Acts 17:16-34 The Church That Encounters the World Sermon preached Nov.

26, 2013 Opening What would you say are some of the worlds great cities? What are some of the must-see sites? Us - Florence for our 25th Architecture - covered bridges Art - David Food - market lots of fun History - Santa Croce - Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli - just a minor church! Walkable - not huge like Paris... People moving back into cities - its where the intellectual and cultural action is restaurants, art, music... Athens Scripture today takes place in one of the worlds great cities. What was Paul doing there? Got run out of town where he was previously - Beroea - and flees to Athens. Athenian history - today Greece is a sad sack - and in Pauls time, the city was past its peak - Greece conquered by Rome - but was still the intellectual capital of the world home of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Herodotus...influence with us still today... Story says Paul taking in the sights in this great city - and something distresses him what is it? Idols everywhere - statues to the Greek pantheon Can you name any of the Greek Gods? Zeus! Apollo! Aphrodite! 1

Why hes distressed - Athens really knew how to do idols; and Paul is a Jew and a Christian - instinctive horror of idols and idol worship. Great big statue to Athena that was visible from the sea - maybe first thing Paul saw of Athens was that idol - like cruising into NY Harbor and instead of seeing the statue of liberty see a statue to a pagan god... And then the ancient Acropolis - temples to all kinds of different gods dominated the city, perched up on that hill...and then statues to the Roman emperor Augustus, and his wife Livia Just about all of Athens art and its greatest buildings - were about idols! Paul is distressed - word we get paroxysm from - he is all stirred up inside and conflicted - hates the idols and that these people worship idols, loves the people and has to do something to help them. What does this say about the people of Athens (intensely religious - but lost) Where Paul starts Paul starts preaching In synagogue and market - but then impresses some of his hearers and gets invited to the big-time - the Areopagus What is the big time for: Country music band - Grand Old Opry Classical violinist - Avery Fisher Hall Golfer - Masters Rock bands - in my day, big-time was Madison Square Garden - saw Springsteen right before Born to Run in 3,000 seat place...after the album came out, never had to play a small venue again The Areopagus--the former location of the Athenian equivalent of the Roman senate--was a center of civic life. The Roman equivalent of Ares is Mars, hence the translation sometimes used: the Mars Hill. Was main civic hall - when emperors came to visit this was where they addressed the leading citizens of Athens; also had the city courts in it.

who was there - the city council some scholars say, but also the people with the big brains, the intellectuals - specifically: Stoics - expect suffering and face life with dignity and courage Epicureans - maximize ratio of pleasure to pain - enjoy the good in life because its going to suck real soon Neither believed in a personal God today - something like lecture hall at Harvard, packed with the intellectual elite So - big crowd there - and you got two kinds of people there - people who believed in a whole lot of gods, and people who really didnt believe in a God at all. I want us to learn from what Paul does here. First thing Paul does, is love the people of Athens as they are. William Willimon - the former head of the chapel at Duke - tells the story of how one day he was walking along Dukes campus with a friend, a professor who was a Christian and it was Dukes Spring fling and the campus was filled with students engaging in drunken revelry, and the professor, looking at all the debauchery, said, Will, do you know what the ultimate proof of our Lords divinity is? No, said, Willimon. What for you is the ultimate proof of our Lords divinity? His friend said, It is that verse that says Jesus looked at the crowds and had compassion on them...I look at the crowds and want to utterly obliterate them. Paul - looking around at Athens and the Athenians with their idols and idolatry - would normally have viscerally horrified and repelled by what he saw. At best, Jews stayed away from idols and idolaters; and there was plenty of precedent in the Hebrew bible for wanting to utterly obliterate idolaters like the people of Athens. But instead of judging and condemning them - plenty of precedent and justification for that - Paul is able to love them as they are. He meets them where they are and begins a conversation, kind of says, I see you are very religious, as if to say, we have that in common, why, Im religious and so are you, in fact, you are so religious that you even have a statue to an unknown god - just to make sure youve covered all the bases - so, lets talk about this. Paul is able to love the Athenians as they are - even and precisely at the point of their lostness - and engage them.

Theres a challenge in there for us. Do we love lost people who may be living in ways and doing things that deeply trouble and even anger us - or do we judge them, avoid them, close our hearts to them? Second thing Paul does - he tells them who they really are Presbytery examinationss of new ministers - one old minister would ask each candidate to look out the window and describe theologically the next person they saw Sinner in need of Gods forgiveness A lost person who needs to know he/she is a child of God... Both are true...but says the ministers who give second response make better pastors. Paul says to the Athenians - we are all Gods children. And this, was a big conceptual shift. Because the ancient gods did not relate to human beings as their beloved children the gods were a fighting, feuding mess who would toy with human beings for their amusement, and your best hope in dealing with them was to win their favor through sacrifices and worship and long, long prayers - wearing out the gods, they used to say. Plato, who sort of believed in one god, once remarked, It would be eccentric for anyone to say he loved God. What he meant was, that the god of all things was too remote to be known by human beings and how can you love something you cannot know? When the weather is nice Ill sometimes sit outside at C&C Caf with a cup of coffee and watch people walk by, watch the cars and trucks drive by. You see all kinds of people Anglos and Latinos, Asians and African-American, Christians, Jews and even Muslims, plain people in long dresses and overalls, men in suits and young people with multiple tattoos and body piercings. Thats a lot of different kinds of people - but all people fall into one of two groups - those who know they are children of God, and those who dont. For some of the people who live here, who pass by the church, they think God is just as distant as Plato did...theyve been beaten down by other people, by the cruelties of life...our job is not to judge them for being different or for making bad choices or living in a way we disapprove of - its to look at them and love them as children of God, and help them know and embrace that identity. Third, Paul tells them about the resurrected Jesus Christ This is where the power lies. Heres the thing - Paul says in Romans that the gospel is the power of God for everyone 4

