6^th Sunday of Easter - April 27, 2008

Kingswood UMC - Buffalo Grove IL

Text: Acts 17:16-34

There has been a story circulating in recent years that Charles Wesley ... the author of so many of our hymns ... chose his music from bar songs, or drinking songs popular in his day, in an effort to reach the people who weren’t allowed into the more proper religious services. We do know that John and Charles Wesley went into the fields around London to preach so that the working class coal miners and others could hear God’s message of love and grace. So the idea of them choosing music from the popular culture of the day doesn’t seem so far fetched. But it turns out that this isn’t what happened at all. The mistake occurred when someone mistook the term bar songs for a description of songs sung in a bar instead of the way the bars of the song were repeated within it.

But the method of borrowing from the culture to make a point about something else, is common. Francis Scott Key did write the words of the Star Spangled Banner to the music of a Welsh drinking song. Can’t you just imagine .... (Raise you glass to the king ... ) The three songs we will sing during communion this morning are all Christian poetry or words set to popular folk tunes of various cultures. And there is a wonderful story behind one of the most haunting of our hymns ... #552 ... Here, O Lord, Your Servants Gather. Tokuo Yamaguchi took a gagku mode of song ... music reserved only for the entrance of the Emperor in traditional Japanese culture ... and after the war and the end of the Japanese empire, Mr. Yamaguchi wrote words in that mode about joining hands as God’s servants, and seeking the realm of God.

Today we’ve heard the story of Paul visiting the ancient and beautiful city of Athens in Greece. He’s been run out of Thessalonica and Berea, and friends have brought him to Athens and left him there alone to wait for some others to join him. He is headed toward Corinth which had become the most bustling port of the region, a center of commerce and political life, with 100,000 people living there. But when Paul arrived in Athens, it remained the cultural and intellectual center of not only Greece but of the known world of the time, even though its population had dwindled to about 20,000. It had been in the forums of Athens that Socrates, Plato, Epicurus, Zeno and others had laid down patterns of philosophical thought and discussion that influence us to this day. The place was filled with beautiful marble monuments, statues and altars, evidence of the development of the arts, architecture, geometry and religious thought. And it was filled with arenas for drama and other performances, a place where forms of democratic government and debate had emerged.

Paul immersed himself in the city ... walking the streets and engaging in conversation with those he met. He would have joined other tourists to climb up the 500 ft. hill called the Acropolis of Athens – the highest point in any Greek city. There he would have seen the Parthenon, the great temple of the goddess of Athena, and he could look down on the city and see the Agora, the public market and administrative center, adorned with shops, sacred buildings and altars. Everywhere he turned he found evidence of religious sentiment – either superstitious practice focused on the many Gods of Greek religion, or more intellectual and philosophical speculation on the source and meaning of life. Both seemed empty in contrast to his rich Jewish grounding in the One God and his experience of Jesus Christ. Sometimes Paul found himself dismissed as a babbler ... a seed-picker or bird that picks up and drops bits of news. Others were curious about what seemed to be news of a foreign divinity. These folks invited him to a more intentional conversation.

They took him to the Areopagus ... the hill of Ares, or Mars Hill ... where he spoke to them at length. Mars Hill is an outcropping of rock just below the Acropolis in Athens. You have a picture of it on the cover of your bulletin today. It is the place where the judicial council of Athens met. And that council is also called the Areopagus. These folks are used to examining new ideas ... though not so quick to accept them, they love to engage in debate. And so Paul was in the position of joining their style of exploration ... but with the urgent news of Jesus Christ. How was he to do this? Most were pagans. Paul had visited the synagogues and argued there about the rampant idolatry in the city. It distressed him deeply to see the city so full of idols. But how to connect?

