Here’s Paul, left alone in Athens, the cultural capital of the world. How do you think he’d be feeling? Overwhelmed? Excited? Fascinated? Imagine this is you, not in Athens, but in New York or Paris or Rome or Berlin? How would you be feeling? Like you couldn’t wait to get out and start exploring? Going to the museums and the libraries and art galleries? In his case to the Acropolis, or the ancient city walls, or to see the sculptures and monuments for which Athens was justly famous? Or perhaps to go and listen to the philosophers debating life and the universe? Or maybe you’re the sort who’d rather just mooch around, sit in a café imbibing the atmosphere, feeling the vibes of this great hub of civilisation.
I must say I love visiting far off places. But I say to my shame that I don’t normally react to these places the way Paul does to his experience of Athens. See how the passage begins? "While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was deeply distressed." Why was he distressed? Not because he was alone in a strange city. Not because he didn’t know the language. Not because his luggage had gone missing on the last leg of his flight. They’re the sorts of things that we get distressed at. But no, he was distressed to see that the city was full of idols. I mean, what did he expect? Well, presumably he expected that there’d be temples to idols, just as there were in the other cities he’d visited, but what he found here was a city that was swamped by idols. Someone has suggested Luke’s saying there was ’a veritable forest of idols.’ It was almost as if the populace had decided that if there was a god to be worshipped then they needed to have a temple to him or her.
Now in a sense Athens may have been unique in the world of the time, but when you think about it, it wasn’t so different from the cities of our world today. Di and I spent a couple of days in Singapore in April and I can tell you that idolatry is rife there. In fact you could almost say that Singapore is one great temple to consumerism. Everywhere you go there are stores selling every possible consumer item you can imagine - and a few more besides. But of course you don’t need to go to Singapore to experience that, do you? Just drop in to Chadstone or Whitehorse Plaza some time. Or pick up your newspaper or turn on the TV and you’ll see the gods of our age on display. Consumerism, hedonism, wealth, pleasure, health, leisure, career, family.
Well, Paul is astounded at this city that seems to be given over to the worship of idols. So what does he do? He argues in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons. Maybe he’s bothered because the Jewish synagogue has had no impact on the city. He realises perhaps that the message they’re teaching lacks the transforming power necessary to make any inroads in a city like this. They need to understand and begin proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ. Do you remember the charge that was brought against Paul in Thessalonica? It was that these men were turning the world upside down. If Athens was to be changed then its people would need to hear the gospel. So Paul began with the Jewish synagogue. But he also went into the marketplace, arguing, reasoning with those who were there, proclaiming the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.
Luke doesn’t say anything about the response of the Jews here. What he’s interested in, here, is the response of the Greek philosophers. Clearly this is a ground breaking moment in the history of the preaching of the gospel. Here we find people who have no knowledge of the Jewish faith, a totally pagan culture, yet one that’s highly intelligent and deeply thinking. In fact it’s interesting to think about the two groups that he begins to debate with, the Epicureans and the Stoics. Let me tell you a bit about them and you can see whether they have their parallels today.
The Epicureans were the ’philosophers of the Garden’. They believed the gods were remote and not interested in human affairs. So what happened was purely the result of chance. They didn’t believe in life after death and had no concept of final judgement. So their aim was to pursue pleasure and a life as free of pain, suffering or fear as possible. Their modern equivalent might be your classic Australian hedonist, or consumerist.
The Stoics on the other hand acknowledged a supreme god, but in a sort of pantheistic way. God was the spirit at the heart of the universe, the ’world soul.’ For them the world was determined not by chance but by fate and the task of human beings was to pursue their duty, seeking to live in harmony with nature and reason, however painful that might be, developing their own self-sufficiency. There’s some parallel there with Buddhism perhaps, or alternatively with those in the west who advocate discipline and hard work as the way to achieve success.
So how will Paul approach this sort of audience?
