Easter 6

Preparation

Please begin by reading Acts 17:22-31 in your Bible. If you do not have one at hand, we have provided the text for you at the end of this reflection.

Reflection--Telling the Old, Old Story

This passage is a portion of Luke’s story of Paul’s missionary visit to Athens, told in Acts 17:16-34.  In earlier omitted verses we lean that Paul, distressed about the pagan worship he sees everywhere in first-century Athens, begins to unfold the Christian message for the people he meets in the city.  In our passage for today, he proclaims his message either before the Areopagus, an important deliberative council, or at the site where the council met (the meaning is uncertain).  In any event, Paul succeeds in planting the gospel story at the very heart of one of the most important centers of Western thought and culture. 

Paul provides a good model for evangelism here.  Rather than attacking his listeners by invoking scripture passages condemning pagan practices, he engages them in a way that will not close them off to his message.  He gently links the Christian story with threads of their own lives and experience—opening the door for the Holy Spirit’s work.  He invokes the common human experience of a longing for God even before we know what we are searching for, a longing that can not be met by idols (or other material things).  Toward the end, he lays the groundwork for further teaching by referring to an as yet unnamed one whom God has raised from the dead and who brings assurance.

We learn in verses following today’s passage that the gospel is met as it often is.  Some scoff.  Some reserve judgment, wanting to know more.  But in some the story takes root and they believe.  In that way, lives and history were changed by God's transforming power.

Helping gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people come to really know God’s immeasurable love for them can be especially difficult because so many have been attacked, rather than fed, by those claiming to be Christians.  Is there a way that we can tell our own faith story that will connect with our sisters’ and brothers’ lives and experiences—a way that will help them work their way through the abuse they have experienced to the good news of God’s inclusive and overflowing love for them?

revclay

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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."

 [NRSV]