Easter 6 2014

Easter 6, 2014

Paul was a busy guy. Not only had he spent much of his young adulthood persecuting the Christian Church in its infancy; but after his conversion, he became a tireless ambassador for the very same Church.

What’s more, he became a missionary to the Gentiles (that means anyone who isn’t Jewish). He even went to the Jerusalem Council to defend the validity of Gentile converts to the faith whether they had been circumcised or not (phew…).

But Paul had a way with people—like, an infamous way. If he wasn’t raising pulses in the synagogues throughout the Roman provinces, he was winding up the local Roman authorities. He did this so well, in fact, that he was even forced to leave his fellow travelers, Silas and Timothy, behind to flee to Athens.

The only problem was that Paul couldn’t keep his mouth shut, and he no more than hit town before he made his way to the local synagogue to have a chat about all of the idols in the city.

  

Somehow, then, this conversation began to mushroom, and soon people throughout the area were hearing the things that Paul was saying. Soon, Paul became mistaken for what they call a “seed-picker.” The NRSV translates this as “babbler,” but seed-picker, even knit-picker, are better translations, because they basically thought that Paul was a traveling philosopher who had come around to start philosophical arguments.

And this is where our reading from the Acts of the Apostles begins today. Paul has caused another stir—however, this time, instead of running him out of town, the people of Athens take him to the Areopagus, a place to discuss ideas and philosophy. (And we think our culture is a civilized one…)

Now, what is interesting about this discourse from Paul is that he doesn’t attack the people of Athens. Remember, he was just in the synagogue complaining about the idols in the city. However, here, we see a different side of Paul. Suddenly, he is connecting meaning to the spiritual experience of the Athenians. He even affirms their religiousness, and compliments their grasping at the mystery of God—so much so that they even had an altar to an unknown god…

But after affirming these things, and even quoting a couple of their own poets to boot; Paul begins making his pitch. He explains that if they understand the concept of the divine, then they ought to also understand that any attempt to create images for worship of God is inadequate.

And while God has forgiven these ignorances, Paul says now is the time for repentance (the Greek word here is metanoia). They literally need to turn around and begin seeing in a whole different way—that is what metanoia means.   

I suppose for me, what is so striking about this reading is that we’re seeing a side of Paul that we might not have known was there. After all, there are a lot of people in the Church who really don’t like St. Paul (personally, I think he gets a bad rap, but what do I know?). The fact is, however, Paul is a powerful personality in the early days of the Church, and we even find that his contemporaries in the New Testament have to work pretty hard to figure Paul out.

 But for all of that, in this particular account, I think we see Paul espousing quite a mature sense of faith, and even a pretty advanced understanding of theology as well—which is kind of comforting.   After all, Paul is one of the archetypes for our own understanding of evangelism, or sharing our faith with others—even though this might not be a strong suit for our particular Christian tradition.

But let’s face it, one of the reasons that we’re not so hot at sharing our faith is because we know how badly evangelism gets botched. I’d imagine that there isn’t a person here who hasn’t had an awkward experience with some earnest person who wants us to ‘get saved.’

  And while we really should be flattered that people think so highly of us that they want us to be part of their faith tradition—it’s not the sort of decision that ought to be made under duress; which is how much evangelism, historically, has been done.

I mean, if you tell me the alternative to doing what you want me to do means eternal damnation in a fiery pit with demons, and fire and…probably spiders—well, I’ll do whatever you want, and probably even buy a vacuum cleaner from you.

But the matter of faith is something quite different than all of that—and Paul’s address at the Areopagus is evidence of this.

First off, when we share our faith, we can’t assume that we’re in the business of filling empty heads. Like Paul, we have to understand that everyone has had some experience of God—some experience with Mystery—even if they don’t articulate it in that way. And it’s my sense that rather than being afraid of those experiences (even if we don’t fully understand them), we should affirm the good in them. After all, if we can’t perceive God working in others, it’s likely that it’s because we haven’t been able to perceive God working in ourselves…so, we shouldn’t project our own insecurities.

Next, I think we forget that it’s God’s job to do the heavy lifting. In other words, it’s not up to us only to invite conversation about faith, and seal the deal immediately. Instead, we offer questions—maybe we even offer our own questions and doubts—just so long as we’re honest. Then, we might need to step back and allow God to work in the hearts of people.

Finally, we need to let go of our fear that someone might reject our invitation to faith. It’s my sense that if we are, ourselves, comfortable with our faith, we should be able to speak of it, even share it with such ease that it would never seem unnatural. Likewise, we shouldn’t think that sharing our faith is all about church language and God talk. Even Paul in his discourse didn’t bring God into the conversation until he had already invited the people to consider their own faith experiences more deeply. So, sharing our faith may be as simple as asking someone about their day and listening. Sometimes evangelism is quiet incarnational work rather than selling fire insurance…(not that it’s ever selling fire insurance).

The point in all of this is that faith is not a matter of decision, it’s a matter of conversion. And what we understand that word conversion to mean can make all the difference not only in how we live our faith ourselves, but how we share our faith, as well. Because if we continue to think that conversion is a one-time experience—we have relegated it to decision. And while we do have to assent to conversion—conversion is something that happens to us continually throughout our lives. We have many conversion experiences throughout our lives, and they continue to form us ever more into the image of God (that which God created us to be).

So, as for sharing our faith, we should always be open to the possibility that we are entering into someone else’s life at a point of conversion for them. We may even be a catalyst for such a conversion—who knows? But whatever the case, it is up to us to recognize that God is always at work in everyone, in every place. And our role is only to invite people to become aware of that work.