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Acts 17:16-34
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Welcome to the commons cast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to commons.church for more information. Welcome.
Speaker 1:If we haven't met, I haven't been around. My name is Jerry. I'm part of the team here, and I'm back. And thanks for everyone for creating some space for me to get away for a few weeks, to have some vacation, and then also do some time prepping and getting ready for the fall. This is really one of my favorite times of the year.
Speaker 1:The new journals have arrived. They will be available in three weeks for everyone, and this is just a really fun part of the season starting to get to see a lot of our ideas come to life over the next few weeks. That said, I'm not actually back teaching this morning. I will be next week, but today we have the newest member of our team here, Yelena Pakmovo with us. And Yelena joined us midsummer, but her and her partner Dennis have actually been around the community at Commons for most of this year.
Speaker 1:It's funny. This spring, I got an email from a couple, and they were new to the community, and they wanted to grab a coffee and learn a little bit more about Commons and get to know me. And so I met with them. We meet up at a coffee shop, and I learned about Dennis and the grad work that he's doing at U of C. And I hear about Yelena and the two graduate degrees she has from Regent and all this experience she has in ministry in church.
Speaker 1:And this is about a week after I had announced that Joel Braun was gonna be leaving our team and heading on to a new project in his life. And so we have this coffee and we chat. And as we're about to leave, I asked, listen, you've got all this education, you've got all this experience, are you looking for a role in ministry somewhere? And Yelena says, absolutely. I just haven't found the right one yet.
Speaker 1:And I said, well, have I got a job for you? And here we are a couple months later. It was a little longer than that, but kidding aside, I really am excited about having Yelena's voice on our team here. Yelena is going to be heading up all of our off Sunday gathering points. That's things like dinner parties and home groups and weekend university learning opportunities.
Speaker 1:But more than that, she brings yet another unique and perspective and voice to our community here at the church. And I think you're really going to enjoy the chance to get to know her and even this chance to listen to her briefly today. So, Yelena, it's all you.
Speaker 2:Good morning. My name is Yelena, and I'm really excited to be here at Commons and to get to know you and share a bit of my story as we go. And my focus here will be, as Jeremy said, on supporting different ways we do community here. Our home groups, our dinner parties, our learning and serving opportunities. So thanks again.
Speaker 2:I feel quite welcomed and excited to start. So this summer we've been making our way through the book of Acts, learning about the stories of the early church and how God was forming them into a distinctly Jesus centred community. And how the way of life and message of that community challenged both the Jewish understanding of the world and the Greek Roman one. So last week we saw how the good news impacted two women representing the opposite ends of a societal spectrum, and how it also changed the life of a jailer while calling the local authorities to accountability. Today we'll see how Paul engages the Greek intellectuals and gets to publicly talk about his faith in their language.
Speaker 2:So would you join me in prayer, and then we'll begin. Our God, full of grace and love, we believe that your spirit inspired the story we're looking at today, and we ask you to meet us through it, to draw us into it in a way that would enlarge our imagination and our hearts. Lord, make us attentive to your work in our lives, and give us grace to move in step with you. In the name of the risen Jesus, we pray. Amen.
Speaker 2:Today is a story about Paul in Athens. I happened to be in Athens a few years ago for a conference on Evangelical Christianity and Eastern Orthodoxy. On our free day, we went to the local market, got some fresh bread and cheese and sampled all kinds of olives, and then we felt ready to explore the city and see what this cradle of the Western civilisation is about. So, the place is fascinating. I wanted to touch every little rock there and take pictures of everything.
Speaker 2:But my favourite part was seeing the city from the top of Mars Hill, or Areopagus in Greek. It is an elevated rocky outcrop where the city council used to meet. So that council functioned as a major court, and its members were considered the guardians of the Athenian traditions. So when you get up that hill today, you get an amazing view of Athens. The whole city is below you.
Speaker 2:You look down and you see the marketplace where Paul used to talk to people. And when you look up, you see the Acropolis, the highest point of the city, and its religious centre, crowned with the Parthenon. A huge temple dedicated to the city's patron, goddess Athena. And standing on that hill, I was struck by how visually the layout of the ancient city communicated what the city believed about the world. The gods were on the top, the city, with its ordinary life, was at the bottom, and the high court that was in charge in keeping harmony between the two was right in the middle, kind of mediating between the gods and the people.
