Our story today opens with Paul in Athens.
Paul never expected to end up in Athens. After his imprisonment with Silas last week, the two of them left Philippi and made their way to Thessalonica. There, too, Paul and Silas and now Timothy got into trouble and were quickly whisked away to Beroea, where again, they got into trouble. For his own protection, Paul was escorted to Athens, where he waited for Silas and Timothy to join him. It is at this point, as Paul is waiting in Athens, that our story opens.
While Paul waited for them in Athens, he was deeply distressed to find that the city was flooded with idols. He began to interact with the Jews and Gentile God-worshippers in the synagogue. He also addressed whoever happened to be in the marketplace each day. Certain Epicurean and Stoic philosophers engaged him in discussion too. Some said, “What an amateur! What’s he trying to say?” Others remarked, “He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign gods.” (They said this because he was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.) They took him into custody and brought him to the council on Mars Hill. “What is this new teaching? Can we learn what you are talking about? You’ve told us some strange things and we want to know what they mean.” (They said this because all Athenians as well as the foreigners who live in Athens used to spend their time doing nothing but talking about or listening to the newest thing.)
Paul stood up in the middle of the council on Mars Hill and said, “People of Athens, I see that you are very religious in every way. As I was walking through town and carefully observing your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: ‘To an unknown God.’ What you worship as unknown, I now proclaim to you. God, who made the world and everything in it, is Lord of heaven and earth. He doesn’t live in temples made with human hands. Nor is God served by human hands, as though he needed something, since he is the one who gives life, breath, and everything else. From one person God created every human nation to live on the whole earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their lands. God made the nations so they would seek him, perhaps even reach out to him and find him. In fact, God isn’t far away from any of us. In God we live, move, and exist. As some of your own poets said, ‘We are his offspring.’
“Therefore, as God’s offspring, we have no need to imagine that the divine being is like a gold, silver, or stone image made by human skill and thought. God overlooks ignorance of these things in times past, but now directs everyone everywhere to change their hearts and lives. This is because God has set a day when he intends to judge the world justly by a man he has appointed. God has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”
When they heard about the resurrection from the dead, some began to ridicule Paul. However, others said, “We’ll hear from you about this again.” At that, Paul left the council. Some people joined him and came to believe, including Dionysius, a member of the council on Mars Hill, a woman named Damaris, and several others. --Acts 17:16-34 (CEB)
We get most hung up in this story, I think, on the idols. I’m not sure why that is. Perhaps, it’s because that, for most of us from a very young age, that first commandment is impressed into us - You shall have no other gods. It’s the first of those ten commandments first given by God to Moses to guide and shape Israel and then, in different way, the followers of Jesus.
To follow an idol is, for most of us, a sin, right? But, I think that when we focus most on the idols, we miss an important aspect to this story - we miss the story of Paul and Paul’s response. After all, the truth is that we are continuously idolaters ourselves, if we truly want to admit it. Think about all the things that keep you from church on Sunday morning, those things that draw you away from worshiping God. Those idols. And it becomes clear that, perhaps, we are quite like those ancient Athenians.
But the topic of idolatry. The topic of sin. The topic of violating the first commandment isn’t my focus this morning. Instead, my focus is on Paul.
I want you to think back a couple of weeks to the story of where we first met Paul and heard the story of his conversion. If you recall, Paul was on his way to Damascus. To do what? Yep. Not just take names, but to take prisoners - Jesus followers - back to Jerusalem. This is Paul the zealot. The one who, at least in his circle, was doing the right thing by ridding Judaism of these “sinners.” Hunting them down and, in doing so, ridding his religious community of these rabble-rousers, these people who are challenging the status quo in his belief system and that of his fellow Pharisees - religious leaders steeped in the Torah - in God’s teachings. (In some ways, this feels a little too close to the horrific events of yesterday in Buffalo.)
But something drastic has changed him, hasn’t it? It's while on the hunt that he runs smack-dab into Jesus. Soon, he is preaching a different message. A message that, in many places, runs him right up against the religious establishment. Against believers and religious leaders who, like the Paul we first met, are trying to protect their status quo. Their traditions. Their belief systems. 
And, then, he comes to Athens. This place known as the intellectual and cultural center of the known world. Think Socrates. Plato. Pythagoras. Aristotle. It was here, in Athens, that new ideas were formed. New philosophies developed. Think Harvard. Or Stanford.
Paul, shaped and formed by the Torah and all of the ritual and levitical regulations of the Hebrew scriptures, is rightly disturbed by the idols that he sees all around him. But, most stunning about what Paul does with his anger and his distress at the idols is not to turn away or to react in fear toward the Athenians, but to move toward them. To move in closer. Even, as the gospel demands, to the point of touching and holding them. With no regard for ritual purity. Or faithfulness to God’s covenantal laws. This man, who once agreed with the stoning of Stephen, now stands surrounded by idols that make him furious, but he must now yield to the Spirit. Who calls him to a new word. A new way of being.
What do you say to those who are radically different from you? Those who are radically outside you and your own belief system? What do you say to those whose way of life, or belief system, or whose religions or rituals, or even race, you have been taught to loathe?
The old Paul might have spewed words of hate at them. Might have distanced himself from them so as not to become ritually pure. But, the new Paul. The transformed Paul. The Paul who has met Jesus moves in. Closer. To the synagogue. Then to the marketplace, which is not just a place to buy stuff, but a marketplace of ideas, that is so Athens.
The new Paul meets them where they are. Speaks to them in words given him by the Holy Spirit. Words that seek to connect with them. Not to condemn them. Or to destroy them. But to reach them. To share with them what has changed him. That there is a single God who has created all things, from whom all people - Jew and Gentile alike - descend. Who wants every…single…person to know of God’s love for them. Embodied in Jesus Christ, resurrected from the dead.
It’s this business of the resurrection that proves to be a sticking point for some. But, even so, there are a few whose minds remain open to this new thing this previously unknown God has done. This new thing that God continues to do. And yet, even for those whose minds are not changed by Paul’s message, they walk away not feeling as though their own belief system has been condemned, or characterized as worthless.
Yesterday, we witnessed another mass shooting. And although we don’t have all of the information yet, it is becoming clear that this attack was racially motivated. An attack that might be something similar to what the old Paul might carry out. An attack that stems from fear. Fear of the other. Fear of change. Fear of difference.
How does this story - this narrative of Paul’s transformation as much as that of the Athenians - inform our response as people of God? How does it inform our mission here?
Perhaps it's a model for us of how we share our own experiences of Jesus. Not a model like that of Christians in times past - and some today - who as they burn with cultural and political (and racial) superiority, engage in mission by literally burning down idols to bring in Bibles and bullets. To enforce their perceived way of being Christ in the world. A way that, in truth, is anti-Christ.
Because the Christ we know, like the new Paul we just heard about, operates from a model that moves in closer to those who are different, to meet them where they are. As they are. With no animosity. No condemnation. Or, in often overlooked words of John 3.17, no judgment. Only a desire to see the world be whole. To bring life.
It’s the model of a transformed Paul. It’s the model of a resurrected and transforming Jesus, who, through us, continues to seek out all people, loved by God, to move closer to them. To meet them where they are.
May it be our model as well. Amen.
Preached May 15, 2022, at Grace & Glory, Prospect, with Third, Louisville, and New Goshen Presbyterian, Prospect.
Easter 5
Readings: Acts 17:16-34, John 1:16-18
