Right Place, Right Time

I don’t think it’s a big secret that I am a Star Wars fan.  In fact, I shared with you my passion for Star Wars back in October last year.  It’s not specifically Star Wars that I want to talk to you about but one of the actors from Star Wars and many other films.  Harrison Ford received his big break after appearing in the films, but is also known for his roles in Indiana Jones and a whole host of other movies.  

Harrison Ford had appeared in a few other films before Star Wars but always as a minor role in films like American Graffiti and Apocalypse Now.  It was actually a pretty bizarre story that goes around the story of how Ford got the part of Han Solo in the Star Wars films.  George Lucas who was the creator of the films had several groups of people auditioning for the main characters interacting with one another and he was down one actor to audition for Solo in one of the groups.  He didn’t want anyone who was established in the industry to audition but someone kept telling him to just have Ford stand in to fill that spot so that the other four actors could have a Han Solo in their group.  So Lucas and Ford both assumed that he was just a fill in so that all the groups had all five main characters in the different groupings.   Since Ford didn’t expect to get the part he simply came to work to run lines and then went home to work on the home he had been working on for his family.  Thanks to his friend who had gotten him to run lines with the groups of actors and thanks to his relationship with Lucas from past films, Lucas began to see how right Ford was for the part of Han Solo.  Harrison Ford was at the right place at the right time and knew the right people.  Lucas eventually hired Ford to play as Han Solo and still had doubts because he wasn’t a new “breakout” actor, but he couldn’t deny how good he was at the part and with the other actors he decided to go with.  

I love that story because I love hearing stories, well about Star Wars for one, but I love hearing stories about how being somewhere or having something happen to you at a certain time or a certain place can change everything in your life.  I’ve heard stories from members of this congregation who share stories about how they didn’t get a job and on the way home from it they saw an advertisement or something that drew them in a different direction.  Part of my call story is about being told I couldn’t be in the career I wanted to be in because of my eyesight and then preaching in church a few months later and coming to the realization that was the right thing for me to do with my life.  Right place, right time. I think we even look back at bad events in our lives and we can see how they steered us away from what we thought was right to a totally new scary direction that ended up being the event that changed our lives for the better, not for the worse.  God has a way of using the bad, the difficult, the disruptive in our lives and make it for the better.  Not always immediately, and usually never easy, but those are the moments when our lives change and we look back and realize how active and alive God was in those moments.  

I really think that is how Paul must have eventually felt in his life.  Paul, who used to be Saul, went from being one of the best persecutors of the early Christian faith to becoming one of the best defenders and evangelists of our faith.  It must have been a hard transition and becoming blind until he repented and converted probably didn’t make the experience any easier.  But Paul eventually came to see that Jesus truly was the Messiah and changed his life’s mission to sharing the good news of Jesus Christ. 

Eventually that sharing of the good news brought Paul to Athens.  While Paul is in Athens he sees all these idols and is shocked that the Athenians could possibly believe in all these different gods.  Because of that, he starts to tell people about Jesus and having faith in just one God not many, to which the Athenians tell him to go and preach at the Areopagus, which is a place of public teaching and sharing of knowledge.  I love this text because of what Paul does, but also because at this moment Paul is the right man for the job.  He is at the right place at the right time.  Paul is a former Jew and has all the knowledge of the faith from which Jesus came from so he can share everything he knows about that and about Jesus.  Paul was also a Roman citizen.  This was a big deal.  Being  Roman citizen meant that Paul had the ability to travel all throughout the Roman empire without any major restrictions.  It also meant that he knew about the deities of Rome and Greece and all the others of the empire. So as Paul, somewhat newly converted, sees all these idols he now has a new insight and awareness of how to share the good news with the Athenians.  

It’s at this moment that he talks in the open market to the crowds about the idol to the unknown god.  The Athenians are so afraid of upsetting the gods that they built an altar to a god that they don’t know if he or she existed or not because they didn’t want to be punished by that god.  Paul uses his knowledge of his faith and their faith as well as their thirst for knowledge to share with them the gospel of Jesus.  Paul is in Athens at the right time and in the right place, and he truly is the right person for the job.  This unknown god you made a temple to is not unknown but is the one and only God who made the world and everything in it.  Paul shows them their foolishness in believing in something unknown while pointing to Genesis and showing that God made the world and all of the inhabitants.  

Then Paul says in verse 28 that your own poets have said, ‘for we too are his offspring’.  The Athenians would think of the great god Zeus as the father and thus they are his offspring, but Paul is showing them again that it is not their gods , but Yahweh, the one and only God who is the one who is God and Father to us all.  Paul then continues to show them that since we are God’s children we cannot use physical objects to pretend to be God, so it is time to give up ignorance and repent from their sins.  What Paul means is that idols are not worth the time or effort and only show how ignorant the Athenians are about God and gods in general and since Athenians (and all Greeks and Romans) felt like they were the most enlightened of all, then they should believe in God and not something unknown that they just created to cover themselves just in case.  

There is so much more in this text that Paul says that continues to point out how smart the Athenians are, but the way they build altars and idols and worship things that they cannot see or know or are afraid of so they do and give and build more, is actually not being enlightened at all.  Right after our text is says that some scoffed, but others believed and some wanted to listen to him say more.  Right place, right time.  Paul, both a strong believer in Jesus and a Roman citizen who knew the enlightened culture of the Greeks and Romans, knew just what to say and how to say it to show them that the only God there is and thus the only one worth worshipping is God who is revealed through Jesus Christ.  

Harrison Ford was at the right place at the right time to get the job as Han Solo which sparked his career, even though I didn’t know it at the time, being told I couldn’t have the career I always wanted and then preaching in church a few months later would have led me to this, it ended up that I was in the right place at the right time.  God was leading me, God was leading Paul, God may or may not have been leading Harrison Ford, I can’t say for sure about that, but we were all in the right place at the right time.  

Where is God leading you?  Where has God already led you so far?  Can you see how the events in your life may have led you to be where you need to be, or where God needs you to be?  Has a hardship eventually become the doorway or the pathway to something better?  I became a pastor because a door was closed to me.  Paul became an evangelist and the greatest speaker of our faith because a new path was opened to him.  Can you rely on God enough to let those challenges, those closed doors lead you to a better place?  To a place where you can use the skills and talents you have been given in this life to glorify God and Jesus?  Have you found your right place, and right time in life?  Or is there a new place and time that you are working on or looking for?  I’m sure we experience more than one time when God speaks to us through our life changes and challenges and perhaps God is speaking to you now and it’s time to let that change happen even if it’s hard.  

Today, may you be open to God calling you, pushing you, nudging you, or whatever way God is moving in your life to be in the right place, at the right time to live a life that both makes you happy, and is pleasing to God.  God bless us all in that discernment and that journey as we follow God’s pathways.  Amen.