Seductive Evangelism
Text: Acts 17:16-32
Not exactly history, not exactly myth, the book of Acts is an origin story. Through episodes about the early church and its leaders, it attempts to explain why Christianity worked. Why we have even heard of it, much less be it. Why it did not fade away like so many of the political and religious movements that were its contemporaries. Or, if you say that the reason was that God intended it, then you could say that Acts explains how it worked.
Acts is primarily the story of its three main characters: Peter, who mostly worked with Jews; Paul, who mostly worked with gentiles; and the Holy Spirit, who guided them both. And in the story are people that these three touched, who were somehow moved to follow Jesus, this Jewish reformer who was crucified and rose from the dead. And for whom Jesus in person and in actions made sense and in some cases transformed their lives.
The coming of the Holy Spirit is the subject of Pentecost (which we will celebrate in two weeks). And Peter gets to make his keynote address shortly thereafter. But the speech we heard today is Paul’s turn.
Paul had no intention of making such a speech. He was stuck in Athens, waiting for his colleagues Timothy and Silas to arrive. He was in Athens for his protection, it seems, having been run out of town elsewhere, and probably should have lain low. But Paul was never one to sit still for long.
Wandering around Athens, he was distressed to find so many idols. Irritated, might be a better way to put it, or exasperated. Idol worship is the big “thou shalt not,” number one of the big ten. So Paul was unhappy with the Athenians. But he also was concerned for them, seeing in them a longing that he thought he might help satisfy.
Paul was a missionary, not a theologian or a liturgist or a church politician. He called himself an apostle, meaning one sent by God. And he was an evangelist, constitutionally unable to keep to himself what he saw as good news for everybody. So he began to argue—in the sense of discuss—with the Athenians. As a result, though it says that they thought of him as a babbler or chatterer, they invited him—politely, in the spirit of academia—to give a little talk, sort of a colloquium. He sounds rather strange to us, they say, so we would like to know what he means.
In the letters we have of Paul, he often writes to Jewish followers of Jesus. And his arguments are in the form of “compare and contrast” the Judaism of Jesus with that of other Jewish movements of the time. He can trust in his arguments that his listeners have a solid foundation. They understand (to say the least) the notion of one God rather than many, and they know the theological and social history of the people of Abraham and Moses. Paul can start there and put the teachings and life of Jesus in a familiar framework. And he can use his own life experiences—as a devout and learned Jew, as a Roman citizen, and as someone struck by Jesus suddenly on the road to Damascus—as illustrations.
But he cannot do any of that with the Athenians. He is not teaching Jesus to Jews here. He is teaching Judaism to pagans. So his talking points are the ones people of the Book all share. God is one, there are no other gods but God. And: God is the creator of all things, a loving and pleased creator. And: People are made in the image of God, people have God within them. And: God is the source of all life, the source of all order extracted from chaos. And: God is knowable.
This speech by Paul is like a poem in some ways—a missional poem—whose purpose is to satisfy a particular people’s particular needs with a convincing fulfillment of the longings of their hearts.
It is structured in a formal way (in what is called a chiastic pattern; where the going in mirrors the coming out). It is about the essence of things, about the most essential desires of people. It is seductive; it flatters the listeners, tries to understand them, and honors them; it is steamy in a way: Paul intends to excite them. And finally, it is wicked, disruptive; its goal is not only to educate the Athenians but to convince them, to change them.
I see you are very religious, Paul says. He is not being sarcastic. He sees in the many idols of the Athenians a deep yearning. A need to find contentment that we all somehow discover to be just beyond arm’s length, forever narrowly unreachable. A need to fill what Pascal called the “infinite abyss” in us, meaning not that the abyss is boundless, but that only the infinite can complete it. We are made in the image of God, and it is God, says Paul paraphrasing an Athenian poet, in which we must live and move and have our being.
Paul calls the Athenians ignorant. [Our Bible translates this as “a god they worship as unknown.”] But he is saying more than what we usually mean by that. Not that they are stupid, but that they lack the knowledge of whom that God really is. The god is not unknown absolutely, but unknown to them. Not well understood. This is the gift Paul wishes to bring to these Athenians for whom wisdom is paramount: He offers understanding and completeness.
Paul’s missional poem has as its center the assurance that God created humans and their habitat 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.” We are drawn to God even though we are often wandering in the dark, because we know something that the Athenians did not: that God is there, not far off and not trying to hide. Those who reach out for God, Paul says, will find God.
Paul follows Christ. For Paul, Christ’s death and resurrection is the proof of God’s favor. And John in his Gospel would agree: God can be found because God has been found in Christ. But for the Athenians, what for Paul is confirmation is for them is refutation. They laughed at him, sneered at him. But not all did. Some see sense in Paul, and, it says, are willing to hear him again about this.
This is sufficient. For a missionary, for a spreader of good news, it is not necessary that everyone who hears, listens. Christianity worked not because Paul browbeat the world with his conviction, but because Paul was pastoral—a pastor to them—and not judgmental. Paul did not condemn the Athenians but cared for them.
Words that tell the story of Christ, words that tell good news, are important. But people become Christians not because they are convinced of the words that describe Christ, but because of the love Christians show for others. By your love for one another, Jesus said, people will know you are my followers. Christians have something important to say about God, but it will seem to the world like just arrogant nonsense if we are not all first as pastors one to the other.
