Acts
17:22-31. Fascinating: when Paul showed up in Athens, the Parthenon was
already 500 years old; the golden age of Socrates and Pericles long past. And
yet the city was (and is still) a marvel.
Paul’s
tone? No condemnation. He connects. He “argues” – and the Greek is identical to
our word “dialogue.” He establishes common ground what he can about their
culture while luring them into something richer and more noble. Can today’s
preacher achieve the same?
He
goes to them, in the agora, the marketplace, the shopping mall of Athens. Can
the preacher get out to prepare the sermon, maybe after conversation with
random people in a shopping mall? To continue the conversation, Paul’s critics
walk with him uphill to the Areopagus, Mars Hill, the stone court where
generals decided whether to go to war or not. Paul comes peacefully, and
suggests his God isn't limited to Athens or any other place or vested interest,
but is for all people, everywhere, in every age.
Acts
17 seems to ask and answer whether Christianity is intellectually respectable,
as Paul makes his case before the most educated, cultured, philosophically
sophisticated people in the world. Paul does his best, but knows he will never
win the day on reason alone. Christianity is not unreasonable, but the Gospel
embraces far more than reason can begin to grasp. Reason is faith’s greatest
block, isn’t it? Paul proudly admits that the Christian message is “folly to
the wisdom of the world” (1 Corinthians 1:19): a poor peasant, executed but
coming back to life? No wonder in the philosophical mecca of Athens Paul was
mocked as a “babbler” (Acts 17:18).
A
few Athenians converted, others couldn't accept the Gospel message; but notice
the word of hope from many of the unconverted: “We will hear you again
about this” (verse 32). Can we be faithful, can we articulate the hope
that is in us, but with perseverance and patience, and in a way that even
skeptics might want to hear us again?
I’ve never slowed down enough to ponder Jesus’
promise: although we fixate on the maybe-not-true “I’ll do whatever you ask,” I
am moved now by “I will ask the Father.” It’s not that prayer works (or
doesn’t) – but the risen Lord, through the Spirit, actually asks God his and
our Father for us. What love! And how would this reality change what we
actually ask for?
The whole passage teases out what agape love is all about. “If you love…
you keep commandments” sounds conditional. But let’s be clear: Love has its
conditions; love has its rules. Love isn’t a mood you feel or don’t. If I love
my wife, I know the rules that bear witness to that love. We aren’t saved
because we’re fastidious rule-keepers.
And John’s rumination on the coming
gift of the Spirit after Jesus’ departure is just astonishing. No systematic
theologies to consult, Jesus was barely gone, and John writes with such tender
wisdom about the mystery of this Spirit. Clearly, it’s not some emotional
titillation, which many American Christians would pervert the Spirit into
being. Ford’s phrasing is striking: “The most straightforward way of
understanding the Spirit is as the shared, distributed, indwelling presence of
the crucified and risen Jesus.” Distributed! It’s not just that you get the
Spirit, or it’s there for you to access. It is distributed – reminding me that
God bestows a variety of gifts on the members of the Body, and we need one another
to get closer to the reality of God! To shut out voices that seem different or
strange is to choke that distributed Spirit.
1 Peter 3:13-22 reveals how tough
things were on early Christians, and thereby how the life of faith today is a
walk in the park, eliciting more yawns than harsh critique. So how does our
text’s counsel apply? Maybe you can say those who dare to live a radical faith
have their troubles, or you can grandstand or confuse people by pointing to how
mad people get over your political ideology. Let’s linger over a few intriguing
items here.
Maybe
this text is a way to talk about issues that matter to you without nagging or
condemning. So you simply observe that those who are trying to do good,
sheltering immigrants, advocating for gun control, lobbying against abortion,
striving for racial reconciliation, whatever it may be (and if you do a list,
zigzag left and then right as I just did to avoid people thinking you’re just
pasting faith on top of your agenda) do bear some misery – although you have to
own that in the biblical world you could be imprisoned, beaten, or shut out of
work, whereas today you’re more likely to get blasted on Facebook. The text
reminds us of Jesus’ suffering, and this solidarity ennobles suffering and
induces the strength to bear it.
The
RSV invites us to “sanctify” Christ. He’s already holy, of course… The verb, hagiasate, a quote from Isaiah 8:13, and
the same word as “Hallowed be thy name,” means to reverence, to treat as holy.
Live in a way that doesn’t embarrass Christ; tempt him to take pride in you.
The “Be ready to make your defense” envisions being on trial, or pressured to
renounce your faith. For us, is this finding yourself in awkward conversation
where a neighbor make a chilling racist comment, or someone blasts a Mexican
yard worker?
