When I lived in Chicago I spent one summer working full time for the school library and the Covenant Archives. I had a co-worker whom I normally spent about half the day working with, and so we spent a lot of time talking about a number of different topics. Me being a seminary student, sometimes our discussions came to religion and God. She explained to me that she believed in God, definitely, but she didn’t really like all the rules and regulations that she found in the Bible. She felt that they were all about keeping her down and keeping her from having fun in life. I mean, and these are her words, what’s the point of dating if you can’t have sex.
Now I had a couple different ways I could answer this. One would be to avoid the question. Sometimes it’s just better not to talk about certain issues when you know you are going to be working with someone the rest of the summer. Another option would have been to try to persuade her that she was wrong, this could be difficult and could backfire and find me working with someone who cannot stand me for the rest of the summer. A third option was to attempt to have an open discussion about the issue in a way that showed that I was listening to the other person and I understood where they were coming from without necessarily agreeing with their view. This would allow you to discuss the issue and hopefully help them to see it from a different perspective without alienating them. This is the approach I took. We spent the day talking about whether the laws that God set up in the Bible made for a better quality of life or not. I tried to suggest that the laws we find in the Bible will make for a healthier life with more opportunities for growth and less risk of being hurt. I attempted to approach the Bible not from my starting point, which involves it being the Word of God, but instead from her starting point, which was that she wanted to have fun with her life. I tried to suggest that by following the lifestyle that God calls us to, we can have a better quality of fun.
We ended up deciding that we disagreed on the answer to this question, but that we could still work together and we could even still have these discussions with each other, for there was respect shown as we shared ideas about who God is and what he is all about.
Paul takes a similar approach when he comes to the people of Athens. He shows them respect and at the same time speaks the truth to them. So today we are going to look at Paul’s mission to the people of Athens and see what we can learn from it as we reach out to those around us.
1. Shouting From a Street Corner
Today’s scripture has a lot in it. We see an evangelist at work, we see an evangelist coming before a group of people and presenting his message in a way that they can digest, in a way that at least gets some of them interested. Our evangelist doesn’t have complete success, and he doesn’t get to present the message in a way that he is familiar with, but nonetheless, we see God working in the spreading of his truth, of his gospel.
The scripture begins with our evangelist, Paul coming to Athens. He is waiting for Silas and Timothy to join him, and as he waits he notices the things that he doesn’t like about the place where he is. Particularly, he doesn’t like the fact that the city where he is is full of idols.
And so, Paul does what any good Christian does when they are in a place where they aren’t comfortable and they have extra time on their hands; he begins to tell others about Christ. That’s right, Paul is bored and sitting around, so he decides to preach. Not exactly how we think of spending our spare time, is it? You and I don’t regularly decide that we need to go out to the market square and talk about Jesus to all those who we come across. And yet this is the very thing that Paul does.
We’ve got to understand that this is who Paul was; he was perfectly comfortable walking up to a crowd of people and starting to tell them about Jesus. Many of us aren’t built that way. And people today aren’t built to hear that either. Living in Chicago, when I would walk around downtown there were two types of people who would accost you. The first were the panhandlers, asking for money. In all honesty, they could be annoying, and I found myself regularly feeling guilty about the money I was spending on nothing because of their presence there. At the same time, being stopped on every corner by someone asking for money was just too much. But they weren’t as bad as the preachers. These preachers would stand on a street corner and shout, or speak into a megaphone at the people coming by them. Though they were seeming to use the method of Paul, they didn’t seem to get the same reaction as Paul. Instead of slowing to listen, people would speed up to get away from them. People today aren’t going to stop to listen to someone speaking on a street corner. We’ve been conditioned to pay them no mind.
The opposite was true in Paul’s time. And Paul didn’t just go to a street corner and begin preaching. He would always preach and teach at the local synagogue first. He would start by sharing his message with the Jews. These were the ones that he had the most in common with. These were the ones that were already on the right track. He didn’t need to take them as far. He didn’t need to convince them about God, they already knew about God. He didn’t need to tell them about their sins, they already understood this. All he needed to do was tell them the good news that the Messiah had come.
Unfortunately, the people at the synagogues often didn’t listen to him. And so then he would go to the marketplace. This is where wandering teachers would go to teach. This is where philosophers would go to discuss ideas. He was going to a place that was set aside for people to talk about religion, philosophy and politics. So Paul wasn’t just going and shouting from a street corner, instead, he was going to a place where people expected to hear others talk about God and he did that very thing.
We’re at a bit of a disadvantage because we don’t really have this type of place around us. And we are told that there are certain topics that we aren’t supposed to talk about in polite company, and among these is religion.
So, we don’t have the same opportunity that Paul had. We don’t have that place where we can go where we will find people ready to listen to us and hear the message that we have. So we need to find other ways to share the truths that we have with those around us. Quite often this happens in a less formal situation, quite often this happens in a one to one discussion instead of sitting in front of a crowd. And to do that we can learn a bit from what Paul did in Athens.
