(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “To an unknown god”, originally shared on May 17, 2023. It was the 264th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
We live in a culture that worships many
gods. How do we proclaim the good news of new life in the one true God to a
culture that values tolerance above all else? Today, we’re going to find out.
Sally and I and our son James went to the
Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino on Mother’s
Day. We went to their newly redecorated and enlarged The Huntington’s Rose
Garden Tea Room for high tea.
As we walked back to the parking lot, we passed
the North Vista, a broad lawn surrounded by Italian sculptures.
It wasn’t ancient Athens, but it reminded me
of the First Lesson for that morning, read in churches all over the world. The
Apostle Paul had been taken to the Areopagus, to the high court in Athens, so
that the court might hear what he had been preaching in synagogues and debating
with philosophers.
The hearing took place in the middle of the
Temple and cultural district of Athens, surrounded by statues and altars, and
Paul begins by making a local connection, in Acts 17:22-23,
22Then 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.
How do we connect
with non-Christian people in our day?
Paul had seen
temples to many gods. He had seen an altar dedicated “To an unknown god” in
case, you know, they had missed somebody. 😊
Athens was a city in
the country of Greece. It still is, but back then Greece was part of the Roman
Empire.
The Romans also had
many gods, and many of them had been based on the Greek’s gods.
The Roman Empire
couldn’t care less what god or gods their subjected peoples believed in as long
as they believed that all other people’s beliefs were just as true as their own,
not unlike expectations in our own culture today. The Romans needed peace
within their empire.
Jews and the new
Christian movement believed that there was only one God and that made them a
threat. Therefore, Paul’s words were being listened to very carefully, and he
begins very carefully.
He starts by
describing Jesus as the god they didn’t know, but very quickly moves on to
the proclamation of Creation by the one true God, the God who created
the world and everything in it. He contrasts the one God with their many gods,
in verses 24-25.
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.
Paul speaks directly, saying that the gods
are created by human beings. God is the Creator of all things. God needs
nothing from human beings, but instead places everything in the cosmos under the stewardship of human hands.
Paul carries the distinction
even further by stating the meaning of God’s Creation, with another
local connection, in verses 26-28
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. 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.’
We are finite
beings, so that we might be drawn to the Infinite. We were made for a living
relationship with God, so that we might be restless until we receive it. We are
the offspring of God; and we long for connection with God.
Finally, Paul brings
the message home with the good news of God in the resurrection of Jesus
Christ. God is alive, and God calls all people to receive eternal life as a
gift in Jesus Christ. in verses 29-31,
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.”
Paul proclaims that God calls all people to
repent, to receive forgiveness, and to turn to new life.
What can we learn from Paul?
Paul begins by saying, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every
way.”
In our own culture,
many are describing themselves as “spiritual, but not religious.”
There are many
similarities between being “extremely religious” as Paul meant it and being
“spiritual, but not religious” as people mean it today.
The most important is
that whether people worship many gods, or that their god is in fact themselves,
they have a god.
Furthermore, whatever
we put at the center of our lives and turn to in times of need is, in fact, as sixteenth
century Church reformer Martin Luther points out, our true god.
The Christian faith,
in contrast, is built on the belief that God choses us. We see it in the cross.
It’s the only way that sinners can be reconciled to God.
Paul finds familiar
elements in Greek culture and religion and re-forms them into bridges of
meaning from the Christian faith.
What are some of the
gods that people have chosen today, and what cultural connections can we make from
them to the good news of the reconciliation to God by Jesus’ death for us on
the cross? Here are five of them:
First is the
god of the supreme self. Self-help books are a huge market in the United
States. For many a radical kind individualism has contributed to what has been
called our true religion: Moralistic, Therapeutic,
Deism, i.e. Moralistic,
because the emphasis is on being a good person who goes to heaven because they
are a good enough person, Therapeutic because it emphasizes experiences,
particularly feelings, that help me be me, and Deism because it embodies
the belief that God exists but is not particularly involved in our lives,
especially when we don’t want God to be involved.