Well obviously his approach is the right one because after listening to him for some time they decide he’s worth taking up to the centre of intellectual debate, to the Areopagus. This is the Hyde Park of Athens, where the thinkers go to parade their ideas, where you just jump up on a rock and start debating those around you. And if it’s new and you’re smart enough, people will listen.
They sound a bit like our media people, don’t they? Always looking for something new, something that’ll titillate the senses, or cause a stir, or draw an audience. And Paul’s just what they’re looking for. Here’s a new teaching that’s quite exotic. And Paul’s clearly a man of great intellect, able to argue with Jewish believers in the synagogue, ordinary people in the marketplace and now the cream of Athens philosophy. So Paul is given a ready made audience for the gospel.
So what’s he going to say? Well, what he says was either a total failure or a model of gospel proclamation to pagan people. My belief is that it’s the latter. Here he gives a classic example of how to preach the gospel to people who have little or no knowledge of Christianity. So pay attention because that’s the majority of people you and I mix with each day.
He starts by acknowledging their interest in spirituality. He says "Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way." He’d seen all their temples: to Apollo, Jupiter, Venus, Bacchus, Neptune, Diana, etc. In fact he’d noticed they were so religious that someone had even erected a temple to an unknown god. Could it be that someone realised that despite the countless gods they had already, there was still something missing? Something that would explain the reality of human life; e.g. the fact that we respond to beauty and kindness and love with warmth but are repelled by ugliness and suffering and injustice? So they’d erected this temple in the belief that there was something more out there? Well if that’s so, then Paul’s here to tell them about this unknown God, to fill in the gaps in their knowledge.
And where does he start? Where the Bible starts: with the God of creation: "24The 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..." With that opening he immediately sets himself apart from the Stoics and the Epicureans. Far from the universe operating randomly or being the general personification of God, the creation is the personal work of God. God is personally involved with it as its Lord. So it’s crazy to think he might live in a shrine made by human hands.
Secondly, God is the one who gives us life: "25nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things." Again, the universe doesn’t run by itself. God sustains all life. And let’s not think that it’s our job to make sure he’s OK, to bring him food and drink like they did in these temples. We’re the ones who depend on him for our lives and livelihood.
Thirdly, God is the ruler of all the nations. All nations on earth are his because he made them from one ancestor. He determines how long they’ll exist, how far their boundaries will stretch. And he’s made our lives such that we’ll long to know him, we’ll seek him out, even though it’s a hopeless search because of our own failings. Yet despite that God is never far away. ’28In him we live and move and have our being,’ quoting a 6th century Cretan poet.
Fourthly God is the Father of all human beings: "as even some of your own poets have said, ’For we too are his offspring.’" This time the poet is one of the Stoics of the 3rd century BC.
It’s interesting that Paul has no problems with quoting a pagan poet. Even these pagans had a glimpse of the truth of God as revealed in his creation. In our case we may not quote poets unless we’re within a particular cultural group, but we may well quote popular songs or use ideas from the popular media, from The Simpsons or Desperate Housewives or ER or whatever the popular culture that you’re familiar with offers. But we need to use these references the way Paul does, to highlight the inconsistencies in the way people act. Do you see how he uses these quotes. He’s saying "your own poets refer to us as God’s offspring, to God as the source of our life, yet you seem to think that God can be represented by silver and gold and carvings of stone. What sort of a god do you think that is?" Not the sort that Paul knows. No it’s simply unworthy of God to think of him like that.
And in case they thought that it doesn’t matter which god you worship, or that the way you worship is a matter of personal choice, personal preference, as so many people today seem to think, he had a warning for them. God may have overlooked our ignorance in the past. He may have allowed people to go their own way for a period of time. But that time has finished. He’s sent his own son to call people everywhere to repent; to turn away from their false worship. He’s sent his apostles into the world to preach the gospel, a gospel of repentance. Why? Because God "has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness". Here’s the fifth element of Paul’s message. God will judge the world in righteousness.
