Acts 17: 22-31
Psalm 148:7-14
1 Peter 3:8-18
John 15:1-8

Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, ‘Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, “To an unknown god.” What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, 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. For “In him we live and move and have our being”; as even some of your own poets have said, “For we too are his offspring.” Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.’

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I know that some of you disagreed with what I said last week (which I invited you to do). If you weren’t here and don’t want to miss an opportunity to disagree with me, the sermon is in the back of the church. But lest anybody get the impression that what I said last week means I don’t think we should be evangelists (which is not what I said, by the way), this week I want to talk about evangelism.

"Evangelist" means "Bearer of the Good News," not, as the evangelists on TV would have you believe, "Bearer of the outstretched hand." What I’d like us to think about is how we can be better evangelists.

Now, some of you might be thinking, "I’m not an evangelist; that’s what we pay you for." Or maybe you’re thinking, "I’m not an evangelist; I don’t talk about my religion." Well — wrong on both counts. If you’re baptized, you’re called to be an evangelist, to (in the words of the Baptismal Covenant), "proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ."

So all Christians (lay and ordained) are called to be evangelists, and all of us are proclaiming something pretty much all the time. That includes those who don’t talk about their religion. You see, we’re called to proclaim the Good News "by word and example." St. Francis said, "Always proclaim the Gospel — when absolutely necessary, use words." We do a lot of proclaiming by our actions, and by our failure to act. We do a lot of proclaiming with our words, and by our failure to speak.

So it doesn’t hold much water for any of us to declare, "I don’t proclaim." It makes more sense (and it’s a lot harder) to ask, "What do I proclaim? What do I proclaim with my words? What do I proclaim by my failure to speak? What do I proclaim by my actions? What do I proclaim by my failure to act?" Am I a "bearer of the Good News," or do I proclaim something else? We’re all proclaiming something, so let’s let St. Paul teach us something about how to proclaim the Good News.

Our lesson from Acts of the Apostles is especially helpful because Paul is not "preaching to the choir," which I think the vast majority of Christian evangelism is guilty of. He’s sharing the Good News with people who have no idea of what he’s talking about.

In Acts this morning, we find Paul, an Israelite, a Jew, a man steeped in the Hebrew Bible and a recent convert to Christ, speaking as a Greek orator in Athens, the intellectual center of the known world which is, intellectually and philosophically, in another world. Now, it’s not unusual for us to encounter sermons and speeches in Acts (they comprise about twenty percent of the text, much more than in any other book), but it is unusual for us to hear a sermon in this setting. Usually, we hear an Apostle preaching in a synagogue. The typical "stump speech" was a run through Israelite history and the prophets, leading up to Jesus. That only worked because of the assumption that the congregation worshipped the God of Israel and was familiar with the Bible.

But in Athens, we hear Paul preaching to an entirely different culture. He is outside a synagogue, "in front of the Areopagus." The Areopagus was like the town center, or maybe the town council, and whenever somebody had a speech they thought the community should hear, they gave it there, in what was sort of like the lecture hall in the center of the world’s most acclaimed community of philosophers.

Paul recognizes that he is addressing an entirely different audience, and he completely changes his message. That sounds like common sense, but it’s not. I’ve seen lots of folks, and you probably have too, who give a wonderful speech or sermon to the wrong audience. They speak over the people’s heads, or maybe they talk down to them. Or they use metaphors and examples that just don’t mean anything to the people listening. I’m sure I’ve been guilty of it (there’s no need for you to respond!).

But Paul isn’t guilty of it, not here anyway. The tone and approach he adopts here is different from any other speech in the Bible. He knows he’s addressing polytheists, people who believe in Zeus and Apollo and Diana and all those other pagan gods. Now, note that these are people that pious Jews like Paul were raised to call "heathens," but Paul starts off by saying, "Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way." Then he says, "I see that you’re so religious that you have erected an altar to an unknown god." Rather than mocking that, which he certainly might have, he compliments them on their seeking God and recognizes that the altar to "an unknown god" represents an area in which they are still striving, a way in which they are open minded, and he uses that to argue for a radically different view of God.

