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Give It Your Best

Dr. Larry Thorson
June 29, 2008

Last week Martha and I attended our denomination’s General Assembly meeting which meets for a week every two years. This year it was just three miles south of my mother’s house where I grew up. Since we were in town to work on her house it was convenient to attend some of the GA meetings.

During the week I had the opportunity at GA to meet Dr. Don Owens, my predecessor here who served this church as pastor from 1991 to October of 2003. He made a good impression with me. What a great guy who left some big footsteps to fill. He’ll be here to kick off our centennial celebration and capital campaign on February 8 next year.

Don is one of those guys with lots of ideas. He now serves as Executive Presbyter of the Southern Kansas Presbytery where he told me that over 50% of residents in that part of the state are Hispanic. I was shocked. Rather than ignoring that fact Don went to Mexico and found a presbytery from the Presbyterian Church in Mexico that had set a goal of twenty new churches by 2020. He (or rather the Holy Spirit) convinced them to plant some of those churches in southern Kansas. The Mexican presbytery will send pastors to plant these churches and the Southern Kansas Presbytery will house them. Wow, what an idea.

But of course not all of Don’s ideas have worked. I reminded him of his farewell letter to this congregation. In it he had related how when he came here there were very few children in the church and the Family Center was virtually abandoned but that in his thirteen years all that had changed. I said that when I came two years after he left there were very few children and the Family Center was basically abandoned. We agreed that it’s just plain hard for people who live in 55+ communities to invite young families to church. They never meet any young families.

So he suggested that maybe the First Presbyterian Church needs to focus on being the best seniors church in the Valley and start a new, younger style church across the street in the Family Center. I said that’s what I would like to do but we can’t do that until we get air conditioning back in the Family Center. That’s when he did something I have rarely ever seen a pastor do, he apologized for having the air conditioning removed from the Family Center and put in the Fellowship Hall. He said “I figured anyone using a gym is going there to sweat fat off and why did they need air conditioning.” I loved his honesty.

What I like about working at the First Presbyterian Church is we can try anything and not have to worry about people criticizing us. Not all ideas produce the results that we want so then we change. Do you know how freeing that is? Imagine what you can do with God’s help if you’re not afraid to fail. That’s the legacy of the First Presbyterian Church of Hemet.

God willing we’re going to bring a new basketball and cheer leading league for children to Hemet called Upward. To qualify as an Upward League we have to enroll at least 250 children and present the good news of Jesus Christ to them. To do that we’re going to have to network with other churches in our valley. Come this winter, Valley-Wide Parks and Rec will not be the only game venue in town. Think Family Center. In addition we’re partnering with Youth for Christ to bring a major dodgeball tournament to Hemet Saturday August 26. Think Family Center.

I say all that because we’re going to do the best we can to meet people where they are, share the good news of Jesus Christ with them and leave the results to God. That’s all we can do. God has called us with a gym to use it to bring people to Christ. If people are brought to Christ, great. If not, we’ll be able to say we gave it our best.

That’s what the Apostle Paul could say in our Scripture today. In Acts 17:16-34 he tried a new approach to reach a difficult group of people that he hadn’t even intended to reach. In fact he was just hanging out like a tourist in the beautiful city of Athens, Greece waiting for his buddies, Timothy and Silas so they could continue on their mission trip planting new churches elsewhere. How many of you have visited Athens? Let’s read.

Scripture: Acts 17:16-17

16 While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. 17 So he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there.

Athens was a bit run down by comparison to its golden age, but it was still a great university town where important ideas were valued and intellectual curiosity was high. It was sort of like Berkeley.
As Paul made his way around, he couldn’t help noticing the incredible number and variety of religious shrines and temples. It was said that there were more statues of the gods in Athens than in all the rest of Greece put together, and that in Athens it was easier to meet a god than a man.

Paul looked at these things, not with modern eyes that admire the works of art, but rather through religious eyes that were stunned at the variety. He began in the synagogue then moved out into the marketplace, a venue not only for commerce but for the interchange of ideas. In a city like Athens it wasn’t difficult to attract an audience.

18 A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to debate with him. Some of them asked, "What is this babbler trying to say?" Others remarked, "He seems to be advocating foreign gods." They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. 19 Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, "May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20 You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we would like to know what they mean." 21 (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.)