Notice that what we find here is both God’s mercy and God’s judgement intertwined. In his mercy he’s overlooked the fact that people have ignored the revelation of God that’s present in the world around them and in their own hearts and have instead turned to dumb idols, to reflections of their own selves as the object of worship. But now the time of his judgement is approaching. Now history is drawing to a close, brought to a climax in fact by the entry into the world of God’s only Son, Jesus Christ. The death and resurrection of Jesus has set in motion an inevitable process that leads to judgement on all sinfulness in the world. The power of sin has been overcome. Now sin itself must be removed from the world. So a day has been fixed on which God will deliver his final judgement on this fallen world. But God, in his mercy, won’t let that happen without first warning us. So he’s sent out Paul and the other apostles to warn people of the judgement they face.
And finally, the judgement will be carried out by, and is guaranteed by, Jesus Christ. He is the one God has appointed to deliver the judgement. And his resurrection is the assurance that this message is true. Notice that Paul doesn’t add that Jesus’ death is the means by which we can be forgiven. It may be that Paul didn’t get that far before he was interrupted and that he would have gone on to mention it soon after. On the other hand, it may be that in the context of a pagan audience, what mattered was not that they understood the means of salvation but that they acknowledge that the living God was the one who deserved their worship, not the false gods of the Temples of Athens. They needed to recognise that the God who made the world and all that’s in it deserved their worship, their obedience. And they needed to understand that this wasn’t simply a matter of choice. There’s an objective truth at issue here. History is moving to a conclusion, a conclusion that’ll be for the salvation or the judgement of all people.
This isn’t a pleasant topic is it? We don’t want to hear that God has fixed a day on which he’ll judge the world in righteousness. I mean if he’s going to judge the world we’d rather he judged us in kindness and warmth with lots of leeway, the way a parent might judge their child’s artwork or the craft they bring home from Theo’s Crew. Mind you we may not feel that about the people who perpetrated the London bombings last week or the person whose drunk driving caused that little boy in Dandenong to lose his foot or any number of other people whose behaviour leaves us outraged. But in the case of our own friends and family we want him to look the other way, to allow lots of leeway. But that would require God to be unjust wouldn’t it? To look the other way for me while he judges the murderer justly. Well, the fact is that God is both just and merciful. He will judge the world in righteousness. But in his mercy he sends out this warning to all people.
So here’s the challenge: What are we going to do about it? Do we believe that this is true? Or are we functional universalists? i.e. do we live in denial, pretending that everything will be all right, that we’ll all go to heaven in the end? Are we so absorbed in this world that we ignore the world to come? Or is it, as Rico Tice suggested at a seminar I went to last month, that we love ourselves more than we love our friends. Are we more concerned about our own comfort than we are about their future? Ask yourself this question: Where will they be in 100 years time? Will they be enjoying God’s presence or suffering under his judgement? Rico Tice told a story of a time when he was playing Rugby for Oxford University and one day he lent one of his team mates a video of a sermon he’d just preached on one of the gospel passages on judgement. And one of his best mates happened to be at this guy’s flat as he was watching it. At the end of the sermon someone asked him what he thought of the sermon and he said "I’m mad as hell." "Why?" they asked. "Because Rico says he’s my friend but he obviously isn’t. If he really believes this stuff and I’m his friend, why hasn’t he warned me about it?"
If we really believe that Jesus came to save people from God’s judgement, to provide a way that we can have peace with God, and that Jesus is the one who’ll judge them in the end then surely we should be warning them about what they face in the next life.
It’s not a popular approach any more but I wonder what would happen if we were to tell our friends how worried we are about them and their relationship with God? If we were to tell them that we believe that Jesus really did die and rise again and that he warned us that he was coming again to judge people according to the way they relate to God? As in Athens there may well be some who’d just scoff and go on their way in continued ignorance but there’d be others who’d sit up and take notice.
Well, let’s pray that we might have the boldness and the concern that Paul showed in warning people of the judgement to come.