How do we build a bridge made of common
values? By naming it for what it is and reaching people with the gospel at a
point of their felt need. By forming worship services that allow for the
transcendent. And by inviting people to empty themselves and open themselves to
God.
Second is the
god of professional sports. Cultures once were known by their churches and
temples of worship, then by their great universities, then by their centers for
the arts, then by their large commercial centers, then for their entertainment
venues, now a city is known for their sports complexes. Professional teams are
valued in the billions of dollars. Young people dream the dream of living in that
light. Youth sports have been pulling young families from churches for decades.
How do we build a
bridge made of common values? Through the Christian witness of professional athletes,
by offering the Christian life of love for one another and service toward others
in response to the love of God as a superior alternative for defining what life
is all about.
Third is the
god of my political party. The elevation of my political views into something where
any disagreement with them is evil and any dissent from them is a form of heresy.
Social media has greatly contributed to siloed lives. Many worship the symbols
of their nation. They describe their country’s institutions as “sacred” and all
their party’s leaders and history as being very good.
How do we build a
bridge made of common values? Paul was a Roman citizen and was proud of it; he
called for support of the just actions of the empire and for the good that it
did. Martin Luther wrote of his two-kingdom theology, that God rules through
the Church and through the governments of this world. He pointed out that both
should be held accountable for doing God’s will to promote the good of all
people. The blending of Church and State into a “civil religion” is neither. We
can be Christian communities that embody God’s love, focus on what binds us
together in Jesus Christ and not on what divides us, and by being open to the
primacy of the power of the Holy Spirit leading us forward.
Fourth is the
god of science. People will sometimes say, “I am a scientist!” in a superior and
dismissive tone that is expected to end all discussion about religion. Yet
there are people throughout history who have been Christians and who were
distinguished scientists. “Science” is a universally accepted method for
knowing things that can be measured that leads to building things. The outcome
of science has been freedom from superstition, higher standards of living, extended
periods of health and longer life-expectancy, greater convenience, and
increased security. It has also led to climate change, overpopulation, weapons
of mass destruction, and the alienation of humanity from its Creator and from
itself.
How do we build a
bridge made of common values? By pointing out that our understanding of science
is based on the belief that there are laws that consistently govern the cosmos,
that science and Christianity are different ways of seeing the same thing, that
the Bible seeks primarily to answer the “Why?” questions and science the “How?”
questions, and that both science and Christianity can be used to destroy and
both must be kept in check by a divine authority outside of themselves.
Fifth, is the
God of relativism. People will say that all beliefs point to the same God, or
that there is no truth except how you chose to define it. Some will say that
all religions are true only relative to the way we are brought up, which is
another way of saying that none of them are.
How do we build a
bridge made of common values? By acknowledging diversity without concluding
that there is no truth. As a president of the World Parliament of Religions
once said, our task is not to find a way to say that we are all the same, but
to find a way to recognize our rival truth claims without killing each other.
Finally, how do we
make known the God who has made God’s self known to us in Jesus Christ?
We don’t. God is
already knocking on the door of every heart. We just name the Name.
We all have a story to tell. It’s called,
“How I became a Christian” or “Why I remain a Christian.” We all have a
question to ask. It’s “Have you heard about Jesus?”
We build paths to
discipleship in our Churches that are made to bring people from zero to faith.
They are paths that are already present in Jesus, who is the Way.
We find cultural
bridges to people without compromising any of the truth we have in Jesus, who is
the Truth.
We pray about it and
ask God how he has called, equipped, and sent us to be his ambassadors to the
world to proclaim the new life in Jesus, who is the Life.
The Christian communities
that are built are not built on our own efforts or strength, but on the work of
the Holy Spirit, already out there.
We just point to
that which people already know, at some level, is
within them and announce the good news that is Jesus. There is no other.
There are many people outside the Christian
faith, but no one exists outside of the love of God. How do we build bridges to
them? How do we proclaim the singular “unknown” God who has been made known in
Jesus Christ?
Paul shows the way by showing us how God works
through him, in 1 Corinthians 9:22b,
I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some.
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