Introduction

God’s people have a challenging calling

We see in the calling of Abraham that he’s supposed to be distinct while also being a blessing to the world around

Israel’s story illustrates how challenging it is to find the balance this requires

Prior to exile the people are insufficiently distinct from their pagan neighbours

After the exile, many of them are too exclusive to be a blessing to their neighbours

After Pentecost, God has expanded the boundaries of who can be included, but this increases the challenge of being different, yet being a blessing.

Our mission is to demonstrate a different way of living while extending an open invitation for others to join

Like Old Testament Israel we find it difficult to do both at the same time.

Many Christians seem indistinguishable

Others seem so exclusive, their life doesn’t serve as an invitation

Today I want to look at how we do strike this balance by looking at the example of Paul in Athens

Paul finds himself alone in Athens after a mob of Thessalonian Jews ran him out of Berea.

As he waits for Timothy and Silas to join him, he has a look around and is disturbed.

Athens serves as the capital of learning (home to Socrates, Aristotle, Plato) but despite this reputation, Paul sees their embrace of idols as foolish

So Paul speaks out, confronting idolatry, but also inviting people into a new kind of relationship with the divineActs 17:16–34NIV

16 While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. 17 So he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there. 18 A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to debate with him. Some of them asked, “What is this babbler trying to say?” Others remarked, “He seems to be advocating foreign gods.” They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. 19 Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20 You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we would like to know what they mean.” 21 (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.) 22 Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you. 24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ 29 “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.” 32 When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.” 33 At that, Paul left the Council. 34 Some of the people became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others.

What does this story show us about Mission?

The world Paul encounters in Athens is enslaved to the futility of idolatry but the Spirit calls out to sinners inviting them to a new life

Paul finds himself in what is supposed to be the intellectual capital of the Roman World, but the people’s intellect is made futile by their allegiance to idols

The temptation is to not care (they’re just a bunch of pagans!)

or to accommodate (when it Athens, do as the Athenians do)

But Paul cares too much about the Athenians to write them off and he loves God too much to accommodate their idolatry

Paul’s love of God and of people means that he must be an ambassador of God’s love to those trapped in sin around him.

He does this by translating the message of God’s invitation to people who are far away into language and ideas they can understand

We must also be translators of the gospel message to our culture.

By translation, what I mean is that we can explain the Christian hope in a way that is compelling, addressing the hopes and fears of our target audience, and showing how the gospel is good news to people like them and how it addresses their deepest needs

How do we do it?I. Cultivating Compassion

Before we can translate the Gospel message to our culture, we need to cultivate compassion for those around us

Without compassion, our attempts to translate the message will come across as smug.1. Remembering Where We Came From

In order to do this, we have to remember where we came from

We are a people of religious immigrants

None of us were born as Christians, but we all ‘immigrated’ here

We can forget we were immigrants

Who are Immigrants?: I once worked with a man who had immigrated to Canada from Czechoslovakia following the Prague Spring in 1968. I remember having a hard time understanding his anti-immigrant tirades because his accent was so thick. I asked, “How can you be so anti-immigrant? Aren’t you an immigrant.” But he felt that those who came her after him were immigrants.

We can have the same sort of attitude. We came from outside and were welcomed inside, but still oppose the same grace being extended to others.

There are no automatic insiders, because all of our status before God is by his Grace.

Writing to Christians in Ephesus, Paul explains how both Jews and Gentiles stand equally condemned but all are welcomed by his graceEphesians 2:1–5NIV

1 As for you [Gentiles], you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3 All of us [Jews] also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest [Gentiles], we [Jews] were by nature deserving of wrath. 4 But because of his great love for us [all], God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us [all] alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.

When we remember that we stand before God because he invited us in despite our transgressions, it should change our attitude towards others on the outside

Inviting others into God’s grace is merely paying forward what was given to us2. Affirming Their Religious Impulses

It’s easy to be hostile towards other faiths, but we need to recognize the impulses that drive people to other faiths are good, although misplaced

In the religion of the Athenians, Paul sees an expression of the God-given impulse that simply misses the mark

The Athenians’ are grasping after the transcendent, but despite their great knowledge, they are worshiping what they do not understand.

