‘they spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.’
When we think of Athens, we probably think of a world class city like Rome or Alexandria or Antioch…but that is not really the case. John Stott describes Athens as ‘a small town despite its intellectual acclaim.’ Is this sounding familiar.
In Acts 17 Paul finds himself in a small town that was one of the world’s great intellectual centers and found himself surrounded by Stoics and Epicureans. Now this is a pretty substantial simplification, but these worldviews roughly correlate to today’s humanists and hedonists…both would consider themselves religious skeptics but the Stoics rooted the meaning of life in dispassionate duty Epicureans believe that happiness or pleasure were the chief end of human existence.
So what happens when we ask a number of UCD students:
What is the most important pursuit in life?
(I'd like to thank Matt Pye, Alyssa Barlow and Kiho Song for putting that video together. And I'd like to thank the students wh answered for their courage and candor in answering such a deeply personal question.)
Again, is any of this sounding familiar?
Almost two years ago, now, when Dan first pitched me the idea of teaching Acts…the first thing I said was ‘I want Acts 17.’ Here’s why. The thing I love about Acts 17 is that it paints a picture of ministry in a small town that is one of the premier intellectual and academic settings in the world. A small town with intellectual acclaim where people pass their days sharing and listening to ideas… …where there is a mix of prevalent but vague spiritual devotion as well as religious skepticism and where most people tend to order their lives either around the idea of social responsibility or the pursuit of happiness[0.5]…In other words welcome to Davis. There may not be a passage in the Bible that is more directly applicable to what it means to be a Christian on the UC Davis campus. So I have titled this talk:
We are going to make three observations about how Paul approaches ministry to this most UCD like of Roman Cities that can inform our attempts to engage our campus with the gospel. We are going to see what we can learn from:
I. Paul’s Character[1]
II. Paul’s Method
III. Paul’s Message
I. Paul’s Character
There are a couple things in the first verse that point to aspects of Paul’s character that prepare him to engage the academic center. The first thing I want you to notice is that he looked for God’s purposes in inconvenience. Look at the first four words. In verse 16:
‘While Paul was waiting.’ The first thing you have to understand about Paul’s stop in Athens is 
that it was decidedly inconvenient. Acts 17 is an unplanned, accidental story. He was headed to Macedonia. You could say that getting there was his dream, his life’s purpose. He was convinced that going to Macedonia was what God wanted him to do. But things didn’t go well. At this point in the story he has just run for his life from a nearby town[2] and was essentially in hiding. Getting discouraged at this point and just checking out for a while would be totally understandable.
But the first thing we notice about Paul’s character in this passage that equipped him to effectively engage the academy is that he looked for God’s purposes in inconvenience.[3] He recognized that a dramatic and inconvenient change in his plans might, actually, be a kingdom opportunity.
The second thing I want to notice about Paul’s character comes from the other half of the first verse. Look with me at v 16: “While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols.” Notice, that he cared enough about God’s glory and people that the worship confusion and misplaced loyalties of the people he observed in this great intellectual center affected him deeply and personally. He was not offended or angry. He was heartbroken. He cared enough to be moved by the spiritual confusion in this town.
And so, here is the questioned posed to us in our cultural moment by the first few words of this passage. Do you see college an inconvenient diversion on the way to your real life…or do you see it one of the greatest opportunities of your Christian journey? People’s worldviews tend to harden in their mid-twenties. You will never again, in your life, be surrounded by so many people so open to ideas. You will never again have so many culturally acceptable outlets for the exchange of ideas. For a kingdom possessed person, every week you spend in this place is gold. Don’t wish it away. Don’t coast to the finish. Paul’s character…his willingness to look for God’s purposes in inconvenience and his general concern for God’s glory and people made him an effective kingdom agent in the academy.
II. Paul’s Method
The second thing I want you to notice about Paul’s approach to this great intellectual center is his method…in particular:
His method was typified by cultural curiosity AND conversational courage.
Paul begins his ministry in Athens by taking a long walk with his eyes wide open. He figured out where the culturally appropriate places were for the free exchange of ideas. But he didn’t 
immediately jump in there and start dropping Bible verses whether or not they would be welcome or understood.[4] Look in v 23 Paul describes the first step of his method of engaging this town ‘I walked around and looked carefully’. He took some time to try to understand these people’s deep longings.[5] He watched, observed, and listened.
Here is the really shocking thing about Paul’s method in this passage. He assumed that God would already be revealing himself to the people of Athens. He did not presume that he was ‘bringing God to them.’ He just tried to figure out how he could fit into what God was already doing. [6] Paul expected God to already be at work. This made him exceptionally observant and a careful listener.[7] It made him culturally curious. He doesn’t just start talking. He took an interest in the deepest longings of the people of this town. He went so far as to acknowledge and compliment their religious impulses and searching and, (look, in v22 “Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious.”) Paul was culturally curious.
