Not Far

Acts 17:22-28

September 17, 2023 • Mount Pleasant UMC

She asked us, “Do you want to go to the top?” I looked over at Rachel and nodded. Of course I wanted to go to the top. I had literally traveled around the world to be in Athens, and “the top” is one of the places I definitely wanted to go because at the top of the acropolis was the Parthenon, one of the most well-known sites of the ancient world. The reason the guide was asking the question, though, is because we were in Athens in the midst of a downpour. It was raining hard, and we were huddled under a building’s overhang trying to keep dry. But I still was determined to go to the top of the acropolis because I didn’t and don’t know when or if I’ll ever be back.

My biggest regret from that day, however, is that I didn’t go to the top of the other site there, which is Mars Hill. When the guide pointed it out to us, I noticed it wasn’t so much a hill as it is a large rock outcropping, reachable today by a metal staircase. Yeah, I decided I didn’t really want to be on a set of metal stairs out in the open while lightning was flashing around us and rain was pouring down. But I still wish I had gone up there and stood where the Apostle Paul stood two thousand years ago when he made his famous defense of the Christian faith to the Athenians.

This morning, we’re going to look at a part of that Mars Hill sermon as we wrap up our series on listening to God. Even though Paul’s main purpose in speaking to the Athenians is to persuade them to follow Jesus, the way he approaches his message has a lot to teach us about hearing from God in unexpected places. So let’s dive in, shall we?

Paul came to Athens in the midst of a missionary journey, having been run out of the previous town. His companions, Silas and Timothy, were a few days behind him, so he arrived in Athens alone. Not one to just sit around, Paul spent the time exploring the city, trying to understand the people by studying their culture. What he found, according to Luke, “greatly distressed” him (17:16). In other words, he was exasperated, provoked, worked up. And what was it that bothered him so much? It was because the city was full of idols. Now, for Paul (and for Luke, who wrote this story down), that would have referred to the many temples and statues that were dedicated to the Greek gods, including the famous Parthenon that was a temple to the goddess Athena. The streets were lined with statues of men and gods, many of them dedicated to Hermes, the herald of the gods. There were so many shrines and statues and temples that visitors who came to Athens would describe the Athenians as “very religious” (cf. Keener, Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, pg. 372).

Today we don’t put our idols on display in the streets. Or maybe we do. Drive through our city and you will find monuments to wealth and commerce, to food and drink. Turn on the television and you will see monuments to violence and sexuality, and you’ll see people worshipping at the shrines of politics and power as if they could save us. Even in the church we are tempted to worship at the altar of self—what can God do for me, what can religion do for me, how can the church meet my needs—and focus on the idols found in celebrity culture. Maybe the predominant idol in our world is “me,” as in “I am the center of my universe.” I wonder what Paul would feel if he walked around our city. “He was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols” (17:16).

Not only was Athens full of idols, it was full of ideas as well. It was the “great intellectual capital of the ancient world” (Wright, Acts for Everyone—Part Two, pg. 83). Luke describes it this way: “All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas” (17:21). Paul walks around the city, learning what the culture is like and listening to what the people are saying. And he knows he can’t just let it pass. So he goes to the synagogue to talk with Jews and into the marketplace to debate with God-fearing Greeks. And some of the philosophers hear him preaching and invite him to come and address the Areopagus, which met on Mars Hill.

The Areopagus was the main legislative and judicial body of Athens, sort of a combination of Congress and the Supreme Court (cf. McKnight, Acts, pg. 202). For our purposes, one of their functions was to license traveling speakers, to determine whether they would be allowed to continue to speak in public or not. They were the censorship board and they determined who the Athenians got to listen to and who they didn’t. Believe it or not, in this culture, while there were the occasional sporting and theater events, going to listen to a public lecture was first century entertainment (Larkin, Acts [IVP], pg. 253; McKnight 202). So they invite Paul to present his case, to tell them what it is he’s talking about so they can determine if he can continue.

