Acts 17:16-31
“May we know what this new teaching is
that you are presenting? It sounds rather strange to us,
so we would like to know what it means.”
Poor,
poor Paul; he always seems to be running defense. We’ve seen him knocked off his feet by an
encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus. He’s been beaten with rods within
an inch of his life, and then he was thrown into the innermost cell of the
local prison, chained to the floor, left in the dark. And today we find Paul the
Apostle angry in Athens. Not exactly the tongue-in-cheek, glamorous life intoned
by Andrew Lloyd Webber in Jesus Christ,
Superstar now is it? In the play, remember how the twelve gathered around
the last-supper table with wine and bread and Jesus? They sang,
Always hoped that I'd be an apostle, Knew that I
would make it if I tried.
Then when we retire we can write the gospels, So they'll still talk about us when we've died.
Then when we retire we can write the gospels, So they'll still talk about us when we've died.
Paul
never set out to be an apostle; you know that he was bent quite in the opposite
way: scourging and massacring the Christians anywhere he found them. Where we
meet him today he’s well on his way to spreading the gospel, writing his
letters, traveling the ancient world—and running into one offense after the
other.
That’s
where we find him in our text this morning. He’s been secreted away from two
different cities—Thessalonica and Beroea—because the crowds and authorities
there threatened violence toward him. They didn’t like the good news Paul was
preaching.
In
Athens, , Paul seemed wise enough at first to know that he should try to keep a
low profile in that city while he waited for Silas and Timothy to arrive. But
as the scripture tells us, “While waiting for them in Athens,
[Paul] was deeply distressed to see that the city was full of idols.” In fact,
you could say that Paul was speechless.
That was too much for Paul, and
he couldn’t help himself. Ever been in that position, when you know you should
keep quiet, but you just gotta say something even though you know it’s probably
going to get you in trouble? It should seem to us that Paul was on the
defensive once again—and he was, but he wasn’t. He’d learned something from his
previous close encounters of the angry kind.
Paul started off complimenting
the Greeks, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way… I
went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship.”
That way, you see, they were busy listening to Paul instead of planning how to
kill him—that’s a good first step for every preacher to take.
And what Paul was preaching, the
Athenians had never heard before. The gospel was all new to them, and frankly,
it sounded rather strange to people who found nothing odd about building an
altar to an unknown god.
Some said, “What does this
babbler want to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign
divinities.” Yet, instead of beating Paul or dragging him off to prison again
for proclaiming the offenses of the gospel, Paul is brought to the Areopagus
where many could hear this new teaching—and how they loved new teachings, even
when they sounded rather strange. Paul was answering their questions and
curiosity with a rhetorical method still used today: we call it apologetics.
The
Greek word apologia means “defense,”
and from the Greek word apologia we
get our English word apologetics. Apologetics is the branch of Christian
theology that seeks to “defend” or answer questions people, suspect or curious,
ask about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Some
examples of questions that are important in the context of apologetics are,
- Why does evil exist if the world was created by an all-good, all-powerful God?
- How do we know Christianity is true in light of the numerous religions that exist in the world?
- Why do people suffer?
The ambiguity of the word apologetics provides
the apologist with a natural icebreaker in public or private conversations on
the topic: the apologist does not exist to “apologize” for being a Christian,
or indeed for anything else. The apologist’s task is to answer questions by
explaining the gospel, breaking it down to its foundations and then building it
up with the evidence given through scripture.
Paul’s
practice of reasoning from the Scriptures when in discussion with Jews about
the identity of Jesus is well known. But as we see in Acts 17, Paul was willing
to depart from this practice when he debated the Epicurean and Stoic
philosophers in Athens: he started from where they were in order to introduce
the Gospel to them. He could not reason from the Scriptures with them since
they, unlike the Jews, did not accept the authority of the Scriptures.
Now,
my words may sound rather strange to you, but I do have a purpose in mind.
Apologetics is absolutely crucial to both the health and the witness of the
church; and it is a serious mistake for followers of Jesus to ignore it. We “who
are committed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ must take seriously the application
of its truth to all areas of life. Unless the Gospel is understood at the
worldview level, its impact upon those who accept it, as well as its ability to
change the structures of their societies, will always fall short of God’s best
for his people.”[1]
Our
aversion to talking about our faith in public is completely understandable.
However, the argument for avoiding testimony is indefensible. And as I say
that, I could guess that some of you might be offended by my remarks; but what
I want you to know is that each of you has the gift of the gospel to speak to
those who have settled for worshiping an unknown god. You have something far
greater, much better, to offer them; and so, like Paul, speak we must.
The words of Paul
are still there, at the Areopagus, “What therefore you worship as unknown, this
I proclaim to you. We may use them to begin a conversation not about foreign
divinities, but the one true God, who sacrificed his very best so that we might
have the Word, the living Word, and defend it to the end. If that sounds rather
strange to you, so be it, but still tell of it, for Jesus Christ is the answer
to any question about life and death that we may have. Amen.
May 18, 2014/First Parish Federated
Church/The Reverend Donna Lee Muise