Speaker 2:Today, for us, it's hard to imagine what the worship of Zeus or Athena looked like, and how all those ancient temples and altars functioned. We walk around and see cultural artifacts, but when Paul walked around, he saw a city submerged in idols. And this is where we pick up our story today in Acts chapter 17 verse 16. When Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. So he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and God fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there.
Speaker 2:A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to debate with him. Some of them asked, What is this babbler trying to say? Others remarked, He seems to be advocating foreign gods. They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, May we know what this new teaching is that you're presenting?
Speaker 2:You're bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we would like to know what they mean. All the Athenians and the foreigners who live there spend their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas. According to Pliny, a first century Roman historian, between Athens and three other cities in proximity, there were about 73,000 statues of different deities. Compare it with the population of Athens in the area, which was between 10,030. Other archaeological and literary sources tell us that people of Athens did not only worshipped gods proper Zeus, Athena, Poseidon, Apollo, and others, but they also personified and worshipped abstract concepts that accompanied those gods.
Speaker 2:There were altars for order, wisdom, virtue, mercy, freedom, and the list goes on. Also, were cults dedicated to heroes. And of course, there was the emperor's cult. So the past and the current emperors were deified and had their own statues on altars in the city. The inscription on the statue of Augustus, for instance, read, Augustus, saviour and benefactor.
Speaker 2:So political decisions required consulting the gods and listening to the oracles. And people had household gods and even travel sized images that they could carry around with them. Various deities were featured in jewellery design and even on coins. So if you think of it, religion in Athens was flowing from the highest point of the city right into people's homes and even their purses and jewellery boxes. It encompassed all of life, which is quite different from how we experience religion today.
Speaker 2:For us, it is this individualised and private pursuit, But in Paul's days, it was very much part of public life and society. So Paul gets distressed when he sees how full of idols the city was. The Greek word here carries the idea of a lush forest, the jungle of visual images. And this jungle would be horrifying for any Jew who would look at those things and hear the commandments ringing in their ears. I am the Lord your God.
Speaker 2:You shall have no other gods in my presence. You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything. You see, in Paul's world, the only true image of God in creation was human beings. There's what God shows who God is. In this world, it's all statues, carvings, paintings, altars.
Speaker 2:According to anti Wright, Paul has two reasons for this strong reaction against idolatry. First is his understanding of humanity. Since a human being is the only creature designed to reflect the creator, idolatry not only diminishes God, it diminishes also those who actually do bear God's image. Another reason for Paul is his understanding of Christ. Paul believes that there had come at last a truly human being, the image of the invisible God, whose aim is precisely to rehumanize other humans and to reestablish them in the way they were supposed to be.
Speaker 2:So for Paul, idolatry makes people less human because it distorts both God's original design for them and its fulfilment in Jesus. But now he needs to find ways to talk about it to people who see the world completely differently. The research in cross cultural communication identifies four stages of successful communication motivation, knowledge, strategy and action. But really, those principles apply to any communication. So motivation refers to what moves you to engage those who come from a different context.
Speaker 2:Knowledge is about how well you understand that context. Interestingly enough, knowledge is also closely connected with your awareness of your own culture and how it has shaped you. Intercultural researcher Edward Hall says, Culture hides much more than it reveals. And strangely, it hides itself more effectively from its own participants. So the real job is to know your own story and where your own biases might show up.
Speaker 2:So strategy is about putting your observations into a plan and action is what pulls it all together. It's about being effective and respectful in your communication while remaining true to who you are. So what is Paul's motivation here? It's that Christ has completely changed his own world. After the Damascus Road experience, Paul had to deconstruct and reframe everything he held true in light of Christ.
Speaker 2:Even his own vacation. And by the time Paul gets to Athens, he understands his own story really well and he has developed a modus operandi for sharing it. But he quickly realises in Athens he needs to learn first. So he looks around and he changes his pattern. He steps out of the synagogue and heads to the marketplace because this is where the conversation happened.