2. Common Ground
Now Paul doesn’t approve of idols. He wants nothing to do with them. We are specifically told in verse 16 that he was greatly distressed to see the idols and their abundance in Athens. Paul had been a leader in Jewish religion before he came to know Christ. There are certain things that are so very clear that were ingrained in him from the very beginning of his life, and one of the key ones is that idols are bad. It’s actually in the second commandment, or first, depending on how you break them up: no graven images! Idols are bad, they are wrong, they are incompatible with the Christian life. They’re breaking a commandment, one of the big ones.
When Moses came down off the mountain with the Ten Commandments he saw a golden calf that had been built by the Israelites so they could worship it. Moses and God were so taken aback and angry that that was almost the end of the people of Israel right there. And idolatry continued to be a problem for God’s people throughout the Old Testament. Their neighbors continued to draw them away from God and convince them that they needed to worship idols. And so Paul comes to Athens and is disturbed by the amount of idols that he sees around the city.
And yet, when Paul brings his message to the people of Athens, he realizes that he needs to begin where they are at, not where he wants them to be. And so he uses the very idols that he has so much difficulty with to make his point to them.
He begins by acknowledging the idols and commenting on the good that they represent. Instead of standing up in front of the idols and telling the people that they are worshipping false gods and trying to single-handedly destroy these abominations, Paul looks at the people and says, “I know you are a religious people”.
Paul starts on common ground as he tells people about Jesus. He’s not happy with where the people are. He’s not trying to advocate idol worship. Paul actually got in trouble with the silver workers in another city, Ephesus, because his message against idols was so convincing that he was putting the idol makers out of business. But here, Paul knows that there is much that separates him from the people of Athens, but there is something that connects him to them as well, and that is their devotion to a god, any god.
Do we do this? When we want to share with others about the truth that we’ve found, do we reach out to them in a way that accentuates what we have in common? No one wants to hear that they are living life wrong. No one wants to hear that they’ve got it all messed up. And yet, sometimes we are called to share that very message with them. And a way to do this is to encourage them with what they are doing right.
Instead of looking at everything that separates us from those around us who are not Christian, should we be noticing what we have in common with them? We will discover that they are more like us than we would like to believe. They have the hopes and insecurities that we have; the same dreams and fears. They even wonder at times about big picture questions that we might be able to help them to answer. They might be living a different life, they might be disobeying all the commandments, but just like us, they are wanderers on this journey trying to find some purpose and meaning to their lives.
3. Unknown God
In sharing his truth, Paul uses one of the very idols that he is so distressed about. He points out the idol made to the Unknown God and decides to use this as a starting point to tell the people of Athens about the one and only God who he serves.
Again, Paul starts where the people are and he presents a message that connects with the needs they know they have. He doesn’t start by telling them where they’re wrong, he begins by telling them where they’re right. He even quotes one of their own poets to them.
But Paul doesn’t end with what he has in common with the people of Athens. He uses this only as a foundation, he uses this only as a starting point so that he can then tell them the truth about God. You see, there are two errors that I think we sometimes make when we think about evangelism, when we think about sharing God’s love and truth with those around us.
The first of these is that we begin by telling people that they’re sinners. You cannot start with bad news. You cannot start by telling people how messed up they are. If you do, you will lose them all right away and you just won’t get anywhere with them. You’ll be like that person with the megaphone on the street corner watching people speed up to get by you as fast as they can. You’ll hear them saying to themselves, “Just don’t make eye contact, just don’t make eye contact.” In all honesty, though, very few of us make this mistake. Unfortunately, I think that because we are so worried about coming on too strong, we fall into the other error.
This second error is the opposite of coming on too strong. And it’s often referred to as loving someone into the kingdom. When we make this mistake, we spend all our time talking about what we have in common with those around us and we never move on to the stage where we tell people the truth about God. This allows us to have friendships with non-Christians, good friendships, but in many ways it makes our faith seem pointless in their eyes. For in our actions and our lives we are basically telling them that it doesn’t really matter that we believe different things, and therefore Christianity will really not make a difference in their lives. This is just as destructive an error as the first.
And so we are called to walk a thin line. We need to be accepting of those around us, we need to reach out in love to the lost, we need to focus on that which we have in common and allow them to know that we are a safe place to talk about difficult things. And then, when they are ready to talk about that which is difficult, we need to come in with the truth, even when it is harsh. We cannot allow ourselves to sugarcoat the message that God has for us, the message that Jesus died for. Like Paul told the people of Athens, we are to tell those around us to repent. I know this can be hard, and yet it is so very clearly what God calls for us to do. Paul talked about what those in Athens got right, but he then moved from this to tell them about what they were getting wrong, what they needed to change. He had spent time with them and given them a chance to know him, he then brought truth before them. Not all converted, but many were interested and wanted to hear more. And we are told that some among them became followers and believed.
So let us learn from Paul. Let us reach out to our friends and those we come in contact with. Let us find things that we have in common with them and use these as an opportunity to build that relationship with those around us. And, when the time is right (and we need to trust the Spirit to let us know when this is), we can share truth with them in a loving way that will move them closer to the kingdom of God. Amen.
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