6th Sunday of Easter

 

Acts:17:22-31

This is the last time you will get to hear from me during the Easter season, as next week is morning prayer and you will get another rousing sermon from Rev instead.  So I realized I would be remiss if I didn’t take at least some time with the other major voice of the Easter season, the Book of Acts.  I don’t know if you noticed, but for the last 6 weeks our First Lesson instead of coming from the Old Testament as it does the rest of the year, comes from the book of Acts.  Which is wonderful little book wedged between the end of the Gospels and the start of Paul’s letters in the New Testament that tells the story of what happens to the disciples after Jesus’s death, resurrection and ascension.  It follows the stories of several of them, mostly Peter and Paul as they travel around spreading the good news of Jesus and founding the first Christian communities.  And it is one of my favorite books in the entire bible, not only because it is easy to read and filled with highly entertaining and exciting stories, but also because since it tells the story of the very first evangelists, it also serves as an excellent guidebook for anyone seeking to spread the good news in our time as well.

And so today we got to hear a story about Paul preaching in Athens.  And just to give you a little background, Paul has been traveling around to all these small towns in Greece starting churches and sharing the good news, but after running into some trouble, as Paul tends to do, he decides to take refuge in Athens.  Now Athens is a very different kind of place than these small towns and cities where he has been in recently.  Athens was the cosmopolitan center of learning, culture, philosophy and art for the entire Roman world and quite possibly the richest city in the world at the time as well.  As such, Athens was a great pluralistic soup of people from all over the known world.  It had temples and houses of worship representing every religious system and cult imaginable as well as dozens of universities and hundreds professional philosophers representing every possible school of thought.

So Paul arrives and as usual takes up residence in the synagogue and the market of the Jewish quarter preaching to the Jews living in Athens about the how Jesus is the expected Messiah, but this time something odd happens.  Paul starts to attract attention from non-Jews interested in his message.  Eventually he gets invited to come speak in the Areopagus, the central town square for learning and intellectual debate where according to Acts the people of the city “spent their time in nothing but hearing or telling something new.”  And what we hear in our lesson today is Paul’s speech to the people.

Now Athens was a city with an incredible depth of spirituality and yearning, but no direction.  They had idols and statues of gold and stone to every conceivable god and goddess, cults for every profession and athletic pursuit, temples dedicated to mythic heroes, kings, and political leaders.   As Paul traveled the city inspecting the shrines and temples, he even found one dedicated to an unknown god.  So desperate were the people for a meaningful connection to the divine, they were willing to worship even the unknown in hopes of finding of spiritual truth.  All in search of something real.  Yet none of these gods could satisfy.  For all their learning, and power and riches, they were still left groping blindly for divine truth.

Is any of this starting to sound familiar?  Do you ever think that we might be living in a world today that is strikingly similar to what Paul found in ancient Athens?

Not unlike Paul’s Athens, there is no shortage of things in our American life to draw our time, attention, money and devotion.  You can buy a product or self help routine claiming to cure almost any ill or fix any problem.  The largest and most expensive public buildings in almost any American city are in fact almost always sports arenas.  And I won’t even get started on how cult-like our political party system is becoming in this country.

Yet beneath this glossy surface there is also a much deeper yearning.  A real and genuine hunger for a true connection with the divine and belonging in a meaningful community.

According to the most recent pew studies, 85% of Michiganders believe in God or some sort of spiritual presence beyond the natural world.  Yet only 61% percent are affiliated with any sort of faith community and only 48% attend religious services even a few times a year.  There is a distinctive disconnect between what we believe, what we hope for, what we spiritually desire in this country and what we are actually finding to believe in. 

And so it incumbent upon us, Christians of good faith, to engage in our sacred calling to help bridge that gap.  But realistically, that is unlikely to happen if we stayed locked within the 4 walls of this building.

And so instead perhaps we should take some advice from the people who really know how to do this, from the foremost of the great apostles Paul & Peter.  When Paul taught in the synagogue, speaking to Jews, he taught from ancient scripture using their shared religious tradition to argue that Jesus was the Messiah (whom they understood and were expecting) but when he stepped out onto the public stage of the Areopagus he changed is tactic entirely.  Dropping the religious jargon and instead meeting the people through their own experience and speaking of a God present in all times and places who is never far away from those who seek Him.  He knows he needs to start with a very basics to engage with this wider audience.

But perhaps our best guidance today comes from our 2^nd lesson, where the apostle Peter gives similar advice to “always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands an accounting of the hope that is in you, yet to do so with gentleness and reverence.  And live a holy life so that those who revile you may be put to shame by your conduct”.  Basically to be ready to share the hope and passion you have in Christ in kindness and love and to live out your faith in the way you conduct yourself every day.  Perhaps so that as the old songs says “they will know we are Christians by our love”

And this is perhaps the most powerful witness we can offer to the world today.  Because the world is pretty cynical right now and perhaps rightly so.  Christians and the institutional church don’t honestly always have the cleanest track record when it comes to representing Jesus’s message of redeeming love. 

But the truth of the gospel lingers despite our past and present sins.  And the world is still hungry for hope.  Still searching and yearning for real connection to God of love who redeems the world.  And it still so desperate want to hear the good news if only we are bold enough to speak it.  Amen.