Speaker 2:It was a massive public space that functioned both as a philosophical forum and the market. And of course it had lots of altars and images, and it was always bustling with the latest ideas and gossip. Just imagine Facebook happening in real space. Instead of scrolling down the page, you would actually need to go there every day, otherwise you'll miss out on things and then you'll need to walk from place to place to hear what people are talking about. So Paul spends his days there asking questions and telling people of Jesus and his resurrection.
Speaker 2:Then the philosophers take note of this newcomer and began to debate with him. When we hear philosophy, we immediately think of this remote academic discipline that is mostly concerned with somebody else's intellectual reflections on somebody else's intellectual reflections. But this was not the case in Paul's days. The ancient philosophy was a mode of existing in the world which had to be practised at each instant. So at that point, the Epicureans and the Stoics were the two main philosophical camps, and both have been around for over three hundred years.
Speaker 2:So the Epicureans believed that gods were as far removed from the world as possible. They were not concerned with people, absolutely not interested. And the world was just a result of random collision of particles. And when people died, they just disintegrated back into those small particles, and there was just no point to fear death. The purpose of life for them was to avoid pain and seek pleasure by cultivating an undisturbed mind.
Speaker 2:The Stoics were pantheists who believed that at the core of the world was this divine fiery substance that animated both humans and objects. And therefore, everything in the world was divine. And since the whole world was divine, there was nothing really wrong with it. If you do not like something about it, well, you just need to rise up above it. So, for them, the goal of life was to live in harmony with the divine through cultivation of wisdom and virtue.
Speaker 2:Stoics also believed that history was cyclical and that the fiery spirit would eventually turn the whole world into one massive fire, and then the history would repeat itself exactly the same, and the fiery spirit would be renewed. So both systems believed that the divine was just one part of the existing world order. And they did not have any concept of a bodily life after death because it was just not present in Greek thought or religion. So both camps rejected the resurrection, they just didn't believe in it. So when they heard Paul and his message, they couldn't figure out what he was talking about, and they quickly labelled him a babbler.
Speaker 2:It was a derogatory word for someone who doesn't really know much but just picks up some scraps of knowledge here and there and does not have a coherent philosophical system that existed for three hundred years, let's say. So I guess if you think of Paul's encounter with those philosophers and their reaction and his reaction, I think one question for us here is what is the place of learning in our communication? How often do we act as these philosophers and not listen carefully enough? And what does it take for us to keep telling our story even when we're not being heard? So the story of Christ emerges in this pluralistic and culturally diverse society, but this is where Jesus wants to be, and this is where we find ourselves in too, regardless of where we come from.
Speaker 2:And of course, in communication, cultural differences do have their place. For example, I come from a high context culture with a strong communal identity, which means when talking to somebody, what's being said will matter to me just as much as what's being communicated indirectly. And my communal identity will influence the way I make decisions. I prefer to get as much input from everyone who will be affected by a decision. But the thing is, you do not need to read a book on cross cultural communication to learn these things about me.
Speaker 2:They will surface when we start talking and doing life together. The truth is, we're all doing cross cultural communication every day in our relationship with people, in our friendships, in our families. And the question is, are we paying attention? Are we allowing the stories to emerge? So, now that Paul has talked to everyone and learned about the norms of the city, he gets to defend his ideas publicly in the Areopagus.
Speaker 2:And his communication strategy is to use this existing platform. Some scholars believe that Paul is actually on trial here and that Luke wants to portray him as this new Socrates who also dialogued with people in the marketplace and charged with introducing new deities and tried in the Areopagus. But why would a bunch of philosophers want to give Paul a court hearing? In his book Paul and the Faithfulness of God, A. T.
Speaker 2:Wright describes the nature of religion in the Roman Empire using the concept of Pax Deorum, Latin for the peace of the gods. Wright says, The people and their deities had to maintain a harmonious relationship, and anything that went wrong in the personal or civic life had to be analyzed, diagnosed, and treated with the appropriate religious ceremony sacrifice, prayer, the fulfilling of oath, or whatever. Much better though was to get the religious observance right in the first place, and thus ensure that all would be well. According to Pax Durum, the gods will watch over the city and give it prosperity in return for the proper performance of the religious rites. So religion was meant to bind the gods and the city together.