Paul doesn’t try to tell them they’re a bunch of pagan idiots. He affirms their desire to be religious, while pushing back against some of their assumptions.

Our attitude towards others of different faith requires that we charitably engage their faith as an attempt to commune with the divine

Paul respects his audience and seeks to build bridges with their beliefs, while communicating a uniquely Christian vision of God’s salvation.

Cultivating compassion is one prerequisite to effective mission. The second is making sure we’re clear on the storiesII. Discerning the Stories1. Understanding Our Story

While it might seem to go without saying, but we can’t translate the message of the gospel into a new cultural context if we don’t understand our message

Many Christians don’t really understand our story as well as they should

Eg. Many Christians have a hard time expressing the gospel when asked to articulate it.

Parroting back an answer isn’t the same as understanding it.

Understanding it means being able to put it into new language that is meaningful to people in a different context

Paul’s sermon to the Gentile Athenians is very different than his sermon to the Jews on Cyprus because Paul understands the story enough to articulate it in new ways.

In order to know the story, we need to soak it in

We must expose ourselves to it regularly – reading the scriptures

We should expose ourselves to different voices for interpreting it

It’s great that you’re in church. I hope I articulate the message well, but you need more than my voice

We hear other voices by going to Bible Study, listening to other teachers – sermons of respected preachers or podcasts. I’ve enjoyed the Holy Post, Voxology, the Bible Project,

When we hear the gospel communicated by different people in different ways, we start to understand the message itself, rather than just learning to parrot someone else’s way of expressing it.2. Understanding Their Story

Once we know the story well enough to explain it, we need to know the culture into which we are translating it

You have to know both languages: If a person wants to translate the Bible into Swahili, it doesn’t matter how well they know Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic (the original languages) if they don’t also know Swahili very well too.

In the same way, if we understand the message of the scriptures, but don’t understand the culture into which we communicate the good news, we’re going to fail at cultural translation.

For Christians to communicate the good news in a way that is meaningful to different people, they need to understand those people.

What are their hopes and fears?

What assumptions do they have about God, or the meaning of life?

What words to they understand, and how do they understand them?

Sometimes the words we use in a Christian context have different meanings to people outside the church. (eg. ‘righteous’)

We need to be able to speak in a way that makes sense to them.

Paul starts by becoming conversant in Athenian culture. He wanders around and observes.

Because Paul takes the time to engage the culture, he finds a hook: the altar to the unknown God.

If we want to share the good news in a meaningful way with our culture, we must understand the culture beyond our Christian bubble.

Understanding our culture means consuming it while not being shaped by it. This can be a challenge

Because our culture is dominated by entertainment, the danger is that we passively take in our culture, and find ourselves conditioned by its assumptions – we need to be critical consumers

So some practical steps in becoming cultural learners:

Don’t consume culture that tempts you. Exercise discretion. If it tempts you to sin, it’s not something you need to be exposed to.

After watching a movie, reading a book, listening to songs examine what it’s trying to say. Identify what it’s about

What assumptions does it have about: human nature, our calling as people, God, a good life

by examining it, and understanding what it says, you can identify ways in which it communicates truth, and ways it subverts the truth

Let me model this by critically engaging a movie, and not one I agree with.

The Cider House Rules: The Cider House Rules that came out in 1999. It’s a movie about an boy—Homer—who grew up in an orphanage during the 1940s as the assistant to a doctor who runs the place. The doctor performs abortions, an illegal procedure at the time—justifying it by noting that the women who come to him get a safe procedure rather than going to people who will botch the job and risk the mothers’ help. Homer eventually leaves the orphanage, in part because he objects to the abortion services the doctor offers, and goes to work in an orchard that makes cider.

The men in who work in the orchard make fun of the rules posted in the cider house as arbitrary rules imposed by unknowing outsiders. For example, they’re forbidden from sitting on the cider house roof, but that’s the best place to eat lunch. In their mind, the rules lack legitimacy because they are handed down by people who don’t live in the situation.

