The Smoke

Perhaps you’ve heard the old adage: Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

The entire northern part of the country came face to face with this reality in dealing with the smoke drift from the Canadian Wildfires. Just last summer my neighborhood was hazy and smelled like a campfire for weeks because of a mulch fire a few miles away that smoldered for a long time.

In both of these cases most people never saw the actual fire… but they saw its effects. They could see, smell, and probably even taste the truth that somewhere out there a fire was raging. Usually the first thing that we see when a fire is burning is the smoke itself.

As we close in on our final weeks in our sermon series “How to Start a Fire” we are going to see how the Apostle Paul utilized this idea of looking for the smoke to help him in his evangelistic pursuit throughout the greek world.

You see for the past several months we have been looking at the Book of Acts and how it presents us with all of the elements that were necessary for the gospel message to spread across the known world like a wildfire.

And one of the most beautiful things about the gospel and the community of believers that came to exist because of it was the radically different way that they lived their lives. The Jesus community was known for their radical equality, their care for the poor and socially marginalized, and their rebuke of the generally accepted social/political order.

People saw the effects that this was having on the world. They saw the smoke. They knew that somewhere there was a fire burning. Even if they couldn’t quite see it yet for themselves.

This was largely in part due to the relentless efforts of Paul and his coworkers. Paul’s work is basically categorized in this pattern. He would go to a town or city and set up shop in the marketplace. And when I mean set up shop, I mean literally set up a shop. Paul was a tent maker by trade. So in each place that he went to minister, he would work his vocation of making and selling tents.

From there he would go into the local synagogues — the jewish places of worship -- and he would tell them about Jesus, the messiah of Israel. This usually went pretty poorly. But Paul felt that it was his mission to take the message of Jesus to the Jews as well as the gentiles. So he always did. After that, he would focus his energy on converting Gentiles (non-Jewish folks). And he had the perfect place to do so — because like I said, he set up shop in the marketplace.

The marketplace was like the center of greek social life, and often that is where philosophers and great thinkers would go to share their ideas and to build up a following. This still happens today doesn’t it?

So Paul would share the Gospel message and often would get into discussions with those who were sharing their own thoughts on life and religion.

However there was another very fruitful and profitable business in the marketplace: the sale of religious paraphernalia. Particularly, Paul was deeply concerned about one thing in general: Idols.

Both of these realities were most prevalently on display when Paul traveled to the Mecca of Greek philosophy and religion: Athens. So lets just dive right in here, because how Paul navigates this is going to be the backbone of how we understand our own call to witness to the people in our world today.

Paul has been travelling with his friends Silas and Timothy, and he goes on ahead of them to Athens, and that’s where we pick up the story:

Acts 17:16–18 NRSV

While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was deeply distressed to see that the city was full of idols. So he argued in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and also in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there. Also some Epicurean and Stoic philosophers debated with him. Some said, “What does this babbler want to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign divinities.” (This was because he was telling the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.)

So this is all on track with Paul’s typical MO. But verse 1 is going to give us some particular insight into Paul’s motives — and actually help us to really see how radically different Paul’s approach is. Paul is a good Jewish man. Remember that. And the cardinal sin of Judaism is this: IDOLATRY.

The first 2 commandments are:

You shall have no other god before me

You shall not make any graven images (AKA IDOLS)

And the Greek world, and really most of the world outside of the Jewish world, was littered with idols. Idols were the means by which human beings put material existence onto the gods that they worshiped. Idols were how humans made sacrifice to and honored their local and regional deities. Idols were the central reality of the religions of the world, and Paul comes face to face with that reality in Athens: the capital city of all things Greek.

To the greeks idolatry was central to their way of life, to Paul idolatry was a slap in the face to his way of life. But Paul, rather than allowing this matter to deter him, digs in. He begins preaching about Jesus, and attracting attention to himself. So much attention that he is brought to the high counsel of philosophers in Athens.

Acts 17:19–21 NRSV

So they took him and brought him to the Areopagus and asked him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? It sounds rather strange to us, so we would like to know what it means.” Now all the Athenians and the foreigners living there would spend their time in nothing but telling or hearing something new.

It turns out that Athenians are very open minded folks. They’ve been at the cutting edge of thought and philosophy for a long time. And they got there by allowing people to speak. You’ll remember maybe some famous names like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle right? These philosophers of Athens set the tone for our entire western way of thinking.