Paul chooses to use a method a bit like those song writers I mentioned at the beginning. Though he didn’t use their own music to reach them, Paul claimed their own Greek poetry and their philosophical reflections on the origin of all things to make a connection. And he identified as a point of contact their obvious yearning to know who God is and to be in relationship with God. He affirms their search in what someone has called a little "sanctified sarcasm," when he begins by seeming to flatter them: "I see how extremely religious you are." In all of their religious observances, Paul does not really see deep or true religious sentiment, but only the trappings of religion ... more superstition than faith. And so he goes to the heart of the issue by focusing on a particular altar he has seen with the inscription: "to an unknown God." Paul leverages their attempt to cover all their bases ... to be sure every possible god has an altar ... into a way to introduce the One True God of Jewish faith that has now been revealed in the resurrection of Jesus. He proclaims that this God is not really unknown but is known as the Creator — the Mother and Father — of the universe. And he takes it upon himself to make the introduction.

He begins by drawing a contrast: the God who made everything in the universe does not live in custom-made shrines made by human hands ... such as their altars represent. God doesn’t need humanity to take care of Him. God is the one who has created all things and takes care of us. He makes the creatures; the creatures don’t make him, is how Eugene Peterson renders Paul’s words. Then Paul describes the activity of God: starting from scratch, he made the entire human race and made the earth hospitable, with plenty of time and space for living so we could seek after God, and not just grope around in the dark but actually find him. He doesn’t play hide-and-seek with us. He’s not remote; he’s near. That is the paradox of this God who is the Creator of all things. God is not remote but near.

To make his point, Paul calls upon two Greek poets who had come up with similar sentiments. Not only is God near, living in us, but we also live in God. We are God’s offspring ... God-created ... the issue of God’s creative activity. And all that we are and do is in God. One commentator talked about God as our oxygen tent. We live and breathe God ... we are sustained and ongoingly created anew by and in God.

A few weeks ago I was privileged to be part of an interview with a young Korean woman who is a student at Garrett-Evangelical and who is in the process toward ordination in our conference. I don’t remember much of what she said ... but at one point the committee was pressing her to talk some more about her relationship with God. And she stopped for a moment ... went inside to her heart memory ... and then made a quiet but firm declaration that "God is beautiful." She went on to share with us the ways she has seen God’s beauty in her life and in her world. I was taken aback by her statement. I had never quite thought about God as beautiful before. Oh, I’ve praised the beauty of God’s creation when I’ve been especially transfixed by the beauty of nature. But somehow that had never translated to me that God is beautiful. But I think that is part of what Paul is saying as he proclaims (through the beauty of Greek poetry) that God is in all things and all things are in God. We don’t need to create beautiful images out of gold or silver or stone or words to depict God. In fact, all those things fall short of truly representing the beauty of God. But it is through our living in God, that God is known and shown.

Paul’s speech on Mars Hill actually focuses on God rather than Jesus until the very end when he claims that the unknown God is now known and calling for a radical life-change. In fact, the name of Jesus is not even used ... but he is referred to as the one who will judge and make right all things, and this is confirmed by his being raised from the dead. We’re back to that theme from Easter ... that through the resurrection, life wins! When we proclaim this on Easter morning, and every Sunday, every morning ... it is a revelation of God’s beauty and grace ... always calling us and all humanity to an awareness God’s nearness to us and our life in God. And as we deepen our awareness of how we are God’s beloved, created people ... we can not avoid the knowledge that all people, all of creation is beloved of God and lives in God.

P.S. We’re God-created. Living out of that knowledge and experience, our faith is deepened and we open ourselves to living a passionate spiritual path in our life together. The worship of idols doesn’t not reveal who God is .. or who we are. But as we come to acknowledge our dependence on God in all things ... in our worship and service, in our growing and caring, in our giving and receiving of grace in all of our relationships and in our world ... we will be challenged and strengthened to share our faith with others in many kinds of ways. Whether we do that through the symbols and rhythms of contemporary culture, or the traditional language of the church, God’s presence will be shown as our spirits move toward unity and peace.

Strathdee song