Speaker 2:And the gods were part of the overall social fabric. This is how life functioned. And the introduction of any new deity into the mix could potentially ruin this harmony. A first century historian, Josephus, writes that the penalty decreed for anyone who introduces a foreign god to Athens was death. If Paul wanted to introduce a new deity, he had to follow the existing protocol.
Speaker 2:The Areopagus had to decide if the new cult was desirable, if there was a place for a new temple, and if the founder had enough money to host an annual festival for the deity. So the philosophers bring Paul to those who had the power to judge his case. And Paul is going to jump right into the middle of it. They want him to defend his Sure, he's going to defend his cult. And the big speech is Paul's opportunity to put his learning and his strategy into action and create this multilayered response to this unbelievably multi layered context.
Speaker 2:So his goal is to tell his listeners about a radically different understanding of God, but do it in such a way that they would hear him. And Paul is strategic about the use of his knowledge of the Athenian culture and points of contact between God's vision for the world and their world view. So he builds an argument that starts from what he shares with the Athenians. And he's going to use the language that he picked up around Athens. So he begins by saying, I see something in your culture.
Speaker 2:People of Athens, I see that in every way you are very religious. The word can also be translated as superstitious, but I would take Paul at face value here. I think he sincerely commends the Athenians for taking their beliefs seriously to the point of making an altar to an unknown god. And this god is whom Paul now is going to introduce to them. And his first point of connection is that his god is not actually new to them.
Speaker 2:Scholars believe that an altar with such an inscription could have existed, because there were similar inscriptions found in the plural, altar to the unknown gods. And it's also possible that Paul saw an altar to the unknown gods and decided to use it in the singular god to make his point. Interestingly, Luke already told us that there was a synagogue in the city, which means that the god of Israel has already been part of the city's life. And I think this can be a good reminder for us to know that God is already at work in those places where He takes us, and we do not need to feel the pressure of making God happen. Whenever we are invited to share a story, including our story of faith, we are not stepping into an empty space.
Speaker 2:God is already there. Have you ever been in conversation with somebody trying to create something that was not yours to create from the very beginning? A couple of months ago, I reconnected with an old friend from whom I hadn't heard in a while. I was feeling pretty down that day, but I thought I need to go into that conversation, trying to bring some encouragement and support. And a few minutes into this conversation I realized that actually it was I who needed support and affirmation, and that my friend was much closer to God than I thought, and that God had been working in her life all this time, I was not part of it.
Speaker 2:And then it was my turn to be encouraged. So going back to Paul, with this charge of introducing foreign deities off the table, this is not a new god, Paul now responds to the philosophers. He says that the God who has made the whole cosmos is the master of everything that exists and is the source of everyone's life. Paul does not talk about God as one element of this existing world order. Quite the opposite.
Speaker 2:Everything that exists is created, sustained, and finds its meaning in God. The line between creation and the creator is not blurred. And the cosmos for Paul is not divine on its own as it was for the Stoics. And Paul's vision of a caring God would also challenge the Epicureans with their detached deities and the world of randomly colliding particles. So having made the point that there is only one creator who is sovereign over the universe, Paul now talks about God's relationship with people.
Speaker 2:For Paul, God is the author of history. History is not cyclical. It does not serve the purpose of divine self renewal through burning up the world. It is linear, and God is acting in history, drawing people to himself. Also, God's vision for people involves all nations.
Speaker 2:It starts with one person and then expands to embrace the whole of human race. Paul introduces a deeply Jewish understanding of God's relationship with people here, but in a language that makes sense to his listeners. He does not mention any names, but any Jew would immediately recognize the allusions to Genesis, and any Greek would recognize their own poet when Paul says, In him we live and move and have our being. This is like Paul quoting a song that everybody knows, and it's Paul's way of finding touch points between his story and their stories. So by now, everything Paul has said is subverting this idea of keeping peace with the gods through religious activities.
