Paul stood up
in the middle of the council on Mars Hill and said, “People of Athens, I see
that you are very religious in every way.
As I was walking through town and carefully observing your objects of
worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: ‘To an unknown God.’ What you worship as unknown, I now proclaim
to you. God, who made the world and
everything in it, is Lord of heaven and earth.
He doesn’t live in temples made with human hands. Nor is God served by human hands, as though
he needed something, since he is the one who gives life, breath, and everything
else. From one person God created every
human nation to live on the whole earth, having determined their appointed
times and the boundaries of their lands.
God made the nations so they would seek him, perhaps even reach out to
him and find him. In fact, God isn’t far
away from any of us. In God we live,
move, and exist. As some of your own poets
said, ‘We are his offspring.’
“Therefore,
as God’s offspring, we have no need to imagine that the divine being is like a
gold, silver, or stone image made by human skill and thought. God overlooks ignorance of these things in
times past, but now directs everyone everywhere to change their hearts and
lives. This is because God has set a day
when he intends to judge the world justly by a man he has appointed. God has given proof of this to everyone by
raising him from the dead.”
This week, over 3000
United Methodists from the western half of the state will gather at Lake
Junaluska for the Western North Carolina Annual Conference. This yearly gathering is part worship, part business,
part family reunion.
Annual Conference
concludes each year with the fixing of appointments – the official sending of
pastors to some 1100 churches across the conference for another year of
ministry. I view this time as a yearly
renewal of my commitment to go where I am sent, to represent God and serve
God’s people, and lead God’s people in sharing God’s life-giving love and grace
with the world around us as the Holy Spirit enables us.
This realization is, for
me, anyway, humbling – wondering why in the world God would count on me, and
empowering – for whatever reason, God is
counting on me. Not just the pastors,
but all of us. God is counting on me.
It’s a time to re-up. This year, there will be a “2” next to my
name in the appointment book, indicating it’s about to be my 2nd
year appointed as the lead pastor here at Morehead. I have already told our bishop and district
superintendent to forget my name and leave me alone! We love it here. Next year I want to see a “3” next to my
name, and then a “4,” and then we’ll see how high it can go.
It’s weird to think that a
year ago, I didn’t know you. You didn’t
know me. We were waiting to be
introduced. I’ve often thought about
that process you go through to get to know someone – how you can go from
complete strangers to having a deeply-meaningful relationship with someone.
I am particularly grateful
for those who facilitate introductions. Even
introducing someone to someone else doesn’t form an instant relationship
between them – they still have to do a lot of the work themselves to make that
happen – but an introduction is often a spark, the initial “oomph” that gets a
relationship started.
When you think about it,
we make introductions all the time. We
introduce mutual friends if we think they might hit it off. We set people up on blind dates. We tell people about restaurants we enjoy,
where to get a good haircut, oil change, or frozen yogurt. We share recipes, garden tips, articles, you
name it, if we love it, we share it with great enthusiasm!
Do we have the same
excitement for sharing our faith and introducing people to Jesus?
We call this
“evangelism.” Evangelism is a churchy
word we use to describe introducing people to Jesus and talking about our
faith. Evangelism has gotten a little bit
of a bad rap lately; perhaps because the very word conjures up images of TV
evangelists with big hair and perfect smiles cajoling money out of a vulnerable
TV audience, or angry people with hateful signs hurling slurs and insults at
passers-by – maybe not the best picture for sharing God’s love!
Make no mistake – we are
called to share our faith, we are called to be about sharing God’s love and
grace in the world, and we are called to be bold in it – but, and this is
critical – we are not called to be
jerks about it. Being a Christian
doesn’t make us better than other people, and sharing our faith does not give
us a license to be obnoxious or condescending.
Friends, we cannot allow
these to be the voices that speak for us, nor can we allow them to keep us from
speaking. Even though these voices
represent the smallest sliver of the Christian community, they are perhaps the
loudest and most persistent voices, and unless we also speak up, when the world
hears the words “Christian,” “Jesus,” “Bible,” “faith,” or “church,” this is
the picture they’ll have.
Now, I know, some people
are going, “Talk about my faith? Tell
people about Jesus? What are we paying
the pastor for?” You pay me to remind
you to introduce people to Jesus.
Remember what we said earlier – God
is counting on me.
The Apostle Paul in
today’s reading from the 17th chapter of Acts, gives us a good
pattern to follow for sharing our faith in a non-Christian world. He has been criss-crossing the Mediterranean,
preaching and setting up churches. He
has been met with resistance and hostility in each place.
He arrived in Athens for
some down time waiting for his colleagues to meet him and figure out what they
would do next. There was no work on the
agenda – no preaching, no teaching, no setting up churches, none of that – just
a little R & R. And yet we know
that’s not what happened.
Paul was walking through
the city, taking in all the cultural and historical treasures that make Athens
the great city it is.
Everywhere he went, he saw
altars and shrines to many gods. The
Greeks & Romans worshipped a variety of gods, but they were also deeply
respectful of the gods worshiped in other places by other people. Not wanting to leave anyone out, they even
set up an altar to “an unknown god.”
