Acts 17.16-34 Passion for souls...
Edinburgh is the “Athens of the North”, so Athens was the “Edinburgh of ancient Greece” City of culture, fine art, learning, steeped in history. A classy place to hang out, with bustling streets, lots of sight-seeing, plenty of entertainment. Paul was waiting around in Athens for his friends – the rest of his team – to arrive. And as he took in a bit of sight-seeing, he noticed temples, statues, wee street shrines. Paul got angry, disturbed. The word means “urged on, stimulated” or “provoked, irritated, or made stronger or worse.”
We need to get rattled. We need to be shaken out of the complacency that whispers in our ears
“Nobody much is interested in the Gospel these days so why bother with evangelism?”
“If God wants to save them, he will speak to them”
“They'll think I'm an idiot! Best to keep off religion”
“”We're too busy/tired/ignorant of the Gospel/we don't have the team to share our faith”
”Everyone has their own truth; you can't force your ideas on other people!”
We need to get rattled. Paul got angry. The RSV says “his spirit was provoked within him” (RSV). We need that to happen to us, to shake us out of our complacency. That shaking is theological: a response to truth; it is emotional: something inside us that we feel; and it is spiritual: it is something God does.
Firstly, it is a theological process. He saw idols everywhere. The Message says “The city was a junkyard of idols”. He saw all this junk, all this tat, all these carvings of elegant goddesses and chubby little cupids... and his reaction was not “Hey, isn't that cute?” his reaction was Victor Meldrew: “I don't believe it!” How can they? How on earth can they have so many idols. That's a response to truth.
The first motivation for mission, is jealousy for God's honour. There's a God in Heaven, who is almighty, eternal, totally good, pure, who radiates with the power that called everything into being; and yet they can fill their city full of these trashy images; they can imagine that somehow this stuff connects them with the ineffable and eternal? How can they have the cheek to equate the almighty, mysterious god, with these grotesque images of fat little boys with wings and arrows?
Do we believe in God? Do we believe in the Three-in-One, the Triune? Do we believe he matters? If he exists, if he is who the Bible says he is, then he ought to be worshipped. If every man, woman and child on this planet owes every breath they take, to this God, isn't it right that every man, woman and child should worship this God? If this God offers grace and forgiveness to those who trust in his son, comes to his creatures in such generosity, isn't it right that those creatures should respond to him is surrender and reverence? Isn't every idol, every distraction, every thing that men and women put in the place of God, everything that men and women use to fill the God-shaped gap inside, just wrong?
The second motivation for mission, is concern for God's children. How can theses people be so totally lost? This One True God says “you shall have no other gods before me”, and these people were ignoring that command. were blithely surrounding themselves with little tin gods that somehow represented the ideal forms that people aspire to – like after-shave or lipstick adverts today... “because you’re worth it!”
Do we believe in God? Do we believe in his holiness and justice? Do we believe he judges. Aren't those idols so empty, so futile, so meaningless? Are they not in the end doing untold, eternal damage to those who follow them, serve them, trust them?
That jealousy, that passion, is theologically driven; it is truth that sets it free in our lives. We need to dwell in the word of god until idolatry and the lost state of people in or world, stings like lemon juice on an open sore.
Secondly, it is emotionally expressed. Luke tells us that “Paul’s spirit was provoked”. His human spirit: the deep inner core of who Paul's being, a level deeper than intellect and sentiment, was stirred up. It is something that happens in the human spirit. He felt it. One of the Greek words translated “compassion” literally means “gut-wrenching”. Now we sometimes get a bit afraid of “emotionalism” in Bible believing churches. But if we are going to be a new testament kind of Church, we need more emotion, not less. We need to feel passion for God and compassion for his people at a deep level.