Eventually it is discovered that one of the orchard workers has impregnated his teenage daughter, and Homer agrees to perform an abortion, realizing that his own morals about the issue needed to be more flexible to accommodate the messy situations in life. The cider house rules become a metaphor for morality dictated from afar. The story tries to say that right and wrong should be determined by the people living out their complex lives.

Thinking about this story, I can find points of agreement and disagreement. On one hand, when rules are made into absolutes and imposed on every situation, they can become harmful. This is essentially the problem with the Torah as practiced by the Pharisees, the rules become inviolable, even when they harmed the people they were meant to serve.

Yet, to say that people can determine what is right and wrong for themselves because they know their own lives is not true. One of the underlying themes in the Old Testament is that a lot of bad things happen when people decide right and wrong according to their own standards. They tend to interpret right and wrong by whats in their own interest, or according to their fears. Nazism took hold in Germany because many German’s sense of right and wrong was warped by their grievances and fears, so moral relativism isn’t the answer.

Jesus is the answer. He doesn’t represent rules handed down from on high from someone who has never been in the situation. Rather he has been tempted like us, yet he lived faithfully. So his vision for humanity takes into account God’s will and also the messiness of human life.

When we think about what we’ve heard read, or watched, and try to identify the points of agreement and disagreement, we’re better able to enter into a conversation with our cultureIII. Speaking Their Language

To communicate with people clearly we need to speak their cultural language. We do this by illustrating both points of agreement but also points of difference1. Finding Bridges of Agreement

Paul masterfully shows points of agreement between himself and his inquisitors who are a mix of Epicurean and Stoic Philosophers

Epicureans were scornful of the popular idolatry of the masses. They felt that god (if he existed) was transcendent (out there) but not imminent (not close to us).

Stoics believed in the pantheon of gods. They believed that God was close, (immanent) but not wholey different (transcendent).

Paul draws parallels with each of them

Epicureans think God is transcendent but not imminent

Stoics think the gods are imminent but not transcendent

Paul thinks God is both transcendent and imminent – He has a point of agreement with each of them

When we dialog with others about their faith, we need to stay aware that many other faiths (and even non-religious beliefs) have an element of truth.

Finding the common ground means is helpful when we have to communicate the differences.2. Articulating Differences

While Paul seeks to build bridges of consensus with his audience, he doesn’t shy away from explaining places where he differs

Neither Epicureans nor Stoics believe in a final judgment.

Epicureans think God is too distant and doesn’t care what people do

Stoics think the gods are many, so there isn’t a single god who would have the authority to judge

Neither group believes in the possibility of resurrection of the dead

Resurrection doesn’t mean a spiritual life after death, it means physical life after physical death

The contemptuous reaction of most of Paul’s hearers reveals a difficult truth: Many people are not persuadable

Paul continues to share boldly, refusing to be discouraged by the reception he gets.

We must remember that rejection isn’t anything new.

God speaks to give people a chance to respond but they must still choose to respond

Some are not ready yet and some never will be

But God wants to give people the chance to respond, so we share, not because we expect wild success, but because we are to embody God’s faithfulness.Conclusion

God asks us to be his representatives – sent from his kingdom to the world.

Like ambassadors, we need to embody the values of our kingdom, but understand the values of the place to which we are sent

We need to understand both of these perspectives to speak for the kingdom

We must remember that God sends us because of the great love he has for those far away

So we must approach them with humility because we were once outsiders

And we should see their religious beliefs not as wrong but as a good impulse that has missed the mark

To become effective translators of the good news, we must learn our story, and be conversant in the stories those outside tell themselves.

This means both constantly exposing ourselves to our story

And consuming culture in a critical fashion, discerning how it differs from a Christian perspective

Then we must find ways to speak the language finding points of agreement and disagreement

God hasn’t sent most of us to foreign lands, or people of strange speech.

Yet, if we have insulated ourselves inside a Christian bubble, those outside might as well be foreigners

So lets work to build bridges of connection outside the church because God loves the outsiders and wants us to invite them in