Sermon: Worshipping the Unknown God

Text: Acts 17:22-34

6^th Sunday in Easter (A)

April 27, 2008

Scripture introduction.  In our second reading this morning the Apostle Paul encounters the philosophers and magistrates of the city of Athens, Greece.  Paul had only recently begun his missionary activities in Europe by crossing from Asia over into northern Greece, to the city of Thessalonica.  He founded a church there but encountered resistance that forced him southward in Greece to Beroea.  But soon his opponents from Thessalonica came to stir up trouble there, too.  Out of concern for Paul’s safety, the believers escorted Paul to Athens, while Timothy and Silas remained behind with instructions to follow as soon as possible.

Alone, Paul began to explore this famous city, which, while it had declined in importance from its “golden age” five hundred years before, nevertheless was known as the center for art, philosophy, and science in the Greco-Roman world.  As might be expected of someone raised as a good Jew, Paul was disgusted by the forest of idols he saw in Athens—no matter how beautiful and artistic they might have been.  And he participated in the favorite pursuit of the Athenians—philosophical debate—with persons from two of the most important philosophical schools, the Epicureans and the Stoics.  Some scoffed, suggesting that Paul was simply recycling the ideas of others and pretending to be more educated that he was.  Others accused him of the same crime—teaching foreign religion—for which Socrates had been executed centuries before.  We can’t be sure from the Greek whether Paul was invited or forced to go to the city council—called the Areopagus.  When he arrived he made an eloquent philosophical defense of Christianity and challenged his hearers to become believers.

Sermon.  During the summer after my high school graduation, our family took what was for me the ultimate vacation—the “grand tour” of Europe.  We began in London and then flew to Greece, crossed the Adriatic by ship to Italy and then took a bus the rest of the way through Europe to Paris and then home to Alabama.  As a boy I had been fascinated by Greek and Roman history and mythology, so the time we spent in Athens, Corinth, and Rome were among the highlights of the trip for me.  I will never forget standing on the hilly and rocky outcropping of the Areopagus in Athens one evening and looking eastward toward the Parthenon, which was high upon the Acropolis and illuminated by the setting sun.  You may know that the ancient Greeks, who built the Parthenon, designed it to fit exactly into what mathematicians call a “golden rectangle,” which is among the most aesthetically pleasing shapes to the human eye.  What’s more, these ancient builders had learned by trial and error that to make the fluted columns of the temple look straight, they actually had to make them bulge slightly in the middle.  I had read about all of this before the visit, but nothing could have prepared me for the beauty of what I saw.

The place I was standing, the Areopagus, was probably not the place where Paul made his philosophical arguments to the Athenians.  In even more ancient times the city council had met on that hill, but by Paul’s day the council met nearer the agora, or marketplace, although the council continued to be referred to as the Areopagus.[1]  I didn’t know that at the time, however, so at the same time I was considering the monuments of Athens’ golden age, I also remembered the Apostle Paul, completely alone, but boldly stating the case for Christianity among a very educated and proud people.  One can only imagine what the city of Athens must have looked like in his day.  The temples would have been in good repair—not ruins as they were when I visited.  The book of Acts tells us that there was a Jewish synagogue in Athens—Jews had spread throughout the Mediterranean world—but the synagogue must not have had much influence.  Ancient pagan religion and schools of philosophy had the cultural high ground in the Athens that Paul encountered.  What interests me about our text this morning is how Paul approached this rather difficult missionary situation.  I think there are lessons in it for how we can relate to the culture around us.  And I believe Paul’s line of reasoning may even advance our own faith.

Let me first point out that Paul did not go into the Areopagus thumping his Bible.  While some Athenians may have been familiar with the Hebrew scriptures, that collection of writings would have had little persuasive power for most of the members of the city council.  Instead, Paul chose to work from within the cultural framework of the Athenian elite.  I mentioned earlier the two schools of philosophy that had the most influence in Paul’s day—the Epicureans and the Stoics.  The Epicureans focused on the material things of life.  Epicureans believed that human happiness was centered in bodily and material pleasures.[2]  They did not necessarily deny the existence of a god, or gods, but they believed that the material world had always existed and always would exist and that god, if there was a god, probably had no real plan for the universe and certainly did not intervene in the daily affairs of humans.[3]  Epicureans would have argued it was silly to make a statue of such a god or to make sacrifices to it.

