Paul at the Areopagus
Acts 17:22-31
A sermon from Paul; maybe not a piece that would get people real excited, but this one is different from all the others in Acts in some ways. He is preaching not to a mixed crowd of the eager and the skeptical and the apathetic, but to a crowd of intellectuals and philosophers at one of the teaching places in Athens.
Now I pastor a church in New Haven, Connecticut, just down the hill from some of Yale's buildings, so I find connections with this passage that are different from when I was pastor of a small church in rural Michigan, when I connected more closely with other of Paul's writings.
So what does Paul say to the smart people? He does not chastise them or denigrate their religious impulses. He praises them for their seeking after God! I really don't think he is being facetious here. I think he honestly is reaching out to them at the place where he and they have something in common: a history of "groping" for truth, for understanding, for God.
He then tells them that in his seeking, he has found, through Christ, one God. He connects with this God; he knows this God as the one who has been living and moving in his life for many years. It's as though he recognizes someone he knows but has never seen before.
What's odd is that our reading for today leaves out the part of the response to this sermon. A couple of people responded to Paul and came to learn more about Jesus. Most did not. Most walked away, disappointed perhaps that Paul did not have a better argument, a more erudite philosophy perhaps?
This is a real tension place for me, as I expect it was for Paul. I am very highly educated at some of the best schools, and I serve a congregation with many highly educated and accomplished members. So do I preach to them with complex theological arguments, doing all manner of apologia? Or do I call them to search within all they know and all they are for the one in whom they live and have their being? Or both? How does the church and its preachers reach out to those who are among the wise and great thinkers of our world with Jesus? The Dawkins and other atheists are reaching out with complex (and often misleading) scientific, philosophical and literary arguments. Paul doesn't really respond to that kind of thing in Athens.
What is the gospel for Yale?
A sermon from Paul; maybe not a piece that would get people real excited, but this one is different from all the others in Acts in some ways. He is preaching not to a mixed crowd of the eager and the skeptical and the apathetic, but to a crowd of intellectuals and philosophers at one of the teaching places in Athens.
Now I pastor a church in New Haven, Connecticut, just down the hill from some of Yale's buildings, so I find connections with this passage that are different from when I was pastor of a small church in rural Michigan, when I connected more closely with other of Paul's writings.
So what does Paul say to the smart people? He does not chastise them or denigrate their religious impulses. He praises them for their seeking after God! I really don't think he is being facetious here. I think he honestly is reaching out to them at the place where he and they have something in common: a history of "groping" for truth, for understanding, for God.
He then tells them that in his seeking, he has found, through Christ, one God. He connects with this God; he knows this God as the one who has been living and moving in his life for many years. It's as though he recognizes someone he knows but has never seen before.
What's odd is that our reading for today leaves out the part of the response to this sermon. A couple of people responded to Paul and came to learn more about Jesus. Most did not. Most walked away, disappointed perhaps that Paul did not have a better argument, a more erudite philosophy perhaps?
This is a real tension place for me, as I expect it was for Paul. I am very highly educated at some of the best schools, and I serve a congregation with many highly educated and accomplished members. So do I preach to them with complex theological arguments, doing all manner of apologia? Or do I call them to search within all they know and all they are for the one in whom they live and have their being? Or both? How does the church and its preachers reach out to those who are among the wise and great thinkers of our world with Jesus? The Dawkins and other atheists are reaching out with complex (and often misleading) scientific, philosophical and literary arguments. Paul doesn't really respond to that kind of thing in Athens.
What is the gospel for Yale?
posted by shelly @ 9:00 AM
1 Comments:
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