HAD THEY COME BACK TO HEAR Acts 17.26-34
Warner M. Bailey
The day Mary and I climbed the hill to the Acropolis we had not yet been in Athens 24 hours. It was truly overwhelming and surreal. The awesome proportions of the temples, the beauty of the statuary and carving, the stark white of the stones and the cobalt blue of the sky—not to mention the fact that we were still suffering from jet lag—made the experience distinctly disorienting, awesome.
I wonder if the Apostle Paul felt a similar disorientation when he visited Athens in its original splendor and was stunned as he looked up at the Acropolis upon which the Parthenon soared? The story in the Acts of the Apostles of his stay in that capital city of wisdom, philosophy, and beauty does show us that the Acropolis had an effect on him, too. He “was provoked” at all the idols he saw, and he argued with Athenians in their market place, the agora as the Athenians called it, a building fronted with Doric columns still standing today at the base of the towering Acropolis. He preached about the resurrection of Jesus to this audience of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers, and his preaching got a mixed response which betrayed just how drastically the Christian good news was misunderstood by these Athenian philosophers..
“What does this babbler want to say?” mocked the Epicureans. They actually called him a “picker of seeds,” spermologos, a vulgar, slang phrase which would come across in our vocabulary as “sap sucker” or “yahoo.” Paul was scorned as a yokel who aped the ways and words of philosophers. Epicureans spewed contempt upon Paul because his preaching of resurrection flew in the face of Epicurean rejection of any afterlife. “Let us eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die,” was their slogan.
“He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign divinities,” intoned the Stoics, who for all their learning, misunderstood “resurrection” to be the goddess, anastasia. Connecting the concept of resurrection to a human being was simply foreign to any Greek philosophy. Thus, the Stoics put the tag of “foreign divinities” to what Paul was telling them. “Foreign divinities,” I was interested to read, was exactly what Socrates had been charged with proclaiming, a charge, you will remember, that brought him to a trial upon his life and condemned him to drink the fatal hemlock. Is Paul also being threatened with preaching “foreign divinities” which disturbs religious peace and order and perverts the youth of Athens?
I’d say that Paul’s visit as a tourist in Athens didn’t get off to a very good start. What he saw made him mad and argumentative. The Athenians are either mocking or menacing. The upshot was that they laid hands on him and escorted him to the place where the “thought police” of Athens held court, a place called the Areopagus. There
they compelled him to answer the charge that he was preaching about two gods—alien, polluting demons—Jesus and his consort, anastasia, resurrection.
Mary and I stood on the Aeropagus. It was just a bit up the way from the marketplace, the agora, and it was dwarfed by the mount of the Acropolis with its soaring temple to Athena. Paul’s speech is a model of diplomacy and rhetoric. And it must be said at the outset that Paul was not entirely forthcoming as he began to speak. “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way.” That’s putting the best spin possible on Paul’s initial reaction of being “deeply distressed”. But who wouldn’t in those circumstances of mockery and menace try to be as politically correct as possible, of flattering while not endorsing.
Then when Paul senses that his audience has calmed down a bit, he picks up a possibility for dialogue with the Athenians that they have dropped in his lap. You have a shrine to the Unknown God. What you worship in ignorance, I now proclaim to you. So Paul has a platform on which to speak to the Athenians on their own terms.
Through a series of three contrasts Paul deftly lays out the case for Christianity. First contrast: God makes the world as a place for the creation to live. Humans do not make shrines in which God is to live. Right? Right! Second contrast: God gives to mortals life and breath and all things. Humans do not serve God as though God needed anything. Right? Right!
Paul would have all the philosophers in the audience nodding, sagely, in agreement. After all, what Paul was condemning was polytheism, the worship of many gods with the hope of keeping them all happy with sacrifices. When the philosophical society of Athens got together, they routinely complained about the widespread polytheism that was the religion of the masses. Paul even quotes approvingly two lines that the philosophers would recognize as coming from their own poets, “In him we live and move and have our being” and “For we too are his offspring.” This would bring smiles to his audience. So far, so good in Paul’s defense of himself.