Speaker 2:First he says, there are no other gods. There's just one. Full stop. Second, he says, the nature of relationship between this god and people is not transactional. It's all grace.
Speaker 2:Full stop. And finally, he says that God is deeply involved in the life of every nation, and city, and person, and not for anything we can give in return, but because God wants to be with us. Full stop. So now Paul concludes his speech, but by making another connection. He reframes a Greek poem that calls people the children of Zeus.
Speaker 2:Paul says, You know what? Your poet gets it right. People do belong in God's family, but human made images of God do not properly reflect this relationship. You end up creating beautiful but lifeless things, and then you bind yourself to them believing it's going to bring peace to the city and make a difference in your life. But what makes all the difference is the death and resurrection of one man, Jesus, who in his body has forever bound people with God and established true peace.
Speaker 2:From now on, says Paul, everyone, all people, everywhere live in the new world, And there is a new king who is also the judge in the full Hebraic sense of the word. Someone who will make the world right and restore shalom, the true peace and harmony that the Athenians have been seeking. So when Paul finishes his speech, the tables are turned. While the city council thought they were there to decide if Paul's god would make a welcomed addition to their pantheon, Paul welcomed them into the story of his God. A Quaker author and educator, Parker Palmer, said, The power of a truly lived life or a truly learned mind is not a power to be sought or contrived.
Speaker 2:It comes only as we let go of what we possess and find ourselves possessed by a truth greater than our own. And I think it's a good description of what Paul is doing here. He invites the intellectuals and the magistrates and all who heard him to find themselves in a larger story. And Luke tells us that some did. So to quickly recap here, Paul comes to a new city with a different culture.
Speaker 2:He's motivated to tell them about Jesus because Jesus has turned his life upside down. Paul starts using his normal strategies, but then he quickly realizes that he needs to do some learning before he speaks. So then he discovers this vibrant philosophical community that likes to debate and engage ideas. And finally he uses the existing structures for communication and builds an argument from the point of shared connections. Paul uses the conventions of Greek rhetoric, but his big speech is very much inviting dialogue.
Speaker 2:It is not a speech to end the debate, it's designed to build a conversation. Paul employs the existing platforms to present his ideas, but the real centre of the story is that he does what he does to engender a conversation and embed himself in this community. He develops good apologetics because he thinks that good apologetics will help his listeners hear him. They like ideas? Fine.
Speaker 2:Relationships can be built around ideas. So what Paul is doing here, he is building and investing in those shared connections. And this is a really meaningful part for us as humans. We're never going to change anybody or influence anybody just by our rhetoric or our theology or our ideas or philosophy. We will not change the world by one brilliant argument.
Speaker 2:But what we're going to do is to influence one person by getting to know their story. And thinking back to my own experience of coming to faith, I do not remember theological arguments. I remember being 17 and walking into a Russian Orthodox Church because for some reason I felt that I needed more God in my life and that was the only church I knew. So with my minimal understanding of Christianity, I thought that the way to get to God was by being baptised through the right ritual. So I walked in, got baptized, and then walked out thinking, great, now I'm in.
Speaker 2:And a few months later, I realized that I was in for so much more. I made friends with some missionaries, found communities through a student bible study group, and then joined a church that preached in Korean, with translation into Russian, talking about God's vision for all nations. And the experience of relationships within that community made faith real to me. I wanted to know God, but I couldn't do it without people who already knew God and who wanted to know my story. And that is why Paul did not only explain the good news to people, he invested in relationships, and he helped people become communities that could live this good news out.
Speaker 2:Because an authentic Christian community will always reflect, even if imperfectly, the one who is holding it together. And when people like me experience this community, they go, this is who God is. Let's pray together. Lord, thank you for what you do in our lives and how you shape and hold our stories. We thank you that you choose to reveal yourself in people and communities, and give us wisdom to know how we can be Christ to each other.
Speaker 2:We ask you to go ahead of us into everything that this week will bring, and help us see where you are already at work, waiting for us to show up and be present. And we pray with us in the powerful name of the risen Jesus. Amen.