What follows is one of the great masterpieces of early Christian preaching, and I’m fairly certain we only have a summary of what Paul shared with the thinkers of Athens that day. We only read a small part of the sermon this morning, but if you follow the daily Scripture readings, you had a chance to read the whole thing yesterday. When you do, when you listen to the text, one of the things you notice is the way Paul uses the culture itself to connect with his listeners. Paul makes a concerted effort here to be positive when he can about their culture and he uses it to connect them to the Gospel story. He says they are “very religious” (17:22). Notice that he doesn’t affirm their religion, but he applauds them for being people who are interested in something beyond this life. He knows they are seeking what is true, and he wants to encourage that search. He also quotes one of their poets when he says, “For in him we live and move and have our being” (17:28), and he delves into their theology when he quotes an Athenian philosopher: “We are his offspring” (17:28). And, of course, there is the famous observation he makes about a particular altar he found that said, “To an unknown God.” There had been a plague in Athens and the citizens tried to end it by offering sacrifices to every god they knew. When none of that worked, they offered sacrifices to an unknown god, and the plague stopped. They concluded that there must be a god they didn’t know of, and so they began worshipping this mysterious being (Keener 373). Paul declares that this god they don’t know is actually the God of the universe (17:23).

Now, some fault Paul for not being more direct about the Gospel. He never mentions the name of Jesus in his sermon (cf. Wright 92), and it seems he gets very little immediate response. There is no report of thousands being converted to Jesus as there are in other places in Acts. But what Paul is actually doing here is planting seeds and building bridges (cf. McKnight 203). He’s laying a foundation for the future, and in fact some people in the crowd tell him they want to hear him speak again on this topic (17:32). He has drawn out parts of their culture that connect to the one true God, and in doing so he is letting the Athenians and us know that all truth is God’s truth. If we find truth anywhere, it is from God. The culture on its own cannot come up with truth; any truth you discover is God’s truth because he is the one who created it all. What we’re seeing here on display in Athens is evidence of Paul’s ability to “trace the voice of God in a pagan text amid a culture littered with idolatrous shrines,” a talent that comes only from his years of learning to hear the voice of God in everything (cf. Greig, How to Hear God, pg. 209).

Paul is showing us how to hear the voice of God even in the culture around us. One way he does that is by touching on the beliefs of two of the main philosophical schools of Athens. One group was known as the Stoics, and they believed that reason was of utmost importance, and that god, whatever god there might be, permeated everything. In other words, the tree was god, the rock was god, you and I are god. The other school, the Epicureans, believed that god (whatever god there might be) was distant, removed from the world. Sort of like some people still today who believe that God wound the world up, turned it on and went away on vacation. The Epicureans believed that the gods had very little if anything to do with we mere mortals (cf. Wright 91; Keener 374). In contrast to all of that, Paul emphasized that God is beyond us, different from us, but he also stresses that God can be found. He says God does everything he does so that we “would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us” (17:27). At least one of the things Paul means by that is that God is constantly speaking, even through the culture, just as he has been demonstrating here in Athens. We can hear God speaking even in what we might think of as a “wicked and adulterous generation” (Matthew 16:4).

At least one of the things that means is that we don’t have to go to particular places or go through particular people to hear from God. Sometimes we think we have to go to a church building or maybe to a place where significant things happened to us like a church campground (or even the Holy Land) in order to hear from God. Or sometimes we think we have to go to a certain person to hear from God. Several years ago, I had a lady who got very upset with me and told me her husband almost died because I didn’t pray for him, as if I had special powers or some sort of elevated connection with God. I know Pastor Rick doesn’t want me to tell you this, but here’s the truth: we don’t have any special powers. The church building does not somehow put you closer to God. You’re not even closer to God in Israel, as much as I love to go there. When God created the world, he declared it all good (cf. Genesis 1), which is why author Wendell Berry said, “There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places” (qtd. in Greig 207). In other words, every place is alive with the possibility of hearing from God, including the culture that surrounds us. All truth is God’s truth because he made it all. Certainly, coming here to worship is important. In gathering in this place, in worshipping the creator, in listening to the word that he has given (remember, we’ve been emphasizing how God speaks very often through the Scriptures), and in learning to listen through the gathered community on Sunday, we are better prepared to listen Monday through Saturday. Or, as Pastor Pete Greig puts it, “By learning to hear God in the sermon on Sunday, we begin to hear his voice in the news on Monday” (209). “There is no aspect of God’s creation through which he cannot and does not speak” (Greig 207). God speaks even through our culture.