Paul decides to share the
Gospel with non-believers, and starts with a compliment – “Look at all these
altars! I can see that you are deeply
religious!” And so many altars – these
people are definitely searching, definitely trying to connect with something
beyond themselves!
We aren’t so different
today than were people in Athens. People
are still longing for meaning and searching for significance. So many altars where we bow – altars of
wealth and power, materialism and nationalism, prominence and prestige,
experience and esteem, friends and family, leisure pleasure – one altar after
another, each built with the promise of enshrining our happiness, each one just
as disappointing as the one before.
Before we know it, our
lives have become more cluttered with altars to false gods than the streets of
Athens.
Why do we do this? Because God created us with a restlessness, a
need deep inside us for a connection with God.
I think of it like the little shape ball I played with as a kid, trying
to fit those yellow shapes into the various holes. Now, imagine one of those holes is
God-shaped. You can try to cram all
sorts of things in there, but only one thing can fill the God-shaped hole in
each of us – God. Anything else, we
remain empty inside.
Paul knew that the people
were searching. So many altars? So much devotion, even if misguided? Yeah, they were looking for something. Patiently, Paul says, “You’ve been
searching. You’ve been looking a long
time” – what they’ve been looking for is the one, true God.
Paul’s presentation meets
his hearers where they are. They are
intellectuals, and he presents the Gospel with quotes and allusions to their
own poets and philosophers. He builds
bridges between their culture and his message, finds common ground, and says,
“Let’s start here.” He is not at odds
with his hearers. He’s not trying to fix
them, correct them, tell them everything that’s wrong with their beliefs or way
of seeing the world. He’s not trying to
prove anything about them or himself.
And though he uses reason
and appeals to their intellect, he presents the Gospel not as an argument to be
won or a puzzle to be solved or a set of prepositions with which to agree, but
as an introduction to the living God, and an invitation to be in relationship
with God.
He doesn’t say, “Let me
help you know things about God.” He says, “Let me help you know God.” The God you’ve worshiped this whole time and
didn’t even know it – would you like me to introduce you? The God who created the world and everything
in it, the God who created you and loves you more than you can imagine, the God
whose image you bear, whose love and creativity are marked indelibly on you,
the God and Father of us all, even though you’ve never confessed God’s name or
realized that you were God’s child, has always loved you and knows your name,
whose will has always been directed toward your good, the God who has been
reaching toward you and calling your name even while you were completely
ignorant of this God because that’s how much God loves you, the God in whom we
literally live and move and have our very being, this very same God – would you
like me to introduce you?
People cannot come to know
God until someone introduces them. Introducing people to God doesn’t mean you
have to be an expert in theology or have a bunch of answers or arguments ready
to go. You simply need to be willing to
share your experience of how God has been at work in your life. If you have a story to tell, then God can use
you. It’s easy – it’s just your own
story, and it’s powerful; you’ll watch God work through that in amazing ways,
and before you know it, you’ll be introducing people to Jesus left and right. As Paul showed us in Athens, we can invite
people to get to know God in a way that is respectful and not pushy, but also
has a holy boldness and passion for sharing God’s love and grace.
We talk about church as
family. A family of faith. God’s family.
You may not have ever thought about it, but there’s a family business –
bringing people (all people!) into relationship with God through Jesus. The
family business is growing the family.
Being part of the family means being part of the family business.
As a church, our job is
clear. It’s already been outlined. We are part of God’s family, so our business
is God’s business – introducing people to Jesus and making it possible for them
to grow in God’s love. What a great line
of work we have, with no shortage of opportunity! Just look around at all the people we have
the opportunity to introduce to Jesus!
But it’s a family business
– that means all the members of the family have a role, including you. Though we have nice benches, do more than
ride the bench here. That’s not standing
on the promises; that’s sitting on the premises! Gather to worship, yes, but then depart to
serve. Come in to be fed, go out to feed
others. Come to get to know God better,
go and out introduce Jesus to others. Don’t
just warm a pew; be part of God’s mission.
The beautiful thing in
God’s mission of introducing people to Jesus is that there’s a job for
everybody. Maybe you can preach. Maybe you can go somewhere to people in need,
around the corner or around the world.
Maybe you can pray. Maybe you can
sing. Maybe you can teach. Maybe you can give. Maybe you can cook, or set up tables, or
greet people when they arrive or help them find a parking spot. So many ways to serve, but each and every one
of them supports our primary mission to introduce people to Jesus.
Friends, like the people
of Athens, we can be easily distracted and pulled in so many directions that we
quickly lose focus and get off track. So
many things vying for our attention, pulling us this way and that way. Let’s keep the main thing the main
thing. Let’s stay focused on introducing
people to Jesus.
I’d love it if church were
a little more like Pinky and the Brain. This favorite cartoon of my childhood
features two animated lab rats – The Brain, a diabolical genius, and Pinky, his
dim-witted but loyal sidekick. At the
beginning of every episode, Pinky says, “Gee Brain, What do you want to do
tonight?” “Same thing we do every night,
Pinky: try to take over the world!”
Such a driving, clear,
undebatable statement of purpose. Said
with clarity and conviction, unequivocally naming their purpose and mission.
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