Does
this entail the simple skill of being able to give testimony to why and what
you believe? I worry I’ve not helped my people enough to be able to articulate
the simple basics of why and what they believe – and my church people who are
glib and eloquent on this are too often the smug types who have all the answers
and are all too eager to download their spiritual genius into others. I think
of Lillian Daniel’s Tell It Like It
Is: Reclaiming the Practice of Testimony or Tom Long’s Testimony as wise explorations of
this, important for our people even if it’s only a quick mention in this
Sunday’s sermon.
I
remind my people periodically that the Creed matters because it was devised to
give people simple ways to talk about their faith. Every Sunday’s recitation is
a little practice session. And this “defense” 1 Peter prepares us for isn’t
dogma so much as a personal naming of to whom we cling; it’s not propositional
but “the hope that is in you.” The average Christian needs to be able to say
without being shrill or sappy, “My hope is in God” or “I believe Christ is with
me.” And that “in you”: 1 Peter’s Greek is en humin, plural, really then “the hope that is in y’all.” We have
good company as we believe, defend, bear witness and make testimony. We’re good
listeners; we stand with others. And it’s always “with gentleness and
reverence,” not cockiness or judgment!
The
Creeds devised by the Church cannot seem to make up their
minds: should “He descended into Hell” be included? or not? The 1
Peter passage seems tantalizingly to suggest that between his burial late in
the day on Good Friday and his resurrection on Easter Sunday, Jesus went down
into the underworld to save those awaiting judgment. Many New Testament
scholars construe the 1 Peter passage differently: if we sort through Genesis
6:1-4, Isaiah 24:21, Jude 6, 2 Peter 2:4, and 1 Peter 3:19-20, we glimpse a
belief held by first century Jews, that disobedient angels were thrown into a
pit and locked up – and that Jesus’ preaching mission was to these evil powers.
Still, the Church has historically taught that Jesus “descended into Hell” –
a doctrine that “need not be explicitly grounded upon specific biblical
texts; rather, it must rely upon a reading of Scripture as a whole.”
Hell,
we know, is not a fiery cavern down in the earth patrolled by red men with
pitchforks. Jesus’ journey there is symbolic, intimating that all people, in
this life and even beyond this life, are offered the love of
God. Even the grave does not silence God’s call. “What is to happen
to the multitude who lived before Jesus’ ministry? And what will become of the
many who never came into contact with the Christian message? What is to happen
to the people who have certainly heard the message of Christ but who – perhaps
through the fault of those very Christians who have been charged with its
proclamation – have never come face to face with its truth? Are all these
delivered to damnation? Do they remain forever shut out? The Christian faith
can say ‘no’ to this urgent question. What took place for mankind in Jesus also
applies to the people who either never came into contact with Jesus and his
message, or who have never really caught sight of the truth of his person and
story” (Wolfhart Pannenberg). God is relentless, unfazed by time, space, or
death itself. Even the pit of Hell is owned by the unquenchable love of Christ;
the abyss is not bottomless, but has an opening to heaven. Or so many thinkers
have argued, unable to make sense of the idea that God could love everyone with
infinite power and wind up losing even one. Perhaps Christ’s descent into hell
opens a window for those who have never heard of Christ, or have heard it from
terrible people.
“In
view of what Jesus had seen the last few days of his life, maybe the transition
to Hell wasn’t as hard as you might think (Buechner).” Many theologians have
claimed that Christ descended into hell the moment he cried “My God, why
have you forsaken me?” on the cross; “No more terrible abyss can be conceived
than to feel yourself forsaken and estranged from God, and when you call upon
him, not to be heard (John Calvin).” Jürgen Moltmann thought it really began in
Gethsemane when Jesus’ request that the cup be removed was denied. Whichever
side of the grave your Hell may be on, “there is no depth, no darkness, no
unraveling of reality, which God’s Son has not shared” (Nicholas Lash). No
matter what Hell I go through, God is in the teeth of it with me, descending
into whatever abyss I have fallen. And, if Jesus descended into Hell, then I as
a follower of Christ, and we as the Church of Christ, must follow, and seek out
those whose Hell is palpable and devastating, and we become the embodied love
of Christ for those who think they are totally sealed off from God.
In The Great Divorce, Lewis imagined Hell
as a dingy, dark place, the weather always overcast. People mull about, hanging
their heads, depressed in this bureaucratic nightmare of a place. Curiously,
they can leave as any time, but they prefer to stay in Hell. Accustomed to the
place, they stay, relishing Hell’s activities calendar, including theological
discussion groups where they talk about questions like what happens to people
in Mongolia… Lewis provides us with some short quotations from Hell’s
residents: “I don’t what any help. I want to be left alone. I’m in charge of my
own life” – common sentiments in Hell. As Lewis surmises, “There is always
something they insist on keeping, even at the price of misery. There’s always
something they prefer to joy. There are only two kinds of people in the end.
Those who say to God, ‘They will be done.’ And those to whom God says, ‘They
will be done.’ And all that are in hell chose it.”
