy ground that brings us closer to answering the mystery of why we exist. Why were we created? What is the meaning to one’s life? Is this all there is to life?
My wife and I have three adult children and two are still at home- they have all expressed discontentment with their current stature in life. Probably the best way to explain this to you is to read you a poem written by a young man named Jason Lehman.
It was spring, but it was summer I wanted, the warm days, and the great outdoors.
It was summer, but it was fall I wanted, the colorful leaves, and the cool, dry air.
It was fall, but it was winter I wanted, the beautiful snow, and the joy of the holiday
Season.
It was winter, but it was spring I wanted, the warmth, and the blossoming of nature.
I was a child, but it was adulthood I wanted, the freedom and the respect.
I was twenty, but it was thirty I wanted, to be mature and sophisticated.
I was middle aged, but it was twenty I wanted, the youth and the free spirit.
I was retired, but it was middle age I wanted, the presence of mind, without
limitations.
My life was over. But I never got what I wanted.
Pre-modern man believed he had solved these issues and questions through faith in God. His religious beliefs were primary to all areas of his life and through living a life that worshipped God by obedience the world’s problems could be solved. The person in the enlightenment period for the most part believed in absolute truth and it was God’s story what the scholar’s call a metanarrative that was the basis for moral absolutes. God was the center of the universe.
The modern period was from the 1500’s until the 1960’s. People still believed that truth was absolute, but notice the change. Absolute truth no longer came from the creator at the center of the universe. Truth now came from human reasoning, from the scientific method. If you could not touch it or taste it, it could not be considered absolutely true. The center of the universe changed from God to us. God created us in His image and man believed he had progressed long enough and far enough that he could return the favor and transform God into the image we needed or wanted Him to be. You have heard the story I am sure of the 3rd grade Christian girl who expressed her belief in God as creator of the universe to her teacher. The teacher embarrassed her by asking her, how can you believe in a God you cannot see? Her answer was priceless when she replied, “I cannot see your brain am I to assume you do not have one?” The modern world believed that man was progressing on a higher evolutionary plane and through progress and knowledge man would make the world a wonderful place. But we have not evolved into a world community of loving, caring individuals and World War II and subsequent wars have for the most part dispelled this myth.
Enter 1960 what we commonly refer to as the postmodern period and understand “we are not in Kansas anymore Toto.” In graduate school this Fall I was required to write a working definition of postmodernism. Here is what I wrote: Postmodernism- A name for the time period in which we currently live. A time when there is no meta-narrative, no absolute truth. It is a period in time where mutually exclusive ideas can exist contemporaneously and tolerance means that if someone rejects ones behavior they have rejected and judged the individual, it is a time of contradiction because there is not a universally accepted worldview and all worldviews are acceptable except the Christian worldview because it is not pluralistic. There is not a single BIG story that is true. Truth is based on the community’s experiences. Christians one way you are perceived in the world is as a community among many communities, who holds a view among many views, who have created a truth –notice not the truth-but a truth that is relative to you among many communities of relative truth. How many times in sharing your faith have you heard “well, I am glad you found religion it seems to be working for you.” It could have been new age pantheism or Mormonism even a homosexual relationship. But in the eyes of the postmodern thinker-he is happy that you seemed to have found a solution and fulfillment for life’s many challenges and questions in this pluralistic world of many choices that actually works for you. Mutually exclusive ideas can exist at the very same time in a person’s life. We live in a shopping mall of choice a smorgasbord of pick and choose. I remember hearing the story of a Christian boy who believed Jesus was Lord and Savior, but when he died he would like to come back as the family dog because of the good life the dog lived. He had mixed two mutually exclusive views into his life Christianity and reincarnation. Our teenagers are inundated with a plethora of ideas from which to pick and choose. They reject the idea that truth is absolute and the metanarratives as too oppressive. To the postmodern mind spirituality is important and the way to solve the world’s problems is through tolerance. Tolerance means if you reject how I live, if you reject my homosexual lifestyle you reject and judge me! A mature Christian would argue with that position and would say, “tolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons. Tolerance applies to the erring; intolerance to the error2. We separate behavior and sin from the individual, we hate what God hates and we love what God loves. God hates sinful behavior and so must we, but God loves the people who are made in His image and so must we. Therefore, if people matter to God, they must ultimately matter to us. If Walter Kronkite were closing the evening news today instead of saying “and that is the way it was Sunday October 26th 2003.” He might say, "and that’s the way we say it is" to better represent the tenor of today’s news media3
Brothers and sisters this may cause you to think that we should continue to isolate ourselves from this wicked generation and eat fried chicken until our Lord returns. Nothing can be farther from the truth and we MUST not become a holy huddle we are the army of the Lord and armies reclaim God’s ground by penetration. We must penetrate the world in which we live!