But then Paul announces his third contrast, and it is a bombshell! Humans cannot make an image of God in gold, silver, and stone, but God can make an image of God’s self in a human, no one other than Jesus, whom God resurrected from the dead to be Savior and Lord and, at the end of the world, Judge. This resurrected Jesus, surely, is the unknown god, the god you have worshipped in ignorance. But now you know, and it’s time for you to repent, to change your ways, and to act on what you now know.
Well, the effect of Paul’s words about the resurrection of the dead was to ignite a furious discussion among the philosophers. Some scoffed, but others wanted to hear more.
Because the mention of the resurrection of the dead provoked such differing reactions, I became curious as to what Athenians in Paul’s day thought about death. In the National Archeological Museum I saw this massive pot, perhaps 5 feet tall with a narrow throat and 2 feet wide at its belly standing on a base about 1 ½ feet in diameter. All over the pot the artist had painted the meandering design in strict lines and
proportionality. The meandering design is a line of continuous swastikas joined head to tail. The whole effect the viewer receives is one of order, exactness and stability. However, right in the center of the pot, almost unnoticeable in the mass of the meandering script, were some stick figures with their hands grasped behind their necks in a posture of grief. There were two lines of these figures arranged on either side of a central panel showing a stick figure lying on a platform with other figures kneeling about in grief. The prone figure was dead. This jar, I found out, is a burial jar.
Here I had found what I wanted to see. Here was a visual story of how the Athenians felt about death. Right in the middle of a massive jar that is 99% covered with a design that screams order, rigidity, stabilty we have this little scene of death and grief. The Greeks were saying to me that death brings the terror of grief into their lives, a terror that upsets their sense of stability. The only way to cope with this terror is to smother death beneath massive reminders that the world is an orderly place. So they painted this little scene of death in this great big sea of order.
We saw how the power of death had such a tight grip upon the soul. For many, the resurrection of a human into the image of God would be too much for them to take, a scandal and a cause for scoffing. But to others, there was a quickening in their soul. They wanted to hear more from Paul.
Had they come back to hear, what would Paul have said? But better yet, had you come back to hear, what would Paul have said to you?
In so many ways we are like that generation of people described by the prophet Haggai. “You have sown much, and harvested little; you eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill; you clothe yourselves, but no one is warm; and you that earn wages earn wages to put them into a bag with holes.” (Haggai 1:5-7) There is an emptiness to life which we are driven to fill in greedy, self-serving, self-enriching ways, but nothing satisfies. The more we rake in, the less we have. Empty lives breathe the air of rampant uncertainty, a feeling that things are never going to be stable again.
The Athenians worshiped in fear and trembling an unknown god. We today simply worship in fear and trembling the unknown. Paul pierces the fog of uncertainty with good news. There is a Judge, and there is a judgment. But there is just as certainly new life for those who turn to the Judge because he understands us.
We will be judged. There will be an accounting. All that is hidden will be revealed. No one will pull a fast trick and live to boast about it. Certainly if God can open a grave and pull out a dead man alive, God can pry open the secrets of human hearts and expose us to God’s unblinking gaze. God will judge us. The Judge is someone who understands all our ways. That is reality. That is honest. That is good news.
But there is also something earth-shattering in what Paul says that makes it the best news. Judgment begins with God’s resurrection of the dead Jesus. It is his resurrection from the dead that makes Jesus our judge. Resurrection means upsetting the
way things are. Resurrection means upsetting what is made hard and fast. Resurrection means giving life to what is dead and corrupt. It means being brought back into God’s family. God made it happen to one man; God can make it happen to you.
But a new life for yourself goes hand in hand with your turning to Jesus. Salvation for you means that those who turn to Judge Jesus will have God’s judgment overturned for them. Jesus, named judge by resurrection, overturns your judgment as you turn and worship him, God’s image upon earth.
You need to be in God’s family. God’s family scrapbook has a page for your picture to be attached. God has provided a way for you to come home. Turning to Jesus, God’s image on earth, leads you into God’s family.