It is difficult to appreciate the majestic setting of Athens in the bustle of
the modern polluted city.
It was no less bustling a city in the days of Paul.
The centre point of the City then as now was the Akropolis.
A city set on a hill with the most remarkable of buildings
that 2000 years later still have a
remarkable majesty about them. And
crowning glory of all the temple home of the Goddess Athene – the Parthenon – complete, then, with
its telling of the story of Athene and the great stories of the Greeks. The Parthenon still stands in all its
splendour, though the story is now told by the Elgin Marbles a couple of
thousand miles away in the British
Museum
And under the Parthnenon a fine theatre still used for many
a performance. And so many fine temples,
not least of which of course is the one to which we owe a debt of gratitude
here in Cheltenham for the Caryatids up on Montpellier – a reproduction of the
fine statues that hold up the roof of one of those temples.
It is to this cosmopolitan city that Paul and his travelling
companions come.
And what happens there is so very telling.
He had plans to tour through churches in the region of what is now
That letter to the Galatians is a wonderful celebration of
the freedom Paul so treasures
1For freedom Christ
has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of
slavery.
in Christ Jesus
neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything; the only thing
that counts is faith working through love.
13 For you were called
to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an
opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another.
14For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your
neighbour as yourself.’
2 By contrast, the
fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity,
faithfulness, 23gentleness, and self-control.
Then it was they sensed the man from Macedonia summoning
them across to what we now think of as Greece – from Philippi they made for
nearby Thessalonica where Paul shared the wonderful good news of the death and
resurrection of Jesus: initially people
were drawn to their message – but then they were accused of turning the world
upside down and ‘acting contrary to the decrees of the emperor’
Hounded out of the city they made their way to Berea – and it wasn’t
long before Paul was writing to the Thessalonians another of his early letters
– urging them to hold on that resurrection faith, seeing death as but a
sleep. But they were to live as children
of light and children of the day, not of the night or of darkness!
Then it was that Paul was escorted to Athens alone and had to wait to be joined by
Silas and Timothy.
What happens in Athens
is fascinating.
He is amazed at what he sees and in particular disturbed in
a strange way by the number of idols there are in the city. It’s a place for great discussion and
reflection on the world. A kind of
coffee shop culture where people meet to explore the meaning of life and what
its purpose is. Different schools of
philosophy – Epicureans who were out to enjoy life to the full with their
eating and drinking, stoics, who reacted against unhelpful emotion and
advocated strength of will and determination all vied with each other for
support.
And so what did Paul do.
I think what he did is a key thing for us to take to hear in
seeking to share our faith.
Up until now for the most part we have met with Paul and the
other apsostles when they have been sharing the good news about Jesus with
Jewish people who were steeped in the Hebrew Scriptures. He rooted his account of the Christian faith in those scriptures
describing Jesus as the fulfilment of the law and the prophets.
But the people he engages with here in Athens don’t have that background.
The genius of Paul is that he engages with them on their
ground, in their terms.
And this is what we need to take to heart in our sharing of
the Gospel.
Advent is about to start and in the run up to Chritmas we
have a wonderful opportunity to share our faith. We are doing some things differently this
year – take the opportunity to invite others – to the Advent service next
Sunday evening.
To the Christmas Café the following week – we are wanting to
share with people around us in the community around.
Take an opportunity through Christmas to share with others
its meaning.
IN explaining the Christian faith how important it is to
start where people are.
19So they took him and brought him to the Areopagus and
asked him, ‘May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20It
sounds rather strange to us, so we would like to know what it means.’ 21Now all
the Athenians and the foreigners living there would spend their time in nothing
but telling or hearing something new.
Was it a forum. Was
it on a hill overlooking the Acropolis?
A place of discussion.
Curiosity.
And Paul has something he wants to share.
22 Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said,
‘Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. 23For 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 starts where they are – and comes alongside them. There is a respectfulness in what Paul says
and a determination to share.
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,
You have to imagine the location, free from the smog of
today. Athens is set against a backdrop of majestic
mountains, it is a city of hills, and in the distance the harbour and the
glistening sea.
You can imagine Paul surveying the wonderful sccene of those
remarkable mountains, the wonders of the sea that could be so cruel and yet so
benign and these words come alive. The
sweep of his hands takes it all in and then points to even the finest of those
buildings. The finest of those buildings
pall into insignificance in comparison with the majesty and the awe of the
world of nature and those mountains and that sea.
This is an echo of much the same kind of thinking Stephen
had shared when speaking of the Temple of the
Jewish people in Jerusalem .
This is something rooted in Jesus’ insights himself – God’s
presence is not located in buildings made from stone – it is to be seen and to
be sensed in the whole 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,
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.
That sense of the glory of God in creation Paul then
elaborates on.
I find this to be the roots of my valuing the world of
science as a way into speaking of the sheer wonder of God in creation – it’s a
great starting place. IT doesn’t give
evidence and proof of God – but it shows that there is good warrant for our
belief.
26From 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, 27so 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.
There is, suggests Paul, something built into all humanity –
a questing after truth, a question after God.
In every society, however remote, there is a sense of the divine, a
sense of the religious. This sense paul
makes something of.
People reaching out after God. And at the same time God is reaching out
after them.
In two quite different settings recently I have found people
fascinated by the writings of Sartre and the existentialists of the
1960’s. In response to that way of
thinking then thinkers like Paul Tillich and nearer to home the Bishop of
Woolwich John Robinson sought a response that would use the language of that
day to present the truths of God.
This year sees the fiftieth anniversary of Honest to God
John robinson’s attempt at popularising that thinking.
I have always found it helpful. To think of God as Being, the very being that
makes us be. Being itself.
Tillich has a wonderful theology that he develops around the
idea of correlation.
People seek for God.
Let’s suppose there is a God.
It would not be unreasonable to suppose God would reach out
to people.
It is as people’s questing, and God’s searching meet that
something is triggered off . A moment of
disclosure. An awareness of God.
This, it seems to me is what Paul is speaking of here.
26From 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, 27so 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.
He then goes on to quote not the Bible, but one of the Greek
poets and thinkers …
28For “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.”
So God is something beyond our understanding , the very
lifebreath of our existence – the ground of our being, being itself.
29Since 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. 30While God has overlooked the times of human
ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31because 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.’
It is then, obliquely, that he turns to the story of Jesus.
The very nature of God can be undrsood in the one in whom
God’s presence dwells supreme – in Jesus Christ himself.
Now Paul reaches the climax of all he shares and he focuses
on jesus Christ.
A triumph – it’s interesting that it’s not long after this
he describes to the church in a neighbouring city that we are going to visit
next week, Corinth, that it is this bit of the message he has come to focus on
more than anything else. We preach Christ
crucified.
This kind of philosophising has its place. But it is in the simply sotry of Jesus that
the impact of our faith is felt at its greatest.
32 When they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some
scoffed; but others said, ‘We will hear you again about this.’ 33At that point
Paul left them. 34But some of them joined him and became believers, including
Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.
Isn’t it intriguing how we catch a glimpse of people, named
presumably because they could be tracked down, their witness verified, because
they became people who played their part in the life of the church.
Damaris – what was she like, I wonder.
There’s a wonderful website, damaris.org that explores the modern world
of culture and the way in which in particular films speak of the deep things of
life and touch on our Christian faith.
They have named the website after this woman, Damaris, who
so valued the approach of Paul who was willing to start where people were and
then draw them towards God, towards Jesus Christ and towards faith.
I for one am pleased Damaris has such a part to play in the
life of the church now … just as much as then.
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