Why do I say Christians please do not be discouraged? Well, let me tell you why. When my father died my mother was young and at 30 years old very pretty. She lived a very active single life in addition to working 2 jobs to support us and at 10 years old I was shuffled from family to family. By the grace of God I stumbled into the Chromy family when the dad became my little league coach. They were my family of preference. When I was 12 and my mom married my step dad and they moved after the summer of my 7th grade to Cocoa Beach, I stayed and lived with the Chromy’s until school started. The point of this story is that Mr. Chromy was a retired Navy Chief and he had a friend Captain Bill Sorrick who was a pilot in the U. S. Marines. Captain Sorrick helped coach our PONY league team that was called the Phantoms. The name of the fighter plane Captain Sorrick flew in Viet Nam. To a fighter pilot a sky full of bogies, Migs or enemy planes is a target rich environment. Although, postmodern people are not our enemy-they provide a “target rich environment” a plentiful field for the church to become self-actualized through evangelism. The world we live in today is full of people who are seeking spiritual things. They love the supernatural and are fascinated with horoscopes, crystals, psychics and mind-altering drugs.
But we have what they value! They value truth but it cannot be the kind of truth that merely states, ‘God said it and that settles it I believe it.” We cannot meet the world today with an attitude that says, “I read it in the Bible and if you do not believe what I believe well then you are going to Hell." Tozer said, “There is today an evangelical rationalism which says that the truth is in the Word and if you want to know truth, go learn the Word. If you get the Word, you have the truth. That is the evangelical rationalism that we have in fundamentalist circles: "If you learn the text you’ve got the truth."
This evangelical rationalist wears our uniform. He comes in wearing our uniform and says what the Pharisees ... said: "Well, truth is truth and if you believe the truth you’ve got it." Such see no beyond and no mystic depth, no mysterious or divine. They see only, "I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ His only Son, our Lord."
They have the text and the code and the creed, and to them that is the truth. So they pass it on to others. The result is we are dying spiritually. To know the Truth, we must "know" the Son.4 I would take that quote from 1977 and to it today to know the truth and share the truth with a postmodern world we must show the world how the truth, how the Son works in our marriages- so we can stay married, show them how our relationship with Christ can altar our minds and make us loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, gentle and self-controlled.5
They need and want acceptance from a community, a family. Christians we are the family of God- so much so that in the Gospel of Matthew Jesus asks the question 12:46-50 Who is my family, not my mom. Not my brothers or sisters, but those who do the will of my Father.
Christians, much of the pluralism we face in our world today parallels the times of Jesus. In Paul’s day people worshipped many gods, the Romans believed that to be polytheistic was fine, but if you believed in only one God you were not monotheistic, but actually atheistic. If you were monotheistic you could be persecuted to the point of death. Christianity today faces the same kind of worldly thinking as people seek the mystery through secular humanism, psychics, horoscopes, new age crystals, pantheism, hedonism, even their fascination with angels and afterlife.
In closing open your Bibles to 17:16.
Paul has been the source of discomfort with the truth to the Jews and he is escorted to Berea. As he waits in Athens he is unsettled, (literally his spirit was being provoked) just like we are by the worship of false gods by people today. You see they could pick and choose a god for whatever they needed, maybe a god for fertility, or rain or for the harvest. The key thing for us today as Christians in this passage is to see how Paul meets these peoples where they are without sign by him of any offense whatsoever by their ignorance. Christians, please if people are going to be offended today may it be because of the truth of the cross and not our arrogance!
So Paul goes to where the people are, they did not just walk into his church, (just a thought). He went to them in the synagogue and in the market and he reasoned with them. The Greek for “reasoned with” connotes a dialogue. Like Paul we must embrace people in our culture with dialogue. Talk to people, make some friends. Cathi says, “everybody is Joe Bedy’s friend he just has not met them all yet.” Start in your neighborhood, in your job, at the market, at the beauty salon-need I continue? Embrace people in our world. Acts 17:17 So he was reasoning in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Gentiles, and in the market place every day with those who happened to be present.
Run the risk of embracing postmodern people they may call you a name- they called Paul a babbler, which implied he had picked up some scraps of knowledge along the way. Understand the Epicureans held the worldview that if it felt good do it, life couldn’t get any better for them unless the Swedish bikini team drooped in. While the stoics who are also present had a different and unique worldview that held unto one’s own self-sufficiency and independence. Very similar to today when people in any geographic location are comprised of cell groups within the larger groups who hold a relative truth that identifies them. Incidentally, one of the major pitfalls of Christianity today is that according to the world we proclaim absolute truth and love at the center of that truth, but the way we live our lives does not reflect to a watching world that are Christianity is really effecting the way we live. To most postmodernist we say one thing and do another. So our lives as Christians in day-to-day life looks just like their lives and their lives have no meaning and are empty.
But Paul beginning in v 22 as he stands before the Areopagus begins by meeting them where they are spiritually without condemnation or any kind of judgment whatsoever. He merely states, "Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects.
Acts 17:23 "For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, ’TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ What therefore you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you.
And from verse 24-32, he does the Billy Graham thing and tells these seekers about the one true God. Now notice some sneered and jeered, but there were others who became Christians and others who wanted to know more and wanted to hear Paul speak again. Therefore, a church was planted! The same thing that happened to Jesus and to Paul when they shared the truth of God will happen to us, some will be offended, some will curse and sneer, some will say we are too narrow minded and too oppressive, BUT SOME will come to Christ and be saved for all eternity some will need to hear more and see how Christ works in our lives, in our marriages, with our children, with the clerk at the grocery store. Christians embrace the culture, Jesus did!
