Ac 17:16-34

5 May 2002

6th Sunday of Easter

“Something New at the Hill of Mars”

            Almost every weekday morning, I’m in the church office from 9 to 12; so if you ever need to get hold of me, that’s a good place to start!  Anyway, this neighborhood is aware of our church carillons, which chime at noon and at 6pm.  Sometimes when the chiming at noon starts, I’ll tell whoever’s working the food pantry that morning that the lunch bell is ringing!  And sometimes I’ll find myself singing the words to the hymn that’s being played—though not very loudly!

            One hymn that I’ve noticed in the rotation is the song, “I Love to Tell the Story.”  It was in the previous Presbyterian hymnal—the red one.  You remember how it goes?

“I love to tell the story,

It will be my theme in glory

To tell the old, old story

Of Jesus and His love.”

            For many in our society, there’s a line in that song that borders on heresy.  “To tell the old, old story…”  The old story?  We’ve heard all that tired junk before—we want something new!  In fact, we’re so enamored with what’s new that we often suffer amnesia.  Who needs a rear view mirror?  Once we pass something, it is to be forgotten.  There’s nothing to be learned from the past!

            I trust you understand that I’m not speaking for myself.  As one who was a history minor in college, I hope I haven’t fallen prey to the attention deficit disorder that our entire country seems to have!  What I’m talking about is the way we Americans worship youth and novelty in the abstract, while at the same time devaluing our flesh-and-blood children by subjecting them to all kinds of terrible things.  But before I go off on too much of a tangent, let me say that today’s reading in Acts 17 reflects something of this same fascination with novelty, with what’s new.

            We pick up the story in the midst of Paul’s second missionary journey—this was the first time he’d ever been on European soil.  He and his companions have barely escaped the clutches of a Thessalonian mob, whipped into a frenzy by some of their enemies.  Members of the church send them to Beroea, where they get a more favorable reception.  That is, at least until certain elements among their Jewish opponents find out where they’ve gone.  So, again threatened by mob violence, Paul is escorted down to Athens, with the condition that Silas and Timothy join him ASAP.

            Thus, we come to verse 16.  On his tour of the city, Paul notices the statues of various gods.  Luke, the writer of Acts, does a good job of setting the scene in Athens, the widely respected cradle of Greek culture, though Paul’s hardly an impressed sightseer!  (He’s not mailing any postcards saying, “Wish you were here!”)  Luke presents him in the midst of a philosophical debate, just as Socrates had commonly done, five centuries earlier.

            He’s engaged by some Epicureans and Stoics, who’ve heard him speaking in the marketplace, in true Athenian fashion.  Some of these philosophers look down on Paul:  by calling him a “babbler,” they’re using a word (spermologo", spermologos) that literally means “seed picker,” a reference to a bird that picks up scraps from the street.[1]  To those sophisticated listeners, the apostle is a poseur, a wannabe who’s pieced together his attempt at a philosophy of life.

            Others, however, see him as the messenger of foreign gods, of strange deities.  By the way, that same charge was leveled against Socrates himself.  Fortunately for Paul, he doesn’t share the fate of Socrates:  no one makes him drink a tasty cup of hemlock!  What does happen, however, is that he gets an offer he can’t refuse:  an invitation to the Areopagus.

            A few words about the Areopagus:  the word literally means “the hill of Ares,” Ares being the Greek god of war.  In my sermon title, I use the Roman name, Mars, because that’s more familiar with most people.  In any event, “Areopagus” can mean either the hill itself or the council that takes its name from the hill.  The council of the Areopagus, by the time of Paul, had lost most of its political authority, but it still was revered as the arbiter of Athenian culture.  Paul, with his unfamiliar teachings, needs to state his case before this body; he needs to pass the test to gain credibility.

            In verse 21, Luke provides this sarcastic tidbit:  “Now all the Athenians and the foreigners living there would spend their time in nothing but telling or hearing something new.”  F. F. Bruce tells us, “The Athenians themselves admitted this; the orator Demosthenes, for example, four hundred years earlier, had reproached them for going about asking if there was any fresh news in a day when Philip of Macedon’s rise to power presented a threat which called for deeds, not words.”[2]

            So here we are again, with the insatiable desire for anything new.  I imagine CNN and Fox News would have loved the people of ancient Athens.  I imagine they’d faithfully tune in to catch the latest camera angle of some plane crash—or maybe the latest speculation on how Britney Spears is getting along with her new boyfriend!

