Imagine a day in Athens on a hill overlooking the city. This part of the city looks much the same in the twenty-first century, but this day is mid-first century. As you look out over the moving city below you are taken by its beauty, but quickly as you turn you see a gathering crowd and remember why you are here. Your longevity past the next few hours hinges on whether you are "on" today.
"Here" is Mars Hill in the mid-fifties A.D. and you a Paul the Apostle. You're about to speak to the Areopagus; a regular gathering of philosophers of various world-views -- Stoics and Epicureans mostly.
However, these philosophers aren't just the smartest guys in the room, they are the guides and directors of Greek society. Right under the envious nose of the Roman Empire they could give thinking, approaches, laws, and people the thumbs up or the thumbs down. For a person like you, who is bringing a new religion, and a new god to their attention, they'll give you a chance to explain yourself, however if their appendages go south so do you.
Just ask the beloved Socrates who a hundred years earlier was forced to drink poison hemlock after explaining himself to this same group. They believed that he had introduced a foreign god outside of the mercurial Greek pantheon. So his sentence was death.
So you, Paul, have been invited to address the same group on the same subject. You have the length of a speech to convince them that you are not deserving of the same fate. Many of them already think you are a "seed-picker"; a slur of the day that is meant to describe someone who, though interesting, is not very logical. The Areopagus made its entertainment and living by poking holes in the logic, and thereby twisting their collective cerebral cortexes around the likes of you.
You could have kept your mouth shut in the marketplace and no one would have noticed. It's just you in the great Athens waiting for your companions to show up and take you out of town.
But you are Paul. "Mouth shut" is not an option. So now you've got one shot. What are you going to say? What did he say?
Well, for starters he praised their religiosity. That's a move that all of us could make. But then he basically tells them he's here to inform their ignorance. Whoops, are you sure you want to insult the intelligence of the guys who pride themselves on being the collective brain of society?
Yikes! But as Paul you're used to walking where angels fear to tread. So you open your mouth and tell them this story.
So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: "Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, 'To the unknown god.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us,
(Acts 17:22-27 ESV)
What on earth is Paul up to? The same thing God has been up to for the duration of His story for all time. It has been a smoldering story for all that time in the heart of humankind. Paul starts with "the God who made the world and everything in it," because "everything" includes and even feeds this element of which Paul is about to speak.
What's more: That the same burning continues in our hearts in our culture, and arts, and media all of these centuries later.
No comments:
Post a Comment