2 Kings 6.8-23; Acts 17.15-34

There is something unusual about Paul arriving in Athens. He had not, so far as we know, planned to go there. He had been driven out of Thessalonica, and from there opposition had followed him to Beroea, where to avoid him getting into further trouble, his companions put him on a boat and sent him south. And so he found himself in Athens, waiting for Silas and Timothy to join him there.

He had arrived in one of the great intellectual and cultural centres of the ancient world. Athens was a city saturated with religion. As he walked up from the port he would have seen its streets and public places filled with temples, shrines and statues. It was also a city saturated with philosophy: a place where people thought and argued, debated and discussed nonstop.

And as Paul walked in through the city, he absorbed all he saw. And Luke tells us that he was “deeply distressed” by what he saw.

We need to understand why that was. As a Jew, Paul’s life was shaped from childhood by the first commandment: “You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them”

For Paul, these statues were not simply examples of great sculpture. They represented something profoundly wrong: people turning away from the living God and worshipping created things rather than the Creator.

And yet what Paul does next is instructive for us. He does not denounce the Athenians. He does not tell them that they were wrong or foolish. Instead, he begins to engage them in conversation.

First he goes to the synagogue, as was his custom, and there he reasoned with the Jews, and with them he used their scriptures as a starting point. But then he goes into the marketplace and talks with anyone who will listen. He soon had their attention and as a result he was brought before the Areopagus, the council of Athens, where they asked him: “What is this new teaching that you are presenting?”

And Paul’s response is rather remarkable.

He does not begin with Abraham or Moses or the Hebrew Scriptures, because his audience don’t know them. Instead, he begins with the world they do know. “I see how extremely religious you are in every way.” He has noticed their altars, their religious searching, and one particular altar inscribed “To an unknown god.” Paul takes that phrase and uses it as a springboard from which he can speak about the God he knows. So he says “what you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.”

It is a remarkable example of Christian witness.

Paul does not compromise his own beliefs. His starting point is that there is one Creator, the Lord of heaven and earth, who cannot be confined to temples made by human hands. But he begins where his hearers are and finds a point of contact with them.

And then he tells them something astonishing: The God whom they do not know is not far away. “He himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.” And he adds: “He is not far from each one of us.”

That last sentence is perhaps the heart of his whole speech. “He is not far from each one of us.” It is worth pausing on that phrase. It is very easy to imagine that God is far away. We live in a society in which the Christian story can no longer be assumed. Many people do not know the Bible. They didn’t go to Sunday school. They didn’t sing hymns in school assemblies. They may never have been inside a church except perhaps for a wedding or a funeral. And the church is increasingly not the place you now go for those life events.

There are generations growing up now for whom the basic Christian vocabulary which many of us grew up taking for granted is almost entirely unfamiliar.

And that can leave the Church feeling rather like Paul must have felt in Athens: surrounded by a culture full of ideas, images, ambitions and beliefs, but in which Christianity can sometimes seem to be just one voice among many. But Paul’s experience in Athens has something important to teach us.

Notice first that Paul has his eyes and ears open. As he walked through the city he paid attention to what he saw. And he did not remain in the synagogue and talk about the idolatrous Athenians from a distance He went into the marketplace. He listened. He observed. And then he engaged.

And if we want to tell the good news to our neighbours, perhaps we should be doing the same. We need to know what occupies their minds and hearts. What are they afraid of? What do they hope for? What do they enjoy? What do they think will make their lives worthwhile? And where do they look for meaning? Because although the statues of Athens may have disappeared, human beings have not stopped worshipping. We may not make stone or bronze statues of Zeus or Aphrodite, but we can give ultimate significance to many things – perhaps family, career, reputation, money, possessions, political causes, and in our day technology.

But beneath all this there remains the same human longing. The longing to know what life means. The longing to belong. The longing to be loved. The longing to discover that our lives are not accidental or insignificant. The longing for God.

Paul put it well when he said: God made humanity “so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him – though indeed he is not far from each one of us.” Others have said the same thing since  – Augustine put it this way: “You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You”.

Pascal the 17^th century French mathematician and philosopher said “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ”

Perhaps that is why Paul’s speech in Athens remains so powerful. He didn’t begin by saying, “You have got everything wrong.” He began, in effect, by saying: “You are searching. And I want to tell you about the one you are searching for.”

Around us many would not call themselves Christians, but they’re searching. Some call it looking for spirituality. Some call it searching for meaning. Some look to find answers to life’s questions through art, music, nature, philosophy or service to others. Some may have no religious language at all, but may nevertheless carry within them an ache which they cannot quite explain.

And isn’t the best response not immediately to tell them what they ought to think, but to acknowledge that searching and to say: “Yes. I think I know something about what you are looking for.” Because Christians believe that the human search for God is not ultimately a search in which we are left alone. The gospel tells us that God has already come looking for us. And that is where Paul’s speech eventually leads. The God whom we are looking for has made himself known. The God who cannot be contained in temples has come among us. And he has done that in Jesus.

Paul’s speech reaches its climax when he tells the Athenians that God has appointed a man through whom he will judge the world. And then comes the decisive evidence: “He has given assurance of this to all by raising him from the dead.”

It was when he spoke about the resurrection of Jesus that the Athenians divided. Some scoffed and sneered. Some said they would hear more another time. And a few believed. That, too, is important. Paul gives his speech faithfully. But he cannot control its reception.

Our calling is to bear faithful witness to Christ. We cannot control what people do with the gospel. We can only offer it.

So as we go from this place into another week, perhaps we can take three things from Paul’s visit to Athens. First, let’s listen carefully and pay attention to the hopes, fears and questions of those amongst whom God has placed us. Second, let’s learn to speak of Christ in ways that make sense to those who may have very little Christian background. And third, let’s trust God with the response to all those conversations.

Amen.