So how do we learn to listen for the voice of God in the culture, in the world around us? First, we begin to turn toward the culture. Now, when I say that I don’t mean to adopt the values of the culture. That’s has happened and is happening too often in the church today, and it’s not a healthy thing. We are called to be different from the world, distinct as a community, or as Peter puts it, a “peculiar people” (1 Peter 2:9, KJV). Turning toward the culture doesn’t mean becoming like the culture. It means becoming “students of the world in which he has placed us,” learning what the values and thoughts of those he has given us as neighbors are, and simply not walling ourselves off in a Christian subculture (cf. Greig 211). This is literally what it means to be “in the world but not of it,” which by the way is not a Biblical quote even though we usually think it is. (The idea is in the Bible, just not the actual quote.)

Anyway, think about Paul in this story. He wanders the city when he arrives, taking in the sights but he’s not a tourist. He’s a missionary, always. We know he looks at the architecture and the religious artifacts. He has obviously memorized at least parts of their poetry and their philosophy so he could talk intelligently about it. It’s fair to assume that Paul, as a Roman citizen, was also schooled in what we would call the classic literature of the time, and he obviously knew the Scriptures. And he was a businessman; we know that in several places where he ministered he also set up a tent making shop. Paul never compromised who he was or his message, but he made an effort everywhere he went to turn toward the culture, to learn about it so he could connect with people around him. The theologian Karl Barth once told a group of young theologians that they should daily read both their Bible and their newspaper. But, he told them, “interpret newspapers from your Bible.” Billy Graham was famous for following that advice, and his sermons routinely included references to what was going on in the culture where he was preaching. Graham turned toward the culture without ever compromising the Gospel. A word of caution, however, in today’s world: make sure that we’re listening to a wide variety of perspectives. In our social media algorithm-driven world, it’s easy for us to end up in an echo chamber where we only hear the things we already agree with, or we only tune into the news channel that affirms our own positions. One of the growing reasons people leave churches today is because of a political disagreement with either the pastor or the congregation in general (cf. Davis & Graham, The Great Dechurching, pg. 31). We live in a world where faith gets all mixed up and confused with politics; that’s not what turning toward the culture means. Turning toward the culture means we stay open and learn about it so we can do the next thing.

And that next thing is this: discern what the culture is saying. We’re not talking about blind absorption of the culture’s message. We must be wise as we take in what is being said. Paul wrote elsewhere that there is an enemy of our souls who “masquerades as an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14). We need to be able to distinguish what is true and what is false. There is a gift of the Holy Spirit that, I believe, we should ask for frequently. Paul mentions it in his first letter to the Corinthians; it is “distinguishing between spirits” (1 Corinthians 12:10). There are sacred and desecrated places out there, and while we shouldn’t be afraid of the culture, we should ask God to help us discern which is which. We do that through regular prayer, and not just prayer where we are talking constantly but prayer where we let whatever it is sit in our spirit and ask the Holy Spirit to guide us. We can do that through journaling; there is something about putting pen to paper that helps us tune into the Spirit and what he is saying. We can do it through connecting with a soul friend, or by spending time at the end of the day reflecting on what has been good and what has been troubling. One question that might be helpful to ask when presented with an aspect of culture we’re unsure about is this: “Is this God’s gift to me, and can I receive it for his glory?” (cf. Greig 213). All of these practices help us begin to discern what the culture is saying.

