In our reading from the Acts of the Apostles today, Paul confronts these questions as he confronts a new culture—an influential culture; but one not wholly compatible with Paul’s Jewish roots or his profound Christian conversion; and also a culture not completely alien to the deep insights which Paul has come to Athens to share from his experience and understanding of the risen Christ.
Who are we? What are we on about? Where are we going? These were questions that very much interested the people of ancient Athens: a people who prized learning; a people much engaged in exploring big questions in science and mathematics, philosophy and literature, arts and physical culture. They were a people who continually asked why, exploring themselves and their surroundings, searching for greater knowledge of humanity and our environment. Even in their religious beliefs, they were not content that they knew everything that there was to know. Who are we? What are we on about? Where are we going?
So, Paul is depicted as entering into this enquiring culture: a Jew among Greeks, a Christian among worshippers of gods with other names, a public speaker amongst a city of thinkers. His Jewish rabbinical background serves him well. He is intent upon arguing his case, on discussing not just the finer points of theology, but the big picture. He is asking his listeners to dig deep into the big questions and not just skate across the service.
He argued with the Jews. He argued with the Greeks. He argued with the philosophers and the people in the market place. Not that that made him many enemies for the Athenians were a people used to that sort of behaviour and, in fact, quite encouraging of it. The Athenians prized new ideas and thoughts, discussion and debate. They were concerned with exploring the big questions: Who are we? What are we on about? Where are we going?
Indeed, Paul is received well by the Athenian community. The picture of his reception is very favourable indeed, because, as the story goes, he is taken to the Areopagus to speak, to explain the strange, new teaching that he is offering.
The Areopagus is a small, barren, limestone hill, northwest of the Acropolis in Athens. Historically, the Areopagus was the place where the Athenian council had met to pronounce justice. The council, the most respected of Athenian institutions, had at one time performed the function of a senate. At the time of Paul’s visit and following the growth of democracy, the earlier powers of the council were greatly reduced. They did, however, still retain responsibility for the areas of religion, morals and homicide. Whether it was to this council which Paul spoke or not, we do not know. In the time of Paul, it was unlikely that the council actually met at the Areopagus, having moved to a place in the Agora, the marketplace. Nevertheless, the significance of the site to the story should not be missed. Paul is depicted addressing the Athenians on the site of their most respected council’s original home. This discussion is significant; and it is held in a very significant place.
Because of its use, the Areopagus was also renowned for the many incidents relating to the responsibilities of the Athenian council which had occurred over many hundreds of years. Perhaps it was historically true, perhaps just a legend or more likely a mixture of both, but one of the most famous stories about the Areopagus related to the shrines to “the unknown god” or “gods”.
There were a number of altars to the unknown god or gods in Athens. The story went that six hundred years before Paul ventured there, a terrible pestilence had fallen on the city which nothing seemed able to stop. A Cretan poet, Epimenides, had come forward with a plan. A flock of black and white sheep were let loose to run through the city from the Areopagus. Wherever each lay down it was sacrificed to the god whose shrine was nearest. If a sheep lay down without being in close vicinity to the shrine of a god, it was sacrificed to “the unknown god” or “gods”.
That story not only tells us a bit about the shrine “to the unknown god” but also about the importance which the Athenians placed upon their educated people, those who explored those big questions: Who are we? What are we on about? Where are we going? It was Epimenides, the poet, who had been credited with the plan for saving the city and it is Epimenides, to whom Paul appeals, when arguing that “the unknown god” was in fact the God of Christ.
For Paul, like any good preacher, begins his address with something which he thinks is important to the gathered assembly and appeals to the authority of people whom he knows his congregation respects. Since he is speaking to people who prized education and cultural achievements, Paul presents the claims of Christianity in an intellectual and cultural way in a reasoned manner.
Tactfully, he compliments the Athenians on being ‘very religious’. Then he refers to their own poets in making his main point. He notes a nearby altar with the inscription, “to an unknown god” and tells them that this God can be known, that this God is not far from each of them. He uses the words of Epimenides, the poet who brought those shrines into being:
This God whom you call the unknown god is, in fact, “the one in whom we live and move and have our being”. This is the God whose children we are.
Knowing who we are, knowing whose we are, knowing where we come from has a huge influence on our self-understandings, and not just on what we think about ourselves, but what we do arising out of who we are. But sometimes we get it the wrong way round. Sometimes we do a lot just trying to find out who we are; and in the process, we engage in a lot of activity and risk losing whose we were meant to be.
The God whom Paul proclaims, the God whom Paul understands to have come to us in Jesus is “the God in whom we live and move and have our being”. This God is the source of our identity and purpose. This God is the God whose children we are.
The importance of knowing who we are is particularly well-demonstrated for us in Australia by the struggles of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Europeans moving into this land stripped them of their land, their culture and their identity. We still witness helplessly the effects of that stripping, of that loss of a sense of who they were as a people; and that’s why things like an official apology to the stolen generations, and a re-writing of the preamble to the Constitution of the Uniting Church to include a recognition of First Peoples are so important. They address the question of identity, of who the people are and where they belong.
Christian people especially must understand the importance of these thing, because who we are has never been about what we do. It’s always been about what God has done in Jesus—about whose we are. In the disconnection of people and land, indigenous Australians lost that to which they belonged.
At the Areopagus, Paul is calling the Athenians to the God in whom they can discover themselves, not because of what they do or have done, but because of what God has done and who God is. This is “the God in whom we live and move and have our being”. This is the God who is the source of our identity and purpose. This is the God whose children we are.
Since arriving in Armidale, that is the message that I have been trying to share with you as a Congregation in order to ground our identity as the people of God in this place, not in what we do, but in whose we are and what God has done for us. I have tried to invite you to rest in God’s gift to us in order that together we might discover the freedom that our identity in Christ gives us. So, there have been many times when we have affirmed our baptismal identity—affirmed that we are incorporated into the body of Christ, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, by God’s grace. In our Elders’ meetings, we have made worship the important focus that it needs to be for the community of the Spirit. Worship is where we are formed as the people of God; and Elders sharing together in worship as key leaders in this Congregation is the most important thing we can do to remember, to remind ourselves whose we are and what God has done for us, in order that we might help this community to rest in our identity as the people of God. Worship here together is the most important thing we do together as the people of God in this place—as we turn our faces towards the God in whom, we live and move and have our being; as we orient ourselves, or rather as we allow God to orient us towards God, we are continually invited to discover the beloved children of God that we are; and out of that continual discovery to be enfolded into God’s mission in our world, not just through our activities as a church, but in our active participation as members of the body of Christ in the society around us. It is the freedom of knowing whose we are, of knowing who we are in God, of knowing what God has done, of remembering that God’s mission is God’s and accomplished in Christ, not ours and done by our own deeds, that will embody our identity in the God whose we are.
Activity is important, but not because of the activity, because of where it comes from. The work of the people of God must come from our acknowledgement of whose we are, of who we are in God; and that acknowledgement begins here, as we open ourselves to the God in whom we live and move and have our being, and invite that God to embrace us as beloved children; and as we hear the gracious words of that God again and again: “Your sins are forgiven.” “You are my people.” “I will not leave you alone.” “I have prepared a place for you.” “You are my beloved children.” “In me, you live and move and have your very being.”
