Acts 17:22-31
Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.
The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, 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. For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we too are his offspring.’
Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”
When we read through the Old Testament, we follow the evolution of the Hebrew people from a polytheistic belief (believing in multiple gods) to a monotheistic belief (belief in only one god.) Judaism is rightly listed today as a monotheistic faith (as are Christianity and Islam) but it is obvious when we read the early books of the Old Testament that the long-ago Hebrew people (like most people in the ancient world) accepted the existence of multiple gods — the Hebrews just believed that their god, Yahweh, was the biggest and best — their own personal God. As we reach the New Testament years, that belief has mostly evolved to true monotheism.
This became a challenge as the new Christian faith of the Jesus followers began to spread around the Near East and Southern Europe where the dominant Greek and Roman faiths still worshiped an extensive pantheon of exotic gods.
Our story for today features St. Paul in Greece, on the Areopagus, a hillside just outside Athens. This was a popular meeting place and a good place to find an audience for his preaching. In his travels so far he has mostly preached to Jewish communities located in these foreign regions rather than to non-Jewish Greeks. With the Jewish Greeks he could point out all the things that link Jesus back to the Old Testament prophets, thus showing that he is indeed God's Chosen One. Here in Greece, he can no longer rely on just teaching that Jesus is the manifestation of all that has been foretold by the prophets of old. The Greeks don’t know those prophecies and probably don’t care.
But Paul, in his wandering about town, discovers an altar dedicated to "an unknown god” by some Greeks who were anxious to not inadvertently offend a god. This is all the hook Paul needs. He immediately identifies this unknown god as the God of the Hebrews — his God. He praises the Athenians for recognizing and worshiping his God (even though they didn’t know that’s what they were doing) and then proceeds to explain that his God is the one, true God.
The Greeks, always ready to discuss philosophy, listened to him with interest until he got to the part about this One God raising Jesus from the dead, at which point most of his listeners laughed and walked away. But a small portion did stay, eager to hear more. And Paul’s ministry to the Gentiles scored a handful of new converts that day. The spreading of the Good News into Gentile territories would be accomplished in just such small steps. His outreach to the Gentiles would prove to be long, difficult and painful but he never gave up. His faith was deep and solid and his love for Jesus never wavered.
This became a challenge as the new Christian faith of the Jesus followers began to spread around the Near East and Southern Europe where the dominant Greek and Roman faiths still worshiped an extensive pantheon of exotic gods.
Our story for today features St. Paul in Greece, on the Areopagus, a hillside just outside Athens. This was a popular meeting place and a good place to find an audience for his preaching. In his travels so far he has mostly preached to Jewish communities located in these foreign regions rather than to non-Jewish Greeks. With the Jewish Greeks he could point out all the things that link Jesus back to the Old Testament prophets, thus showing that he is indeed God's Chosen One. Here in Greece, he can no longer rely on just teaching that Jesus is the manifestation of all that has been foretold by the prophets of old. The Greeks don’t know those prophecies and probably don’t care.
But Paul, in his wandering about town, discovers an altar dedicated to "an unknown god” by some Greeks who were anxious to not inadvertently offend a god. This is all the hook Paul needs. He immediately identifies this unknown god as the God of the Hebrews — his God. He praises the Athenians for recognizing and worshiping his God (even though they didn’t know that’s what they were doing) and then proceeds to explain that his God is the one, true God.
The Greeks, always ready to discuss philosophy, listened to him with interest until he got to the part about this One God raising Jesus from the dead, at which point most of his listeners laughed and walked away. But a small portion did stay, eager to hear more. And Paul’s ministry to the Gentiles scored a handful of new converts that day. The spreading of the Good News into Gentile territories would be accomplished in just such small steps. His outreach to the Gentiles would prove to be long, difficult and painful but he never gave up. His faith was deep and solid and his love for Jesus never wavered.
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