who believes. Power - Greek word is dunamis which is the root of the word dynamite. In Pauls time, you had tribal or national gods - kind of like how a flag is the symbol for a nation now, the chosen god was a symbol for your tribe or people. You also had specialized gods - Aphrodite, the love goddess; Mars, the god of war, Janus, the god of business and commerce. And to get their attention - you had to suffer before the gods. You had to suffer, by praying long and loud until your voice grew hoarse and your knees ached like fire...you had to suffer, by giving elaborate and expensive sacrifices in the hopes that the god would notice your gift and pay attention to you. But you never knew if you were getting through, and the gods were capricious and easily offended and if they were, watch out. I mean, the Athenians had that statue to an unknown god to cover all the bases - dont want to make one of those gods mad at us even if we dont know who that god is! But in Jesus Christ, God came to suffer before us. And to suffer for us. And Paul tells the Athenians that the Lord Jesus Christ who suffered and died to break the powers of sin and death over us - is resurrected from the dead and is a living reality who gives us his love and forgiveness and peace and healing if we only open our hearts - we dont have to get the gods to open their hearts, we instead just have to open ours to receive the goodness God wishes for us. Worshiping the small g gods is wearying. Those same small g gods are still around today - the idol of love and sex, making us worry and strive to be attractive, making us center our lives around finding and holding onto just the right person....the idol of success, making us base our worth on how much we earn or the job title we hold or what other people think of us...the small g gods take and take and never deliver what they promise. But Jesus does. Promises and provides abundant and everlasting life. Promises and provides rest for the religiously weary. Promises and provides joy and peace that nothing in the universe can take away. Everything we do here, everything, must point to the Lord Jesus. Only he, can save. Only he, can fill our empty places. Finally, one last point - Paul meets them where they are Like Ive said before, Susan and I love living here. The mountains...the ice cream...the farms and orchards...the smell of fresh manure in the morning...and its fascinating, living among the plain people. Ive been trying to learn more about the Amish and River Brethren and Mennonites...enjoyed reading a book about the Amish in our new Book Club.

The Amish represent one vision, one understanding, of how the church is to relate to the world. And that is to separate from a corrupt and fallen world and live apart, as much as possible, in order to preserve ones purity and faith. There is beauty and goodness in those communities of faith - they really take care of one another, when someones barn burns down, they all get together to build another for their neighbor; when someone is sick and cant work, the community comes together and supports the family. But ultimately, they are like island fortresses to keep the world out. The vision is ultimately of a pessimistic one of a corrupt world that cannot be redeemed and the best one can do is to pull back, hunker down and preserve yourself and your family. The other vision, is the church moving towards and into the world where God is already at work. For a Jew, there was nothing more horrifying and corrupt than a place like the Aeropagus - yet Paul stood right there, in the midst of that shrine to pagan idolatry, to share the good news of the resurrected Jesus Christ. For us - we dont have much of a choice - because in 1939, the congregation of Central Presbyterian decided to rebuild the church right here on the square. We cant withdraw from the world - were right in the middle of the action. And Im personally glad for that. And so here Central Presbyterian church stands. And what is our posture towards the world? I love how Central opens its doors to the community. Simple things, like being open during Applefest so people can use the bathrooms. Beautiful things, like being open for prayer when the luminaries are lit during Christmas-time. Delicious things, like the Pork and Sauerkraut dinner next week, when hundreds of people will line up to come in our doors. And I love how Central welcomes people who are our guests. A few weeks back, we had a Wednesday night gathering to eat together and watch a film on the plague of human trafficking, and someone brought a young woman she had just met, said, come to my church tonight, theyll welcome you...and the woman came and you did welcome here and she said, and I quote, This is the first time Ive been to a church where theyve treated me like a human being. We do well at welcoming in people in here - now I suggest we build on that, by moving out there. Heres what I mean. Last Sunday, we had lemonade on the square out there, instead of coffee and snacks, in here. So we change what people see when they drive by - instead of a big beautiful church building, they see actual people. And Don Weber had the great idea of singing hymns, out there, instead of just in here. So we did, and after second service it was warm enough that people had their car windows down and I watched 6

people swivel their heads and smile at us while we sang about the Lords amazing grace. Moving out there...in less than a month, it will be time for the annual Christmas parade. So this year, were going to have a float in the parade...if youd like to help build the float, see Sandy our childrens minister - to be out there as a presence in our community, and have a float with a message of some kind about the Lord Jesus Christ. Moving out there - because we can no longer just expect people to come in here. We have to go meet them as they are, where they are, just like Paul did. And love them as they are so they can come to know the Lord Jesus Christ.