Acts 17:16-34 “Not a Church in Athens”
A cowboy is walking down the street. He is wearing chaps and a ten-gallon hat. He has a gun holster on, and he is sporting two .45 caliber colts on either side. In his one hand he holds a dog leash. At the other end of the leash one would have expected a Great Dane or at least a German Shepherd. But instead, the people in town had to note that this burly cowboy was walking a wiener dog, also known as a dachshund. People stared in disbelief.
The sheriff in the town went up to the cowboy and asked him why he was keeping such a small low dog on a leash.
The cowboy turns to the sheriff and looks him square in the eye and says, “Now I don’t want any trouble. The sheriff in the last town told me to ‘get a long little doggie,’ so I did.”
Prior to Paul’s coming to Athens, he was told to “get along” both in Thessalonica and in Beroea. In fact the people in Thessalonica followed him to Beroea to cause him to keep moving. This brought him then to Athens. In Athens he is waiting for Timothy and Silas to catch up with him there. According to our Scripture for today, they never actually do connect in Athens. Paul is very much alone the whole time that he is there. Then, he gets along again. He moves on to Corinth without really staying long enough in Athens to set up a church. So, no church is started in Athens.
When Paul first arrives in Athens, he is looking around the Agora (marketplace) and is disgusted, provoked, insulted by the idols that are everywhere to be seen. There would have been larger-than-life statues in the colonnades of the buildings there. There would have been smaller idols for sale. His reaction to being surrounded by so much pagan belief was that he had a “paroxysm” as it is said in the Greek for this text. You will recall that last month I discussed this word with you when we discussed Paul’s breaking with Barnabas over John Mark. Paul was so angry at John Mark that he had a paroxysm. He was so angry that he was having fits of rage. This same word is being used again. Paul was really having a physical reaction to all of these idols in the market in Athens.
That could be one reason that the people who wanted to hear what he had to say took him out of the Agora and brought him over to the other side of the Acropolis in Athens to the hill that is called the Areopagus. It was also a quieter area and a place that had already been traditionally used for hearing people speak on various subjects. It was like London’s Hyde Park or the Washington Mall of its day. You could go there and listen to people rant and rave about whatever. And apparently since Paul seemed to be babbling a bit, they thought that this was the right place for him to talk.
Now, the Bible tells us that he just did not preach the Word as such. It says that he got into a debate with Epicureans and Stoics. We will all recall that the Epicureans are the ones who believed that the most important thing in life is to create your own happiness. They did not believe in an afterlife. The stoics believed just the opposite that one should deny one’s self in this world. And, for the first time it seems that Christianity is no longer the sharing of the Good News but it becomes a strange philosophical debate.
What do you think? Can a person debate another person into accepting the Faith? There has been a lot of talk about CS Lewis of late because of the release of the movie Prince Caspian which is the second book of his Chronicles of Narnia. His most famous book is of course his attempt at an intellectual approach to the faith, entitled Mere Christianity. Please note that they are not making that book into a movie! There is no secret entrance to another world hidden in a closet in the book Mere Christianity. The book does not depend on accepting things so much on faith. In the end, however, Christianity is all about faith. It is about something that can only be debated to a certain point and then faith must take over.
Hebrews 11:1-3 has these famous lines about faith: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Indeed by faith our ancestors received approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the Word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.” You see, the Athenians had arguments about philosophy and a plethora of idols. They just had simply no faith to speak of. The question comes up then: how can there be a church if there is no faith?
I am reminded that this is the number one complaint of Jesus to his Disciples. Jesus tells them that they do not have enough faith. In Matthew 8:23-27 we have the story of Jesus and his disciples crossing the Sea of Galilee when a storm comes up and threatens to sink the boat. Jesus is asleep at the bow of the boat. They wake him up and said, “Save us, we are perishing.” Jesus responds: “Oh you of little faith.” Then he calms the storm and everything is fine again. The Athenians are just of “little faith.”
In verses 19-21, I see another reason why the church did not get started in Athens. The Bible tells us that the Athenians just really loved whatever was new. Although Christianity was new, and what Paul was saying had never been heard before, we all know what happens to new things after awhile: They are no longer new and no longer interesting. That is why we read today’s newspaper rather than last week’s. If it is not new, then it is not news!
We all like new things right? We all love the smell of a new car. We all like to shave with a new razor! We like new clothes. We love new things so much that we tend to take it to extremes. We like new wives and new husbands! We start looking at anything or anybody who is old as if there is automatically something wrong.
I want us to consider that when Christians talk about “knowing Christ,” this is not in the sense of knowing a fact or a scientific theory. When we say that we know Christ, we mean that we have a personal relationship with the Lord. When someone comes to know Christ in his or her life, then it is a most exciting time, akin to getting to know someone for the first time as a friend. One slowly comes to trust the other person more and more with their feelings, triumphs, and disappointments. Getting to know knew people is really a fantastic time.
However, in our lives if we were to put a value on our friendships, I think most of us would say that we value our life-long friends more. The people that we have known all our lives matter most to us. So, getting to know Christ as someone new in your life is fantastic, but having the assurance that Christ has always been there for you and always will be, is much greater!
The last thing I want to bring out from this text in regards to why the church did not take root in Athens has to do with what happens at the end of Paul’s preaching on the Areopagus. It says in the Bible that three things happened. And, these are the three different responses that anyone of us might face after sharing faith with others. First, there were those who scoffed. Second, there were those who said that they were undecided and might want to hear more about Jesus. And third, there were those who started to believe.
Apparently, those who started to believe in the Lord decided not to stay in Athens but rather went with Paul on to Corinth. They were Dionysus and Damaris. Obviously, you cannot have a church without people. Jesus said that where two or more are gathered in His name, there he will also be. Well, those two who were gathering in his name left!
It is sometimes funny when pastors gather together and talk about their churches. Very often the conversation revolves around the 3 “b’s”: Budget, Building, By-laws. What has always interested me is that whereas budget, building, and by-laws are nice things to have, they are not necessary for the church. There are churches all over the planet that have no budgets. There are churches that have no buildings. There are churches that have no by-laws. In fact, in the Book of Acts that we have been studying, we see that there is not a church mentioned anywhere in this book that has a building, a budget, or by-laws! Have you noticed that yet? In Philippi they met near the river and in the prison as it were. In Lystra they met at Timothy’s family home. In Athens they met on the Areopagus. Jesus himself never built a church building! The emphasis of always building another church building has been nicknamed “the edifice complex.”
What are needed for a church are people! People are the greatest singular asset of a church. It is like that old joke about the Pastor who stands before his church and says “I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that we have enough money to continue our ministry this year. The bad news is that the money is still in your pockets and not in the offering plates.” The people are the true assets of the church.
Consider what would have happened if the Holy Spirit had come down on a different day than the Pentecost in Jerusalem. You see, all the people were gathered there already! If the people had not been there, the Holy Spirit would have come down and nobody would have been affected by it. Holy Spirit would have gone back and no church would be here today! You matter most! This church is about you and God!
To close,
without faith there can be no church. Without a long lasting relationship with
Jesus Christ, there can be no church. Without the people—without you—there can
be no church. No church was started in Athens because these things were
missing. Praise God that we have what Athens lacked! Amen.