            If Luke’s comments are sarcastic, Paul doesn’t seem to be.  Knowing how he feels about idols, we might expect him to have a sharper tone than what he takes.  But the apostle isn’t combative; he isn’t arrogant.  He strives to find common ground with his Athenian audience.

            Paul takes as his starting point an altar he notices during his tour of the city, one dedicated “to an unknown god” (v. 23).  As he says, the Athenians are “extremely religious,” so much so that they have a practice of erecting altars, even to foreign gods of which they know nothing.  Paul has obviously seen one of these.

            The apostle, in his address to the August assembly of the Areopagus, proclaims his ability to enlighten them—to remove their ignorance of what they worship.  By the way, he’ll touch on that theme of ignorance again at the end of his speech.  Paul’s talking to people who understand philosophy, so he wants to speak their language.

(And on the matter of speaking the language of one’s audience, are you still with me?  Banu warns me about going too deeply into the textual side of my sermons.  I guess my feeling is that if we can get this [raise the Bible] into our minds and into our hearts, we’ll be much better prepared for whatever hand life deals us.  This will last a whole lot longer than any clever comments I come up with!  Still, I understand the value of being relevant!)

Paul tells his audience that the Most High God, the one who created everything, “does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything” (vv. 24-25).  These are points that many Greek philosophers had also made.  Paul’s showing them that they have many areas of agreement.

            In verse 28, he even quotes a couple of Greek writers.  Paul borrows from poetry dedicated to Zeus, the highest Greek god.  From the poet Epimenides:  “They fashioned a tomb for thee, O holy and high one— / The Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies! / But thou art not dead; thou livest and abidest for ever; / For in thee we live and move and have our being.”  And from Aratus:  “In every direction we all have to do with Zeus; for we are also his offspring.”[3]

            By quoting hymns to Zeus, the apostle isn’t recommending that the Athenians continue to put their faith in the old Greek gods.  Rather, he’s acknowledging that they have a partial grasp of the truth, but they need a little help.  They admit that they like new things—well, little do they realize just how truly new is the message of Jesus’ resurrection that Paul brings.

            In fact, it’s so new that the resurrection has begun a new era in world history.  In verse 30, Paul tells them that the raising of Jesus from the dead has become the turning point of history, dividing it into times of ignorance and repentance.  “While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance [for the Greeks, that would include their belief in Zeus and other gods], now he commands all people everywhere to repent [in response to the proclamation of the gospel of Christ].”

            Even though many find Paul’s talk of the resurrection to be humorous, there are a few who take him seriously.  For the most part, the Athenians don’t seem to realize that they literally have a live one in their midst.  They don’t realize that Paul’s message is about a God who continually makes things new.  The God in the resurrected one, Jesus Christ, is the one for whom they grope in ignorance, “though indeed,” Paul tells them, this God “is not far from each one of us” (v. 27).

            I wonder, how much better would we fare with “a live one” like the apostle Paul in our midst?  Would we recognize the value of what he’s telling them?  Would we dismiss him as some off-the-wall character who, with his crazy talk of Jesus and resurrection, shows just how irrelevant he is?  After all, the Greek god Apollo said, “Once a man dies and the earth drinks up his blood, there is no resurrection.”[4]  How can we find any hope in what this fellow Paul is saying?

            Of course, we’re not ancient Athenians, so we’re not terribly swayed by something supposedly said by Apollo.  But we are swayed!  Something I’ve noticed at times among us in this congregation is a sense of…almost despair—of resignation to our fate.  It’s the sense that the church is going to die, and there’s nothing we can do about it.  This kind of despair—this kind of resignation—puts a stranglehold on the faith and love of a congregation; it leads to the opposite of faith and love.  It can lead to something that Paul elsewhere warns against:  “If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another” (Ga 5:15).

            I don’t think Paul’s referring to folks who imagine that they’re Hannibal Lecter!  However, people who gripe and tear into others do fit the description.  But it doesn’t have to be that way.  We don’t have to be the people who let Westminster die.  We can be a church in which those seeking Jesus Christ can find him, instead of one that drives people away.  We can be a church that truly extends the compassion of Christ into our community and into our world.

There’s one in our midst who’s more truly “a live one” than the apostle Paul.  Jesus Christ “is not far from each one of us.”  “I love to tell the story, / It will be my theme in glory / To tell the old, old story / Of Jesus and His love.”  That’s the old story God wants us to tell in our new century.

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