The Areopagus is both a place, a small rocky hill northwest of the Acropolis in Athens (in Greek it means "hill of Ares" - the Romans called it "Mars Hill"), but more importantly it was the most prestigious council of elders in the history of Athens, so-named because it met on that site. Dating back some five or six centuries before Christ, the Areopagus consisted of nine archons or chief magistrates who guided the city-state away from rule by a king to rule by an oligarchy that laid the foundations for Greece's eventual democracy. Across the years the Areopagus changed - by Paul's day it was a place where matters of the criminal courts, law, philosophy and politics were adjudicated by some thirty-or-so members. It is here that Paul delivers one of his three major missionary speeches and the only one we have record of to non-believers.

22 Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: "People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.

He begins with what sounds like a compliment: "Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious." This is the only time we find this particular Greek word in the New Testament. It is desidemon which means literally, "fear of the demons or of the supernatural." What Paul was saying was that the people of Athens were highly superstitious (which, by the way, is precisely how the old King James Version translates it).

"For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD," Paul continued. In fact, had Paul had more time to play tourist, he would have found many altars to unknown gods in Athens. Six hundred years before, a terrible plague had fallen on the city which nothing could halt. A Cretan poet, Epimenides, had come forward with a plan. A flock of black and white sheep was let loose throughout the city from the Areopagus. Wherever each lay down it was sacrificed to the nearest god; and if a sheep lay down near the shrine of no known god it was sacrificed to "The Unknown God." This is the springboard from which Paul's sermon takes off. "What you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you." That’s when he really gets going.

24 "The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 'For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.'

29 "Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead."

        You would think Paul was a lawyer arguing in court. He begins at the beginning: creation. "The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands." Or, for that matter, in a wooden statue or lump of rock somewhere. God is not the made but the maker, and this God made EVERYTHING - individuals, giving the breath of life; nations, giving direction to history. You can forget the rain god and sun god and all those other niche gods. This one is all you need.
        Next Paul takes into account this yearning for God that appears to be universal. He insists that this is by divine design - "so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him..." Then there is the somewhat shocking statement, especially to those Stoics who insist that God is so far above and beyond us that no contact is ever possible in this life. Paul says God "is not far from each one of us," and then he adds a familiar quote from their aforementioned poet Epimenides, "'For in him we live and move and have our being.'" And he continued, "As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring,'" the word of their Cilician bard Aratus. Hmm. Tell us more, preacher, tell us more. He was speaking their language.
        Now the preacher brings it on home. Since we all are God's offspring, all these various and sundry little gold or silver or stone representations are useless. Even worse, they are ultimately blasphemous, and God will judge such behavior. So, Paul concludes, God "commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead." It is no Unknown God with which we are concerned anymore but rather the Risen Christ.
        That was a good sermon. It met the people where they were. It presented the gospel. It’s what had to be preached. It would be nice to say that everyone who heard were mesmerized by his message and another 3,000 joined the Christian church that day, just like at Pentecost after Peter's sermon, but such was not the case.

32 When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, "We want to hear you again on this subject." 33 At that, Paul left the Council. 34 Some of the people became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others.

Instead of "Wow, what must we do?" and 3,000 joining the church, it was, "Hmm. Interesting." And that was the GOOD reaction. As the text has it, "some of them sneered." Some wanted to talk more, but whether that was more than the native Athenian intellectual curiosity we will never know. Not exactly a banner day in the life of the early church.
Oh, it is not as if no one responded at all. We have the word that Dionysius, one of the Areopagus council members, did, along with a woman of which we know nothing called Damaris. Luke includes "a number of others,' but no more detail than that. But you never hear from them again and there is no record of a church being founded in Athens.

Some have suggested that Paul's speech on Mars Hill offers a model for engaging the secular intellectuals of our day. He begins where his audience is with reference to their own situation, a remark about their being "very religious" and that altar to an unknown God. Then Paul, having identified with his audience, subtly began to talk about the true God, not their god, not just any god, but the God of all creation who has guided history and is closer than some might dream. He even quotes their own Greek poets to make his point. People need to know that it makes a difference whether or not they have the RIGHT God. Any old god won't do! Now, bring it home, preacher. Where do we encounter this God? In the risen Christ. Ta-Da!

He had tried to share Christ with the Athenians by force of his reasoned argument, but with not much result. He tried to use Greek logic but it didn’t work very well. He apparently changed his approach on his next stop because we read in his words in I Corinthians 2:1-5…

When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified...My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power.

That’s what we’re going to do. We’re simply going to tell "the old, old story of Jesus and his love," to more people and let them respond in their own way. Just tell the story, and live the story in your own life so folks can see what a difference it makes.

So give your very best and relax about the results. Allow new ideas to flow from your mind and don’t worry whether you think they’re going to work or not. Invite people to Jesus Christ and don’t worry whether they turn you down or not. Just give your very best. Amen.