Monday, May 22, 2017

To an Unknown God



If there was anything the Athenians knew something about, it was gods. They had spent hundreds of years thinking about and talking about and asking questions about gods. Hard questions. Questions like: Who made the world? Who was the first human being? What happens when we die? Some of the smartest people in the world had contemplated these questions. And, to the Athenians, it was obvious: their lives were controlled by a group of super beings they called gods. It was gods who ruled the earth. It was gods who ruled the sea. It was gods who ruled the mountains, the rivers, the sky… everything. The Greeks believed that these gods sat on Mount Olympus and controlled every aspect of human life: travel, hunting, beauty, love, weather, fate. You name it. The gods were in control.[i]

The Greeks thought they had figured it all out. They identified these gods. Named them and attributed them with great powers. Clearly, the people of Athens knew something about gods.

They knew about gods, and they worshiped gods. Their city was filled with temples and altars. In fact, Athens was the heart of pagan culture.[ii] It was the home of Pericles and Plato. Pericles was the brilliant general, orator and politician who transformed a bunch of alliances into an empire and led the people to build the Parthenon, which was a temple dedicated to the goddess Athena.[iii] And Plato was the brilliant philosopher who expanded on the teachings of Socrates, who was famous for his relentless questioning.[iv]

So, after centuries of questioning everything, the people of Athens had come to believe that success and failure in life depended on whether or not the gods were angry with you. If you had a good crop, for instance, that meant the gods were on your side. If there was a drought, then you had somehow managed to insult one of the gods. The Greeks knew what pleased and dis-pleased human rulers so they figured it was much the same with gods. Doesn’t everyone like to be praised? Worshiped and adored? Don’t we all like to receive gifts? So the people of Athens prayed to the gods and offered up sacrifices, hoping to please the gods and stay on their good side.[v]

The whole notion of worshiping many different gods may sound strange to those of us who have been taught that there is only one true God. But idolatry is more than worshiping a statue. “Idolatry occurs when we begin to value anything more than we value God.”[vi]

And, let’s face it, we value a lot of things: Careers, family, independence, beauty, youth, success. We have sports heroes, war heroes, and comic book heroes. There are music icons, fashion icons, and movie stars. Some people even love politicians, poets, and plumbers!

“Now, wait a minute!” you say. “Sure, we value these things. But worship them? That’s a stretch, don’t you think? They’re not really gods….” And you may be right. But I tell you what. If you really want to know how much something means to you, try to give it up. Or better yet, have someone else try to take it from you. Or even just change it a little. You will find out quickly how much it matters. Whenever we spend more time thinking about some hero than we do about God, that is idolatry. “If our every thought is about the latest gadget or our personal appearance, that’s idolatry. If the first priority in our lives is our family, even that’s idolatry.”[vii]

When God said, ‘You shall have no other gods before Me’ (Exodus 20:3), He wasn’t just talking about the imaginary deities that seem so ridiculous to us today. He was talking about anything that usurps His place as number one in our hearts.”[viii]

 So we have Tiger football, cell phones, and the Pioneer Woman. And the Athenians had Zeus, Hera and Aphrodite. And they worshiped them religiously.

The Athenians knew about gods, and they worshiped gods. But they still had that little nagging voice somewhere deep inside that whispered, “Something is missing.” And they were right.

Paul sees it the moment he enters the city. Paul, you may recall, was once a leader in the Jewish community, and, when he first heard about Jesus, Paul did not believe. In fact, Paul did all he could to stop people from following Jesus. Until Jesus stopped Paul right in his tracks. A light from heaven flashed around him, and, for a short time, Paul could see nothing at all. Then Jesus sent someone to heal Paul. After that, Paul was dedicated to Jesus.

Paul went from one town to another, telling everybody he could about Jesus. But people don’t like it when you start messing with their gods, so Paul had been forced out of one city after another. Finally, he ends up in Athens, where he intended to wait for his co-workers, Timothy and Silas. But Paul sees that the whole city is worshiping idols, and he just can’t keep quiet. So Paul goes to the synagogue and to the marketplace (two places where he knew he would find people) and starts telling them about Jesus.

“Paul faced a challenging audience in Athens. It was a cultured, educated city that was proud of its history.”[ix] There were Jews in Athens, and Gentile people who had converted to the Jewish faith. But there were also a lot of pagan philosophers who loved to talk about religion.