And thirdly it is spiritually inspired. The human spirit is the part of us where the Holy Spirit lives. So when Paul's spirit was provoked, the Holy Spirit was at work. Word and Spirit Christians believe that the Word of God and the Spirit of God flow together in our lives, to lead us and guide us and motivate us. We need the Holy Spirit to take the word of god, the theological truth of who God is, and set it on fire, to provide the “head of steam” to power us in mission. Mission is only fuelled and sustained by joy. If mission is lacking, it’s because joy and delight in God are lacking. “Come Holy Spirit!”
Team or no team, there is no question of “this not being the right time” for mission in Athens. It certainly wasn't the time for sight-seeing. Paul can't contain himself. He once said “Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel” (1 Corinthians 9:16NIV) or “I couldn’t keep from preaching it if I wanted to. I would be utterly miserable. (Living Bible). How we need to get rattled, jealous so that it can't be “not the right moment”.
We need to Get relational. Paul's response to this deep feeling of jealousy and anger, was to connect with people. First – as ever – with his fellow Jews. He reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and God-fearing Greeks (RSV), but also with whoever would listen in the marketplace (v. 17) J B Phillips suggests “He felt compelled to discuss the matter with the Jews in the synagogue...” He didn't need to convince Jews to turn away from idols, but he still needed to tell Jews that their Messiah had come and his name was Jesus. And then, yes as time went on and he gained a bit of a reputation, he was taken to the “city assembly” and asked what this new teaching of his was all about.
We all have a set of connexions. You know people. I know people. The people we know, know people. We get introduced to new people. Some of these people know Jesus; some of them don't. I can think of over thirty people that I know, that I speak to from time to time, some of them are family, some I know by name, some I meet in the opticians' or when they come to do work in the house. Jesus says the fields are white unto harvest. Do you know what we say? We so often are saying “The fields are still green, shoots but no harvest; the fields are brown; nothing is growing in them; the fields are grey stubble, harvest is in the past.” We think Jesus is wrong. Jesus isn't wrong. We're colour-blind! We haven't learned to spot spiritual life, spiritual hunger when we see it. Come Holy Spirit and open my eyes to the harvest.
We need to Get relevant... It wasn't always a comfortable or easy journey. They dismissed Paul as a babbler – maybe a reference to his foreign accent – and deliberately or otherwise misunderstood what he was saying. You can hear the dismissive, ridiculing tones in “He seems to be preaching about some foreign gods.” Possibly because Paul frequently mentioned “Jesus” and “resurrection”, they thought Paul's two gods were “Jesus” and “Anastasis”. He had to hang in there.
He had to learn the language, and not just the language but the culture. He had to look for the points of interest, the points of common ground. And he finds one in the altar “to an unknown god”. He finds another in the Greek philosopher Epimenides's line “In him we live and move and have our being” and in the philosopher Aratus words “We are his offspring.” These were major cultural influences in Athens. The fact that Paul knew them and could quote them speaks volumes. He wasn't just dumping an obscure and irrelevant message upon them, but speaking in terms they understood.
But more than that, both the lines Paul quotes were originally written about Zeus, the “Father/king of the gods.” Is Paul suggesting that the one true God, the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is to be identified with Zeus, the father of gods and superheroes? Of course not! What he was saying was 'This Unknown God, the one you know is there and have never met, is not just some minor deity: he is the One true God, “in whom we live and move and have our being.” We are all the children of this God. There is no other!' But he could well have been misinterpreted. But that was a risk he was prepared to take.
Relevance is risky; but relevance is necessary. We need knowledge; we need understanding, we need passion and courage, to be able to understand the undoubted spiritual hunger of our day, and to be able to say “here is food”. To people filling their lives with material things; with experience be they sexual or drug-induced, , with ideologies, with religious systems – calling on angels, engaging in pagan rituals – we need to be able to say “Here is what you are looking for. Here is something to make sense of yourself and your world. Here is an experience; here is spiritual reality!”
Come Holy Spirit and help me to get rattled, to get relational, to get relevant. Give us a passion for souls ...
© Gilmour Lilly April 2014
