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Sixth Sunday of Easter

Acts 17
22 Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.
24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’[b] As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’[c]
29 “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”


A famous Cretan once said “all cretans are liars.” But was he telling the truth?

Now your head is spinning. If he was lying when he said all Cretans are liars, then perhaps Cretans aren’t liars after all. If he was telling the truth when he said all Cretans are liars, then how can such a candid Cretan be labelled a liar. See the problem?

I know, this is too much for 11.30 on a Sunday morning. But it’s not my fault. The passage that Taye read for us contains a direct quote from the philosopher-poet Epimenides. And in the same poem he creates the Epimenides Paradox, the problem of those lying Cretans.

Yes, you are not hearing things. In the same poem that that Epimenides says ‘for in him we live and move and have our being,’ he also gives us his paradox, the Cretan calling all Cretans liars. Odd.

But the author of the Acts of the Apostles is not done with this particular line of thinking, because he quotes another classical Greek poet—this time Aratus—when he says ‘we are his offspring.’ This one might be more interesting, since the ‘he’ in the line ‘we are his offspring’ is Zeus. Or Apollo, if you are more Roman than Greek this morning.

So Paul has accepted an invitation to visit the Areopagus in Athens—literally the hill of Ares—to discuss his particular philosophy in the very place where philosophers gather to talk philosophy. First Paul was arguing with some—Stoics and Epicureans—and the next thing they are asking to learn more. So off to hill of Ares they go—Mar’s Hill for you Romans—and the conversation begins.

Paul delivers a sermon that may contain the most clever bit of contextual theology in the Bible, and on that very spot some were saved. But that would be jumping ahead. First, Paul has been looking around. Discouraged, we learn, by a city full of idols, until he sees something. We’ll let Paul tell the story:

“People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.”

At first glance it seems like Paul has lost his copy of Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” but that may not be the case. I think he called them ignorant in the best possible meaning of the word. ‘You don’t know? Then let me tell you.’ You are ignorant of this thing you treasure, so let me fill you in.

Before I continue with this fine sermon (Paul’s, not mine), I should note that one statue among many in the public square with the inscription TO AN UNKNOWN GOD was more common than you might think. This was a deeply religious society, even if they were a tad confused by all the gods, and so it would follow that you might hedge your bet—spiritually speaking—by erecting a kind of placeholder shrine, to some other god you might have missed. It was a simple solution to a common problem: too many gods.

Back to Paul’s sermon, he begins at the beginning as he sets about to describe this unknown god they should know. This God made heaven and earth, and doesn’t live in an earthly temple like Olympus. This is the God of all times and all places, who made humans to yearn for God: ‘For in him we live and move and have our being’ Paul said, then added for good measure: “Some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’”

He concludes that since we are God’s offspring (made in God’s image) then it follows that this God will not be an idol of silver or gold or the finest marble. No, we must repent of such foolishness and give ourselves to the very one God sent to forgive us.

We learn that some were unconvinced—Luke says they sneered—but some were moved that day: “Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others.”

So what did Paul really do that day? In order to explain what I think he really did that day, I’m going to need the help of the Rev. Lillian Daniel. Lillian is a minister in Chicago and a frequent blogger with The Huffington Post, and she made quite a stir a couple of years back when she wrote a blog entitled “Spiritual But Not Religious? Please Stop Boring Me.”

Now maybe Rev. Daniel could use a little Dale Carnegie herself, but she has a point, so we will let her speak:

On airplanes, I dread the conversation with the person who finds out I am a minister and wants to use the flight time to explain to me that he is "spiritual but not religious." Such a person will always share this as if it is some kind of daring insight, unique to him, bold in its rebellion against the religious status quo. Next thing you know, he's telling me that he finds God in the sunsets.

But I like sunsets. She continues:

Like people who go to church don't see God in the sunset! Like we are these monastic little hermits who never leave the church building. How lucky we are to have these geniuses inform us that God is in nature. As if we don't hear that in the psalms, the creation stories and throughout our deep tradition.

And finally the coup de grâce, because you can tell she’s having fun:

Thank you for sharing, spiritual-but-not-religious sunset person. You are now comfortably in the norm for self-centered American culture, right smack in the bland majority of people who find ancient religions dull but find themselves uniquely fascinating.

Don’t you wish you were a blogger? Think of the things you could say! She was a way, you have to admit.

But beyond edgy and clever, she is really just a letter-day St. Paul. The self-absorbed spiritual-but-not-religious person beside her on the plane is the direct heir of the Stoics and the Epicureans on Mar’s Hills, discussing the latest idea: which new god is the most compelling, and how the old-used up gods are so last season, how they are so literally antiquated.

The men and women who gathered on Mar’s Hill were dilettantes, people with an interest that never goes below the surface, eager to learn but never commit. And this seems to sum up the spiritual-but-not-religious crowd: happy to buy the book, but determined to tell no one. Or eager to see the sunset, but less likely to see Jesus in the broken person sitting on the sidewalk.

And perhaps the most annoying part the spiritual-but-not-religious conversation at 35,000 feet—and I’ve had them too—is how terribly rude the ‘sunset person‘ can be. I have just told them that I have a vocation, a thing to which I have given my whole life, and their response is ‘I think organized religious is crap, or evil, or passe,‘ or all the other things I have heard since I started having the very conversation Lillian describes.

But that is neither here not there, since we already know that following Jesus will seem foolish to many, another helpful thing Paul reminded us. Instead we need to see this as an opportunity—not to defend ourselves—but to defend the faithful ones who gave us the gift of faith and expect us to pass it on the same manner.

So off to Mar’s Hill we go, not because we want to, but because we have to. Our faith is in the sharing, the story of those brave ones who took a risk to challenge complacency and carelessness. Now boarding at gate one, your next flight and an new seat mate. Amen.

posted by michael jacob kooiman @ 9:41 AM