Do We Really Want The Inconvenient Truth Too?
Good Morning Friends,
Even as we contemplate the journey to Pentecost and the growth of the church around the world in the power of the Holy Spirit there is something that calls me back to the presence and power and focus of an earthly Jesus and his prayer that we be one. The thing is that in the Bible we read about the Church of Corinth and Ephesus and other communities and it is never the churches plural of a place. Today in our reality of multiple churches in a place, the focus on God gets blurred, much like the situation in Athens presented in today’s text from Acts. You see the Athenians had way too many gods to worship much like we have way too many churches in community. Of course, there is only one God and one Church and one Called Out Assembly of believers in each community, but the way we live does not reflect this power. So, interestingly maybe it is the unseen church and the unknown God we need to be paying greater attention to. Friends, we seek the truth but find the ignorance bliss. Still, the nature of the Holy Spirit seeks our revival even as it stretches our love. So, Do We Really Want The Inconvenient Truth Too?
Scripture: Those who conducted Paul brought him as far as Athens; and after receiving instructions to have Silas and Timothy join him as soon as possible, they left him. 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 they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some scoffed; but others said, “We will hear you again about this.” At that point Paul left them. But some of them joined him and became believers, including Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris, and others with them. After this Paul left Athens and went to Corinth.
Acts 17:15, 22-18:1 (NRSV)
“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
John 16:12-15 (NRSV)
Message: The truth about God can be a little problematic for those living in the world for it requires of us our body, mind and soul…it requires us to grow in love. Today’s text gives us an example of this challenge. You see, Paul, in the act of sharing the Gospel, was up against a lot in Athens. The philosophies of Athens ranged from the Epicureans to the Stoics. One was about enjoying life and the other about enduring it. One was about indulgence with the chief goal of life being pleasure and the other indifference with the chief goal to not care. Paul knew that both were dead ends but also opposite ends of the spectrum of a whole list of beliefs and idol worship that missed the mark. However, all the philosophies of ancient Athens had something in common. They all hated the preaching of Paul. They were looking down their noses at him as if he knew nothing. Then Paul cleverly pointed out that their culture acknowledged a God that they did not know and was not embodied in a little stone or wood carving. So, he shared the message about the God that they acknowledged as an asterisk and yet did not know…the God of creation…the God of personal involvement…the God of repentance…and the God of judgement. And that just set them off. Even their tolerance had its limits and still, some believed anyway. So too today in the truth of the Holy Spirit, in the great diversity of expressions of faith, we need to realize that we may never be one until Jesus returns and yet we still might have some sense of revival of the faith so others might believe.
Pray we continue to be Christians even though it is often inconvenient. Pray we understand the folly of mythology and the limits of philosophy. Pray we realize that complete open-mindedness is its own trap. Pray instead that we work to empower people for worldwide mission but also for a unity that honors Jesus. Pray we stretch our love so that others might believe. Pray we be witness to the spark of the Spirit that glorifies Jesus. Pray we realize that in this age of the Spirit that we must seek the truth even at the risk of controversy. Pray we listen to what the Holy Spirit declares so that we might know better what we are to declare. Pray we stretch our love but not the truth.
Blessings,
John Lawson
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