As we discern, though, there is another caution that Paul offers when he writes to the Philippians. We have to be aware of what is sticking in our minds. Paul says this: “Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things” (4:8). As we discern what the culture is saying, we’re looking, as Paul did, for those things that point us and connect us with Christ. And we need to remember that God uses different things for different people. For some, the Newsboys concert last Sunday out at The Mill was a spiritual experience; for others, it was a lot of loud noise that they just didn’t enjoy. I have a friend who has the uncanny ability to watch just about any movie and pull spiritual themes out of it; for others, many movies are just full of violence and not in any way glorifying to God. Here’s my point: be careful not to judge your brother or sister as they are discerning the message of the culture. The Spirit just might be speaking to them differently than he is to you. In the early church, this showed up in a controversy over meat that was sacrificed to idols. Some said to go ahead and eat the meat because the idol wasn’t really a god, while others were concerned that it had been used in religious worship and therefore wasn’t suitable for the dining table of a Christian (cf. 1 Corinthians 10:23-11:1). I had two friends who got into an argument—in a Sunday School class no less—because one friend had seen the other friend’s car outside a local bar and assumed that the other person was inside getting drunk. Be careful, as we are connecting with and discerning the culture, that it does not lead us to being judgmental and harsh with our brothers and sisters.

Because in all of this, we need to complete the loop by returning consistently to Christ. We will not be successful in remaining “in the world but not of it” unless we stay connected to Jesus. We do that in a variety of ways, one of which is continuing to be connected in worship, which is not a given for Christians anymore. Since the pandemic, the big-C Church (and in many ways, we have as well) has been going through what some are called “The Great Dechurching.” We are at a point in American history where, for the first time, more people do not attend church than do. Forty million adults used to go to church and no longer do (Davis & Graham 3). Many in the media, of course, celebrate this as a good thing, but the research on the matter shows that attending worship generally results in improved mental and physical health. In fact, the Human Flourishing Project at Harvard University (not a Christian institution by any means) said this: “Religion and spirituality may be an underappreciated resource that physicians could explore with their patients” (qtd. in Davis & Graham 30). Did you hear that? Physicians should prescribe faith! We need the connection to Jesus that happens here, and we need the connection with each other. There is something about seeing each other’s faces and hearing each other’s voices that helps ground us. That’s the whole original reason behind Methodism’s tradition of an Annual Conference for clergy, for connection and encouragement. Charles Wesley wrote these lines that we still sing at the opening of every Annual Conference: “And are we yet alive, and see each other’s face?” (UMH 553). We need worship, we need fellowship with other Christians, and we need the encounter with Christ that comes through all of it. To stay grounded as we listen for God’s voice in the culture, we need to return consistently to Christ.

Paul listened to the voice of God in the Athenian culture, and because he did, some began to follow Jesus that day. Paul was obedient to what God whispered to him, and he was reminded again that God is, in fact, not far from any of us at any time. He is speaking, even in the midst of a culture that seems to be determined not to listen. I believe Paul was remembering his experience in Athens when he wrote these famous words to the Romans: “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will” (Romans 12:2). Because God is speaking, even in the culture.

Just for a moment, I want to return to something I shared four weeks ago, this exhortation from Pastor Pete Greig: “Learning to hear God’s voice—his word and his whisper—is the single most important thing you will ever learn to do. I’m not exaggerating… Hearing God is essential to the very purpose for which you and I were made. Without it everything falls apart” (3). I know that over the last four weeks, we have only dipped our toes into the vast ocean that is the experience of listening to God. But I believe as we live out the practices we have talked about, and as we have patience with ourselves, we will grow in our ability to hear God’s voice.

I don’t know about you, but I’m often not patient when it comes to spiritual things. I’ve grown up in an instant satisfaction culture, and I want results right now. But let me once again say: God is rarely in a hurry to speak. God wants us to slow down to his speed; he’s not going to speed up to meet our schedule. I think about Moses, who was eighty years old before he met God at the burning bush. I think about Abraham, who was seventy-five years old when he finally heard the voice of God calling him to uproot, move and start over. And I think of Jesus, who spent thirty years as a carpenter and only three years as a preacher. God works on God’s own timetable, so it’s up to us to be ready to hear whenever he speaks—whether through Scripture, through other people, in a still, small voice or through the culture. God is the one who spoke and still speaks, and he is not far from any one of us (17:27). Let’s pray…and listen.