Acts 17:22-31
James McTyre
Lake Hills Presbyterian Church (USA)
Sunday, April 27, 2008

Acts 17:22 Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, "Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way.

The Apostle Paul, the first global missionary of the church, had been preaching in what's now the country of Turkey. The Bible doesn't specifically say what happened to make Paul feel the need to leave Turkey, the region where he was born and raised, but evidently, the Spirit was kind of drying up. One night, Paul had a dream. In his dream, a man from Greece was pleading with Paul to, “Please come and help us.” That was all it took to get Paul and his flock of missionaries to decide to hop a boat and sail to Greece.

In Greece, their first stopping point was Philippi. We get the book of the Bible, the letter to the Philippians, from this mission outpost. Things went well in Philippi, at first. But then, Paul and his associate, Silas, got in trouble with the local authorities for being preachy know-it-alls and disrupting the slave trade. After a brief trial, they were attacked by a crowd, stripped naked, beaten with rods and thrown in jail. Then, thanks the miracle of a very localized earthquake epicentered at the jail, all the prisoners were set free. Faced with a God who could cause earthquakes with laser-beam precision, the Philippian fathers very kindly asked Paul and his preachers to leave the city and never return.

Next, Paul landed in Thessalonica, from which we get the books of the Bible, the letters to the Thessalonians, 1 and 2. Paul and his friends had more jail time, but this time, instead of sending an earthquake, God simply sent bail – which also works. Following this, the missionaries decided it would be best to move along again.

So, then they went to Berea. This time, word was beginning to travel faster than the jailers. Before Paul and his associates could be thrown in jail the Christians of Berea decided to escort them to yet another city in scenic ancient Greece. This time, it was Athens.

Athens – city of philosophers, the birthplace of democracy, host city of the first modern Olympics – Athens was the perfect place for Paul to land. The Bible itself says that the people of Athens “would spend their time in nothing but telling or hearing something new.” Kind of like California, but with togas.

Athens would have been the perfect place for Paul to preach, except for all the idols. Athenian Idols were everywhere Paul looked. On just about every corner - statues of nude men. It drove Paul nuts. Remember, Paul was Jewish, a Jewish convert to Christianity. Idolatry and nudity not only violated several commandments embedded in Paul's psyche, they were also really irritating to someone who was preaching the One God in Jesus Christ for all humanity.

So Paul started arguing. He argued in the synagogues. He argued in the market square. Now, the Athenians were a little different. Instead of dragging Paul to jail, the Bible says “they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, where they asked him, '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.'” (They're so polite in Athens. But, after all, it's in southern Greece.)

Why in the world would it matter where they took Paul, and why would Luke the writer of Acts mention the Areopagus by name? The Bible doesn't say specifically. A little history helps.

The Areopagus was not the center for public debate. “Pagos” in Greek means, “big rock.” Areo probably comes from the name of Ares, the Greek god of war – not polite war, but savage, bloodthirsty, slaughtering war. The Areopagus was the traditional place in Athens where murder trials were held. So, while the Areopagus might not mean so much to you and me, for Paul -- who preached Christ crucified, for Paul, who had recently stood before the magistrates -- for Paul, who had recently been beaten with rods -- Paul who had in at least one jail and driven out of every town he'd visited – for Paul to be taken to a hill, not unlike the hill where Christ was crucified, a hill honoring the Greek god of slaughter, a hill where murder trials were held – well, suddenly those open-minded Athenians might have looked a little more menacing.

But even with his knees knocking, Paul was a genius. Again, a little history. The Areopagus, the homicide court of Athens, was also the site of the temple to the Unknown God. Remember, Athens was filled with statues to the “Big 12” gods (Zeus, Athena, Ares, etc.), and also scores of lesser gods. Legend had it that around 600 years before Paul, Athens was in the grips of a plague and desperate to appease the gods with the appropriate sacrifices. There was a philosopher named Epimenides who came up with a 600 BC health care plan. Epimenides' idea went like this:

The Athenians gathered a flock of sheep to the Areopagus and released them. The sheep roamed about Athens and the surrounding hills. Wherever a sheep stopped and lied down a sacrifice was made to the local god of that place. There were so many gardens and buildings associated with a specific god or goddess, that pretty much wherever a sheep landed, the people could build an altar and make a sacrifice (and I'm guessing it was the unfortunate sheep. Thanks for all your help, there, Fluffy). However, at least one, if not several, quick-thinking sheep led the Athenians to locations that had no god(s) associated. Looked like a good plan on the sheeps' behalf. Sadly for them, though, Epimenides (also thinking quickly) realized the hole in his health care logic and told the Athenians, “Oops. We must have missed a god,” and built an altar and made the sacrifice to... the Unknown God, on the Areopagus. Perhaps given the moral failings of the Big 12 gods, this god who started out as a placeholder for a religious “Oops,” the Unknown God, became very popular.

So, here's Paul, standing atop the Areopagus, this place of murderous death. He looks out at the Temple of the Unknown God. Thinking even more quickly than the sheep or Epimenides, he says,

“For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, 'To an unknown god.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him--though indeed he is not far from each one of us.”

And, Paul's genius doesn't stop there. He knows the philosophy of Epimenides and even quotes him to the Greeks:

For 'In him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your own poets have said, 'For we too are his offspring.'

Again, we hear this quoted about our God, but the line about 'In him we live and move and have our being,' is in quotes in your Bible. It's in quotes because Paul is quoting the great philosopher of the Athenians to the Athenians. The line, 'in him live and move and have our being' was originally part of a poem written by Epimenides about Zeus, the number one god of the Greek Big 12, who was, according to Greek religion, the father of all creation.

Paul is a genius of biblical proportions. He stands on the hilltop of murder, remembers the guy who invented the Unknown God, quotes this guy talking about the #1 Greek god, and applies the Greeks' own philosopher to Christ who died on a hilltop and the God of Jesus in whom we 'live and breathe and have our being.' Dang, Paul is good. And if you don't know the history, you miss that. Unlike the rest of us preachers, Paul is brilliant. Biblically brilliant.

So Paul, who's been so annoyed by all the naked, idolatrous statues, goes on:

“Since we are God's offspring (implied there, NOT the offspring of Zeus or any other naked statue), we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance (and as much as the Greeks love their gods, they hate ignorance, so again Paul's landing a genius jab), now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead."

Oh, Paul just couldn't resist. Apparently, according to the Bible, he had them, right up until the point about the resurrection. The rest of the story picks up in verse 32:

When they (the Athenians) heard of the resurrection of the dead, some scoffed; but others said, “We will hear you again about this.” (In other words, “Hmmm. Well. That's interesting. Thank you very much. Let's talk about this again some other time. We'll call you.”) At that point (the Bible says) Paul left them.

But some of them joined him and became believers, including Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris, and others with them. After this, Paul left Athens.

OK. Here's the thing. You're logical, sensible people. You live – not in the cradle of democracy – but in its greatest example. We've got more American Idols than we can count – homes, cars, TVs and the people who live in them. We are desperately aware of the unknown. We may not worship the god of the unknown, but we live in fear of the unknown every single day. Every week, we come to worship. We walk up the hill to sit before the cross, we listen to words and songs and prayers about the God in whom we live and move and have our being – are we going to do more than rub our chins and say, “Hmmm. That's Interesting. Thank you very much. Let's talk about this again some other time.”?? Or are we going to do what Paul said to do?: Repent. Repent and live and breathe and have our being in the God who is known. The God who knows us. The God who brought Jesus Christ back from the dead?