On the other hand, there were the Stoics.  We think of a stoic person as someone who is not affected by pain or pleasure.  But Stoicism involved much more than that.  Here’s how one commentator summarizes that philosophy: “Stoics taught that divine reality, which had many names, such as Reason (Logos), Spirit, or Providence, permeated all of reality. . . .  [For Stoics,] [A]ll things are interconnected by a higher intelligence that providentially guides all things to an intended goal.”[4]  To them human happiness was centered in the soul or spirit, as each person sought to be in harmony with the divine principle that “guided all of life.”[5]  They believed that there had been a creation and that humanity was united in common kinship.[6]  The Stoics also would have viewed idols as silly or quaint because they considered the entire world to be infused with divine power, not just the material contained in the idol.  Their conception of god was abstract and without a form that could be represented in a statue or image.

With this background, let’s see how Paul structured his argument.  First, he complimented the Athenians on their religious impulses—not a bad idea if you’re all by yourself in a different culture.  Rather than tell them of his disgust for their idols, Paul actually mentioned one of the statues, which was dedicated to “the unknown god.”  He said, “That’s the God I am here to announce to you.”  That is, “I’m no proclaimer of foreign gods: you already worship this God.  You just don’t know this God—yet.  This God created everything there is.”  By mentioning God as creator, Paul would have been disagreeing with the Epicureans, but he would have had the Stoics on his side.  And then he made his point about the silliness of idols.  Perhaps gesturing to the glorious Parthenon on the hill behind him, he said that this God does not live in temples made by human hands.  This God, like us, is alive and not made out of gold or silver or stone.  Both the Epicureans and the Stoics would have agreed with that, although for different reasons.  When Paul said that God created all nations from one ancestor, he certainly had in mind the book of Genesis; but the Stoics, who did not know the Hebrew Bible, nevertheless would have agreed with his conclusions.  Then Paul with favor quoted a well-known Stoic assertion about God, “In him we live and move and have our being.”

I think you can see what Paul was doing—using the symbols and beliefs of the culture he encountered to reach the people of that culture.  When he argued with Jews, Paul used the Bible, but in Athens he quoted philosophers.  One is reminded of Paul’s own statement in First Corinthians (9:22):  “I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some.”  Note that although Paul found common ground with his listeners, he did not compromise his message.  For example, Paul did not shrink at the end from announcing Jesus Christ to the Athenians, although at least according to Luke’s account Paul did not actually use Jesus’ name.  Rather, he spoke of Jesus’ resurrection and of resurrection in general.

A few minutes ago, as I summarized the philosophies of the Epicureans and the Stoics, did you hear echoes of some of their beliefs in our own culture?  What about the Epicureans’ search for happiness in pleasure?  What about their belief that God, if God exists, is so remote that we cannot know much about God?  When we hear people say, I’m very spiritual, but I’m not very religious, are we hearing echoes of the Stoic belief that God is in all things but is so abstract as to be impersonal—just a rational principal with which we seek to be in harmony?  When we go out into the world, don’t we (like Paul) encounter fewer and fewer people who have any working knowledge of the stories of the Bible?  Quoting Scripture to contemporary Americans is often to speak a language that they do not know.  But we can follow Paul’s example and speak to them of God’s love and of the salvation won for us in Christ by using the language of our current culture, whether that be science or movies or hip-hop music.

As a final point, I want to suggest that, beyond any practical evangelistic strategy, Paul’s speech is essentially one of hope.  Last week Katherine Whitaker challenged us with her sermon about the questions of life.  As she was preaching, I realized that questions are particularly appropriate for young persons as they are beginning to adopt for themselves the faith that has come down to them from family and church.  But the questions do not stop after we enter fully into adult life.  For all of us there are times when the questions loom very large—when we suffer loss, when our health fails us, when our money runs out, when we have been wronged, or when we feel all alone.  There are those questions that come in waves.  And there are the big questions that we keep with us throughout our whole life, even though we are persons of faith.  How can I know the Bible is true?  Is God really there?  What is the meaning of my life?  When I die, will it make any difference that I lived?

We are not so different from the Athenians, are we?  Ours is an age of questioning and exploration.  That is why we value their ancient culture so highly.  That is why today we still read their philosophies.  Like them, we are fascinated by every new thing that comes along.  Our appetite for new experiences and new knowledge is pretty much unlimited; and it can be distracting, diverting our focus from the things in life that truly matter.  To us who question, for whom all the pieces of the puzzle don’t yet completely fit, to anyone who finds it hard to see God working through the events of our world, Paul affirms that if we will just keep searching—keep questioning—we will find God because, indeed, God is not far from us.  Don’t give up.  God is close, closer than we can imagine.