The Epicureans worshiped pleasure. Their chief purpose in life was to enjoy a peaceful life, free from pain, disturbing passions and superstitious fears (including the fear of death). They did not deny the existence of gods, but Epicureans believed that the gods had nothing to do with folks like you and me.[x] The Stoics believed that everything was a god and that god was in everything. So they believed that all things, good or evil, were from god and should not be resisted.[xi] We can find fault with these theories, but at least the people of Athens were searching for the truth. They wanted to know God, and they felt led to worship. Bishop Will Willimon says, “…their impulse to worship is right even if the objects of their worship are wrong. They at least know that something else is needed to make sense out of life, to give coherence to the world.”[xii]

So they were willing to listen to what Paul had to say. His message was new to the Athenians. It was different, and that intrigued them. They liked to learn and to argue and to question. So they invited Paul to preach at the Aeropagus. He goes, and this time, he changes tactics slightly. In the past, when Paul had preached to Jewish people or to Gentile converts to the Jewish faith, he would begin by looking at the Hebrew scriptures and showing how they pointed to Jesus. But the people in Athens are not familiar with the Old Testament. So Paul begins his message with general references to religion.[xiii]

“In all things you are very religious,” he says. And though it sounds good, it was not necessarily a compliment. True. There were temples everywhere. And the Athenians loved their festivals and sacrifices and prayers. Paul had even found an altar that was dedicated “TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.”

It seems that 600 years or so before Paul arrived in Athens, a terrible plague had come upon the city, taking many lives. Then a man named Epimenides had an idea. He released a flock of sheep in the town, and wherever a sheep lay down, the Athenians would sacrifice that animal to the god that had the nearest shrine or temple. But, if a sheep lay down and there was no shrine or temple nearby, the Athenians sacrificed the sheep to the Unknown God. This way, they hoped to please any god that they may have somehow managed to overlook. Paul tells them this Unknown God is the Creator.[xiv] The Athenians believed that, if you denied the existence of a god, you might very well be punished.[xv] They already believed in lots of gods, so they are willing to hear what Paul has to say about his god.

It has been said that every single person is created with a God-shaped hole and only God can fill it. The people of Athens certainly had a longing to know God. By paying attention to the world around them, the Athenians had learned a lot about God. They had learned that God is smart. Smarter than they were. They had learned that God is powerful. More powerful than they were. And they had correctly surmised that God is involved in human affairs.

But there is so much more to know about God.

If you think God is some superhero sitting way up in the clouds, arbitrarily making decisions just to monkey up our lives, then you really don’t know God at all. Paul tells the Athenians, “This Unknown God that you worship … that is THE God. The Almighty. The Creator. The one who made all things. You and me and every blade of grass and every cloud in the sky. The Creator made it all. Not because God was bored. God loves us, and the Creator went to a lot of trouble to create this world for us to enjoy. And that longing that you have to know God, that IS God. God loves you, and the Creator wants you to know and love God. So God sent his son Jesus to be the one sacrifice, the one gift, that could make any and all of us right with the Almighty God. But some did not believe that Jesus was the Son of God, so they killed him. But Paul’s God, the Creator, was so powerful that, after three days, God raised Jesus from the dead.

There were some in Athens who made fun of Paul. Others were curious and wanted to know more. And some believed. Friends, we live in a world where people are searching for something to believe in. Something that can make sense of life. Like the people of Athens, their experience of the world can convince them that there really IS a God. Don't you get a sense that God is present and powerful and wise when you look up at a sky full of stars? We can learn a lot about the Creator by looking at the creation. But if the world is ever going to know Jesus, then we who know him must introduce him to those who do not know. Some will laugh at us. Others will be curious and want to know more. But some will join us and believe. Isn’t that worth any risk?

  



[i] The information on Greek Mythology was written by History.com staff and published in 2009 on the History.com website at http://www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/greek-mythology. Publisher A+E Networks. Accessed May 19, 2017.
[ii] William H. Willimon. Acts: Interpretation. Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1988. 142.
[iii] The information on Pericles was written by History.com staff and published in 2009 on the History.com website at http://www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/pericles. Publisher A+E Networks. Accessed May 19, 2017.
[iv] The information about Plato was written by History.com staff and published in on the History.com website at. Publisher A+E Networks. Accessed May 19, 2017.
[v] Pollard.
[vi] The definition of idolatry was written by the staff of the United Church of God and published on the Beyond Today website at https://www.ucg.org/bible-study-tools/bible-questions-and-answers/what-is-idolatry. Copyrighted 1995-2017 by the United Church of God.
[vii] United Church of God.
[viii] United Church of God.
[ix] David Guzik. “Commentary on Acts 17:4.” David Guzik Commentaries on the Bible. http://www.studylight.org/commentaries/guz/acts-17.html. 1997-2003. Accessed May 19, 2017.
[x] Guzik.
[xi] Guzik.
[xii] Willimon, 143.
[xiii] Guzik.
[xiv] Guzik.
[xv] The information on Greek religion was written by John Richard Thornhil Pollard and published on the Britannica website at http://www.britannica.com/topic/Greek-religion. Copyrighted 2017 by Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. Accessed May 19, 2017.

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