Paul knows this. So he gladly goes to a place called the Areopagus to meet with these head philosophers.

Now, if you were to go to modern day Athens and look to the highest point of the city you would see the unmistakable sight of the Acropolis.

Here’s a photo of it from the rooftop of the Best Western Athens at night. The largest structure is a building called the Parthenon, and it was the temple to the goddess Athena. Here’s a couple of pictures of it up close. The acropolis was the religious center of Athens, and just below it is a place called Mars Hill, also known as the Areopagus. It is just a plateaued rock formation that overlooks the city… and a modern marketplace. It was here that the council of philosophers would meet with Paul.

Here’s a picture of me and some friends sitting on Mars Hill. And another one to show you the perspective of how close it was to the Acropolis.

In our modern age we think of philosophy and religion as being separate, but in the ancient world the two went hand in hand. And so Paul, this devout Jew, finds himself literally standing in the shadow of like the greatest display of pagan idolatry, being asked to defend his new philosophy to the greatest thinkers in the world.

Acts 17:22–30 (NRSV)

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.

Look at what Paul does here. Paul sees the smoke. He sees that there is something here. He sees that the Athenian people see the smoke as well. They’ve got Idols and they’re multiplying, but they still see the deep gap between their human understanding and the truth of the divine. So in order to attempt to bridge that gap, they have created an idol to the unknown god. An idol to fill in as a stop gap. An idol just in case they were forgetting someone in their plethora of gods. And idol that Paul attributes to the god of Israel.

Rather than see this idol and scoff at these people, Paul takes this knowledge of these people and uses it to find common ground. He knows that they see the smoke — the signs that there is more to this world and to the divine than they can see. So Paul helps them to see the fire. Paul helps them to see the Gospel message.

He says you are so close! That unknown god that you worship is THE GOD. The creator God. The God of Israel and also the God of all of this world, who has instilled in you a sense of awe and wonder that you might grope for and find him! He’s not far off!

Paul Goes on:

Acts 17:30–34 NRSV

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.” When they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some scoffed; but others said, “We will hear you again about this.” At that point Paul left them. But some of them joined him and became believers, including Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.

Paul’s method here isn’t one of shame. It isn’t one of avoidance. Paul’s method is to meet the men of Athens in the common ground, and to offer them a deeper insight into what exactly it is that they are so diligently seeking after.

Postmodern Athens

We live in a world where evangelism gets a pretty bad public reputation. Mostly thanks to people who stand on corners with bullhorns telling the world that they are going to hell.

Theres some dude that drives around the south island doing that here.

But that’s not Paul’s strategy. Paul meets the Athenians where they are.

Our world is increasingly what we call “post modern” and even “post Christian.” And what really categorizes post modern and post Christian thought is actually not the staunch atheism that was so popular in the mid 1900s.

What is most common is the belief that there is something out there, but an unwillingness to believe that Christianity or any religion has got it right. Many people are willing to believe in God, but have a hard time with the Jesus part. (and honestly I think that its not so much Jesus as it is Jesus’s followers).

People see the smoke, they just need help finding the fire. And that’s our job. Like literally the number 1 job of every Christian is to help people find the fire. And we do that by finding out what it is that people see, finding the common ground between our Christian faith and what it is that they are willing to believe in at that moment, and then inviting them to come a see more.

Sometimes that’s simply “are you able to just believe that I, a generally rational person, believe?” Most people are open to that. And from there, it’s simply a matter of saying “come and see.”

That wasn’t a strategy that Paul invented. It is literally the only strategy that Jesus ever employed. Come and see. Follow me.

Neither Paul or Jesus let the circumstances of a person’s life stand between them and the invitation. Paul could have said “these Pagans are offensive to God, breaking the first 2 commandments all day every day.” But instead he went to where they were and said follow me.

The chances of someone coming to church here because I put videos on the internet are slim. I could be the best preacher in the world… I am not… But I could be… and no one would ever know if they aren’t invited to come to the place where I do the preaching. We could be the warmest and most welcoming and loving community of people in the world… which we are… and no one will ever know if you don’t invite them.

People see the smoke. You need to help them see the fire. So who are you inviting to church next week? It’s a great week. 1 service, food after. Everyone you know believes in eating I can tell you that right now. So who is it? Who you inviting? Don’t let the sun set on it. Ask them.

Let’s keep this fire growing.