What I want you to notice is that Paul is not culturally curious to be hip or edgy or to smuggle the gospel into the conversation without anyone noticing. He is culturally curious because he believes that God is already at work all around him.[8]
And while we see in v 16 and in v 23 that Paul took some time to understand Athens when he 
got there…he probably hit the ground already conversant in pagan poetry.
Bruce: “He does not quote Hebrew Scriptures which would have been quite unknown to his hearers; the direct quotations in this speech are quotes from Greek poets.”
His cultural curiosity was not just an isolated thing that he did when he got to a city.[9] He drops two quotes from pagan poetry during his presentation of the gospel. He probably did not read up on this in the day he was in Athens…he had likely been cultivating a working familiarity with pagan poetry hoping to find echoes of truth in it. Which leads to an important aside from this passage: How do Christians interact with culture?[10]
Andy Crouch offers a model. He suggests that there are at least six tools available to Christians as they approach culture:
Condemning Culture 
Critiquing Culture
Cultivating Culture
Copying Culture
Creating Culture
Consuming Culture
Crouch argues that each of these is useful in certain situations, but that none of them is universally appropriate.
There are cultural artifacts that should ‘greatly distress’ us just like Paul found in Athens. There is stuff in our culture that we simply must resist. But there is other cultural content that we can simply consume as a form of Sabbath…a rest. One of the unique aspects of Christian theology is that in the idea of Sabbath it contains relatively robust reflection on the human experience and utilization of fun. But, there is a subtle distinction between entertainment and Sabbath. Consuming culture should be invigorating. It should recharge you.
But Crouch argues that what we see Paul doing here is in the realm of cultivating and creating culture. He becomes conversant with the surrounding culture and then makes a third thing out of the best the culture has to offer and the content of the gospel.
This would be the equivalent of us demonstrating the Christian theology of human nature by appealing to Arcade Fire
“And there’s something wrong in the heart of man,
you take it from your heart and put it in your hand!”
Or to pitch the human need for and desire for cosmic mercy from Linkin Park:
In this farewell,
There's no blood,
There's no alibi,
'Cause I've drawn regret,
From the truth of a thousand lies.
So let mercy come, and wash away...
What I've done[11]
Paul believed that Jesus was the fulfilled hope of Israel…but he also believed that Jesus was the
fulfilled hope of Athens…it was just going to take more work to be able to tell that story. He zeros in on the ‘temple to the unknown god.’ The way the story goes; there was a famine in the land years earlier. When the leadership asked a prominent philosopher Epimendies why this was happening despite their many religious centers and monuments he suggested that they must have missed a god and that had made him angry. So they constructed a ‘catch all’ temple. This is like multiple choice answer (d) – all of the above. Incidentally, the actual existence of a temple like this is verified by other historical sources.[12] And this is another way in which Athens is like UCD. University students are extremely spiritual as a whole.
The Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA reports in a recent study:
College Junior that believe:
- in an afterlife (64.8%)
- in a higher being (83.4%)
A faculty survey found:
- 81% of college professors consider themselves to be spiritual persons
- 69% report actively seeking out spiritual development
But the ‘Unknown God’ is the only one widely acknowledged. The more we claim to be able to make out the characteristics of our God, the more skepticism we encounter.
The first thing we notice about his method is that Paul was culturally curious. Here is the application. If you are a Christian, committed to engaging the university, look and listen carefully. Keep your senses sharp for ‘God sightings’ in the wider culture…recognize that ‘secular culture’ is punctuated with efforts by artists to ‘seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.’
Are you having trouble coming up with kingdom projects? If you are having trouble identifying the deepest longings of your fellow students or ways that you can serve them…try following Paul’s example from v 16 and in v 23.[13] where he says “I walked around and looked carefully”
Go on a long walk through the campus and ask God to help you understand what are the most fundamental longings of the students on this campus? 
Mark Driscoll, is the pastor of a church named after the hill in this passage. It is the largest church in Seattle, which is widely considered one of the most secular cities in our country. This is how he describes his method “Our approach has always been two handed - what we believe is timeless and what we do is timely."[14]
That comes right out of this passage. The form of Paul’s message was flexible, the content was not, which brings us to the second part of Paul’s method.[15]
He was culturally curious AND conversationally courageous.
