Acts 17:22-31; Psalms 66:8-20.

In today’s reading from Acts 17 we earwig on Paul’s address to the Areopagus on the topic of an unknown god. Paul is both a scholar and a student, he has credentials from the Pharisees and rabbis with whom he studied Jewish Law, and he remains open to the Holy Spirit to teach him further. This is important because the men to whom Paul is speaking are also masters and students of philosophy and theology. Paul addresses his remarks in the style of a scholar; in this place of the study of gods Paul speaks of the God to whom he belongs as the sole creator who exists beyond temples such as these. The God of Paul created humankind and needs nothing from us in the way of resources as offerings. The God of Paul is the bringer and sustainer of life, and this God created the world with order and structure: God made place within space, and such order makes it possible for God to be found in the pursuit of order and study. “You’re on a right track,” Paul might have said, “it is so that God can be found through reflective study”. Paul speaks of all men and women deriving from one nation established by God, a lone source. This means that all people are the offspring of God exactly as the philosopher Aratus said in the 200s BCE; and it is indeed in God we exist and function as Epimenides said in the 500s BCE.

Paul uses Greek philosophy to point to where their pursuit of the rational God has fallen off course. If humankind has been made by God and from God, then it follows that God cannot be made from gold or stone; so what’s with all these statues and temples as objects of worship? God is now calling us to repent from human ignorance and see truth revealed in the man sent by God to show us the way to God. If you want to know God then you need to pay attention to the real world of created things, not manufactured ones. Gold cannot tell you about God, only a man can do that, since women and men are made by God. Idols are made by men, and they have no voice and no opinions. However, Paul says, there is good news; God has sent such a man with the gospel, the great news that God is waiting to be found and wanting to be found. God, in the spoken revelation of the one who came from God, enjoins you to the undertake the chase through repentance from ignorance and trust in the revelation of God.

So this speech has a context, it is addressed to academics in an academic place and Paul is philosophising with the philosophers in the philosophy club, that’s where he is. I find it interesting that Paul doesn’t actually say very much about Jesus or the message that Jesus proclaimed, other than to say that God is accessible through any concerted, well-directed effort to find God. Paul’s message to the Areopagus is not Jesus Christ and him crucified as it was to the Jews, but God the rational and personal essence which both transcends and engages with the physical “real” world.

During my studies for ministry I undertook a unit in The Acts of the Apostles and in a lecture I heard that this passage is set-piece speech on how to proclaim the story of God to pagans. Our lecturer said that this speech is not the exact words of Paul but instead was drafted by the author of Acts as one of five key speeches which form a framework for the whole book. Whether it really is Paul’s words-for-word reported back to the author, or whether it is a literary invention conceived by the author to make a point is not the point here. But it is still good to know. These are not random words spoken off the cuff, there is intent and thought gone into this speech. We hear Paul speaking to a pagan audience at the Areopagus of Athens about how Jesus does not need a temple or priesthood to be set up in his honour since God acts in the world. This is a counterargument to the interpretations of the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers, and their idea that the “unknown god” needs an altar to his honour in case he gets violently offended by this oversight. If anything God is dishonoured by the plinth; its presence limits the creator’s influence to only this one small place. Jesus is the evidence of what God is doing, and he is attested to by his being raised from the grave by the power of the creator.

We can draw four messages from this.

1. God loves and wants to be reconciled with the academics and with all pagan leaders, as well as the worshippers and all Jewish priests, Levites, and Israelites.
2. God’s way of doing outreach is inclusive because it is culturally specific. An Areopagus message would sound like useless wordy worldliness to the Sanhedrin, and a Sanhedrin message would sound like ethereal superstitious babble to the Areopagus.  There is only one God, and only one way to God, but there are countless ways of speaking about God which draw out a response from the hearer of the news of salvation.
3. The gospel stands up to academic scrutiny even in the presence of the most learned of learned men.
4. God was doing the work through the Jews before God was doing it through the Christians. Paul has not discovered a new thing about God, and Paul has not invented cross-cultural evangelism.

Bless our God, O peoples says Psalm 66:8 in the New Revised Standard Version. The New King James says gentiles which makes it even more obvious what is going on: the Hebrews are calling the world to bless the God of the Hebrews. God established [each living thing] in life according to Psalm 66:9, just as the Greek philosopher Epimenides said. The nations have tried to destroy us says the Psalmist; in other words, God may be not made of gold and stone, but the people of God have been refined and refreshed as if we are, Psalm 66:10, but we have come through because of our God’s faithfulness. So now I (singular) will worship with Hebrew worship, says the Psalmist, and I call upon you all now to listen to my story of what God has done for me. And what has God done for me? Well God heard my prayer. Now I call upon the world to come and hear (Psalm 66:16) me say that when I cried out to God, God came and heard (Psalm 66:19).

The messages of the Psalmist and of Paul are not entirely the same, but there is a common theme. The God of the Israelites is the God of the world; the only true God. The One for whom the entire world is searching can be found amongst the Israelites in the personal testimony of individual Jews and in the disciplined and applied study of the Jewish cultural traditions. Whatever your way of searching for meaning is, it’s important that you understand your need for something greater than yourself. God has provided a way to know this, in Jesus Christ, and the thing you need to know is Jesus Christ himself. Jesus is both the revealer and the revelation; he is both the narrator and the hero of the book.

So how does this apply to you or me?  Some of us fit into both models, even if it does require some stretching. I was raised in a Christian home; I learned the stories of God as a child from my parents and other adults in my life at church and school.  I am not a Jew, but I am a Christian, so I know about God from inside the culture of God’s own people. Yet I am also a student. I don’t like being thought of as a scholar or an academic since my desire is to be approachable in ministry. I am clever and well-read, I have degrees in Arts, Education, Ministry and Theology, but I hope I’m not lofty. I can debate with other university graduates, but I’d rather sit and listen to people living daily lives in the hope that I never become too grandiose to do that; even if I do use words like “grandiose” in my sermons.

The gospel speaks to the ordinary person who just wants to thank God for what God has done, and to the no-less ordinary person who enjoys a well-written book and relates to a God of crosswords and sudoku. If finding God is a puzzle to be mastered for you, a journey to be walked by you, a lover to be wooed for you, a parent to be rediscovered in your adulthood, or any other image, there is room in God for all those ways to lead to satisfaction. Whether you meet God and go deeper with God in books, gardens, or solitary or with your beloved walks along the beach; whether in singing in the car or at church, in hanging out with Christian friends on Sunday mornings or Tuesday afternoons, I encourage you to do more of it. Continue to pursue God, continue to go deeper into your relationship and God’s love. Whatever it is that you do to know God more, is what God has set before you entirely for that purpose. So, go on, keep going on, and no longer be ignorant of the depths of God’s love for you and the world.