It is important to articulate the gospel as good news to the deepest longings of your cultural moment…but it must retain the major facets of the message. By introducing Jesus as the ‘unknown God of Athens’ Paul saw the gospel as the ultimate fulfillment of a very specific cultural longing. But he was not shy about its basic content of his message that included repentance, judgment and resurrection.[16]
And at this point, the passage continues to reflect the experiences many of us have had on the university campus. In v18 they mocked him and in v32 ‘they sneered’.[17] Paul gets laughed at…he gets ridiculed…but he remains conversationally courageous. I think I usually respond to ridicule with self doubt. Honest reflection and self assessment is always in order, but being a messenger of the gospel also requires a courageous confidence in the message…a kind, gentle, but thick skin.[18]
Paul did all this work to be culturally clear – and, in the end, most just sneered at him…but a few didn’t. If you take a risk and try to articulate your world view in an intellectually rigorous and culturally appropriate way on this campus, you are probably going to get worked…but there are a few who will be listening very closely. There are a few who will want to hear more. That is the story of what it means to be a messenger of the gospel in the University. It is hard work. It is often frustrating. But there may not be a more strategic place in the world. Paul was culturally curious and conversationally courageous.
So, Acts 17 has a message to those of you who are committed to the Christian story and are tying to figure out how that works on a pluralistic, post-Christian campus.
III. Paul’s Message
But maybe some of you are here tonight and are feeling more resonance with the Athenians than with Paul. You are interested in lots of ideas. Maybe you find the god-hypothesis far fetched or maybe you worship an ‘unknown god.’ You are legitimately interested in understanding the fabric of reality but don’t want to derail that process by prematurely committing to a world 
view. Well, first, I want to say that we are thrilled that you are here. We desperately want CL to be a place for two kinds of people: those who have made some sort of commitment to Jesus and are trying to figure out what that looks like, and the spiritually curious that are wondering if Jesus might be somehow related to your spiritual hunger. Let me just say, that from this passage, I think Paul himself would commend your spiritual tenacity. I hope that if you followed the message until now, you will realize that we don’t presume to be introducing you to God. We believe that if you have a legitimate spiritual hunger, that you have made progress looking for him. But, we also believe, that there are some specific things about Jesus that you really need to understand and appropriate.[19] There are three themes in Paul’s message that are worth noting. Judgment, Repentance and Resurrection. These ideas have two things in common: they will generally get you mocked on this campus, and you simply cannot understand Jesus apart from them.
You will not be able to appreciate the work of Jesus apart from judgment.[20]
You will not be able to access Jesus without repentance.
You will not be able to understand Jesus apart from his resurrection.
But this passage includes some phenomenal news for those of you who are on an as-of-yet unfulfilled spiritual quest. And that is, that God, is really bad at hiding.
27God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.
My daughter is just over two and a half. And one of her favorite things to do is to play hide and seek. Now, most of us have played hide and seek long enough to understand the objective…it is to NOT get found. But she has no interest in that form of the game. For Charis, the objective of hide and seek is not to stay hidden, but to be found. If I take too long to find her, she will poke here head out and smile at me. The object of hiding is not the hiding itself but the affection I show her in the pursuit.[21]
Well, there is one thing we can all agree on whether or not you are committed to the Christian story. If God exists, for one reason or another, he seems to prefer a certain measure of hiddeness. But, this passage resonates with my experience of that hiddeness. God doesn’t hide like a self interested adolescent playing hide and seek, who’s objective is self preservation. God hides like my daughter hides. He hides with the objective of being pursued and found.
v 27 says ‘God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.’
If you are on a spiritual quest…or even if you are a Christian who is just going through a bit of a dry patch and feel like God is distant…Paul’s message is keep looking, because God is really bad at hiding…he only hides to be found…and he might be hiding in plain sight…in the one place you have not yet looked…in Jesus.
__________________
[0.5] I have to admit, I expected more students to cite social responsibility as the most important persuit. Such a heavy weighting on happiness suggests that the University campus is far more Epicurian than Stoic. This was a surprising result to me. I guess I expected both
[1] You can not believe the compulsion I felt to alliterate this point. I considered ‘makeup’. Bronwyn recommended mojo, manliness and malleability (the latter I almost used)
[2] Why do we insist in calling them the ‘noble Bereans.’ Sure they checked the scriptures to see if Paul was right, but they were weak minded enough to be incited to try to kill him and chase him out of town. We forget the end of the story because they look like good protestant Biblicists. But I think there is a larger message here. The passage is definitely elevating biblical literacy and verification but also arguing that Bible knowledge is not enough to keep us from crass and dramatic deception.
[3] A contemporary equivalent would be something like “Paul realized that he didn’t have the right classes and had to stay at UCD an extra quarter” or “The only job he could find out of college was an internship in a disreputable Oakland neighborhood.”
[4] He actually doesn’t even quote the scriptures.
[5] Keller points out that to extrapolate from this that Christians are called to street preaching or contact evangelism is to miss the point of the passage. Street preaching is weird in our culture. It is dismissed as eccentric, offensive, and obnoxious. It is a breach of social contract. Paul figured out the appropriate places where there was likely to be a free exchange of ideas in a culturally appropriate setting. We need to identify those places in our culture. Where do people congregate to
[6] v25 Paul knows God does not need him, but he is thrilled to be involved…he didn’t overstate his own role. Note: Rightly ordering our importance in God’s work is imperative for ministry longevity. The human spirit can not bear the weight of the tasks we are involved in. We can not bear the guilt of ultimate failure or the intoxication of ultimate success. Either will destroy us, either by crushing or by self seduction. Most people I know who have persevered for years approach ministry like Paul or Nehemiah: “They are your servants and your people who you redeemed by your great strength and your mighty hand.” (Neh 1:10)
[7] v 25 He knows that God does not need him, but is excited to be used. He didn’t overestimate his own role
[8] Paul acknowledges the effort and desire of a people seeking the transcendent. We learn elsewhere in his writings that Paul actually believes that behind these idols there lie, no kidding, demons. Personal, invisible, malevolent nastiest. But he does not lead with that (he doesn’t even really bring it up). He finds something to affirm on the front end of his address. He doesn’t offend by tearing down their world view but by standing on the resurrection.
[9] And lest we think that his knowledge of pagan philosophy was from his life before being a Christian…remember…he was a Pharisee of Pharisees.
[10] Note: The idols did not aggravate or exasperate him. The Greek word is a medical term. He was grieved. He was saddened. He didn’t take it as a personal affront, but as the symptom of a spiritual sickness.
[11] Incidentally, I have not been able to listen to this song in quite the same way since it was on the Transformers soundtrack.
[12] FF Bruce. Bock argues convincingly that Luke fares very well when his accounts can be empirically tested with external historical data. I am fully convinced that, while he was certainly a polemical historian, he was as conscientious in the accuracy of his history as can be expected given the communicative limitations of the era.
[13] Incidentally, Nehemiah and Jerimiah take long walks in their cities, in the attempt to understand God’s vision for the service and redemption of their communities.
[14] He goes on to say, in his normal brash but hilarious tone, ‘We are theologically conservative and culturally liberal…It’s not whether or not a church contextualizes its to what year...Some churches are on the cutting edge of the 17th century.
[15] Theologians and missiologists make the distinction between contextualization vs accommodation. The former seeks to articulate the message in a context that makes sense in a particular culture without violating the basic principles of the message. The latter changes the message so it has a higher chance of adoption in a particular culture. You can imagine the debates that ensue about whether individual practices constitute contextualization or accommodation.
[16] Much is made between scholars that the cross does not play prominently in this address. But Luke’s presentations of apostolic preaching are almost certainly selective, highlight reels. For more on the cross in Acts see Stott’s The Cross of Christ.
[17] He didn’t offend them because he was a jerk. He didn’t offend by his manner, but by his message. Way too many Christians measure their success by the number of people they piss off, saying ‘the gospel is foolishness to those who are perishing.’ But this can simply be self serving justification of intellectual laziness and cultural illiteracy. It is incumbent upon someone who is trying to articulate the gospel to make the distinction between a fundamentally offensive message (that God calls all people everywhere to repent and acknowledge his preeminence) and simply being an a@# h#$%. Even this week, in commenting on Kira’s facebook page, I used careless, condescending language, and people were offended by me before they even considered the content of the message.
[18] Postscript: So, how did he do? Well Paul’s ministry was validated neither by its success or its failure. It was hard work for small victories. Hardly the 5,000 of Pentecost or the exponential growth of Antioch. But in campus ministry, this is normative.
[19] I wrote three unrelated drafts of this paragraph and one or them is entertaining enough to include: And if you are here tonight, and are in the positions of the Athenians. You came to college and are interested in lots of ideas. Maybe you find the god-hypothesis far fetched or maybe you worship an ‘unknown god.’ Well, thanks for coming tonight. It was honestly courageous of you to walk into a room like this, and I recognize that you and God have been doing business far before you walked into Kleiber 3 to listen to an over educated guy with lopsided eyes. But I think Paul’s words in v 27 should be of special interest to you.
[20] FF Bruce - ”Like the biblical revelation itself, his argument begins with God the creator of all and ends with God the judge of all.”
[21] I got this illustration from Bronwyn Lea. She offered it while giving me feedback on a different talk several months ago, but it was just such a perfect picture of this story that I saved it.
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