"I know who that unknown god is," he says, "and guess what? That God is the God who made the world and everything in it; that "unknown god" is Lord of heaven and earth, who gives all mortals life and breath and all things." Then, quoting the Greek poet Epimenides, he says that in their unknown god, "we live and move and have our being." And quoting their poet Aratus, he says that, "we too are his offspring." And Paul says that, unlike many of their gods (who often just mess with people because they’re bored), this new God judges righteously, as evidenced by his having raised a righteous man from the dead to appoint as judge of the world.

And he says, "God is the one who made you with this desire to search for him. It’s okay that you’ve been groping blindly after made-up gods until now, but now that you know who God is, it’s time to repent, to turn around, and believe in this God, who is close to each one of us."

Paul has met these Greeks right where they are. I can hear the teenagers in the congregation thinking, "Great. But who cares? Like I’m really going to be preaching to Greeks before the Areopagus." This thought will, of course, be accompanied by a roll of the eyes.

Who cares? Well, we should all care. Because, you’re right that we won’t be preaching to Greeks before the Areopagus, but we are called to share our faith with people who really don’t know much more about it than those Greeks did. I am constantly amazed by how uninformed our culture is about Christianity, despite the fact that there is a church on every third corner and virtually everybody thinks they know what Christianity is all about. Lots of people have learned about Christianity from traditions that take a very different approach than ours, and I spend a huge amount of my time trying to undo what some other preacher has done which I don’t recognize as Christianity. And lots of people don’t go to church. They learn about Christianity from the news (so that I’ve been self-conscious about wearing my collar lately because people think priests are child molesters), or from TV (so called) "evangelists," who often are bearers of Bad News or Expensive News.

When I was at All Saints’, I approached the Jewish Temple on Peachtree about exchanging teachers. I’d go there to explain Christianity, if they’d send a Rabbi to All Saints’ to explain Judaism. The Rabbi’s response was, "Thanks, but we’re not interested. We already know all about Christianity."

Now, if the Jews think they know all about Christianity (which I’m very confident is not true), think about how many misconceptions the average person (forty percent of whom never go to church) has.

No, you’re not going to share your faith with Greeks before the Areopagus. But let me tell you something, at Woodward Academy, at Delta, at the Brake Pad, at the Ford Factory, at the grocery store, at the dry cleaners, at the Woman’s Club, at the Neighborhood Association, at lunch with a friend, wherever you talk to folks, you are going to encounter a Greek world, a world populated by people who don’t know much about Christianity, even if they think they do. And even if they do know something about it, they certainly aren’t likely to understand our particular (and, I think, wonderful) interpretation of the faith, which is quite different from the theology that floats in the air of the South like the pollen.

So let’s look at five ways Paul customizes his message for the Greek world of his time. I’m going to add a sixth. I hope they will help us be better evangelists in our time.

First, Paul is respectful of the Greek’s religious experience, and he does not say insulting things that would "shut their ears." He tells them that he appreciates the fact that they have been striving for religious truth. Can you imagine if he had opened up by telling them they were dead wrong? They wouldn’t have heard another word.

You will hear people tell you of all kinds of religious experiences, from worshipping pyramids, to reincarnation, to other faiths, to "getting into heaven if you’re good," to "praying on the golf course." Respect the quest for God. Well, maybe not "praying on the golf course," but respect the other ways people have genuinely sought God.

Paul looked for an opening, a place that indicated that they didn’t think they had all the answers, that they might be willing to learn. He found it in the altar to the "unknown God," and he used that to talk about his own religious experience. Listen for where people are struggling to find meaning, for the places where they don’t think their life is working. That is where they will be most likely to listen. Listen for their pain, their doubt, their fear. God will be near.

Paul spoke their language, quoting from poets familiar to them. He didn’t use what we might now call in-house "stained glass" language — discussions of "sacrifice," and "sin," and "redemption," and "atonement," and "life in Christ verses life in the flesh," and such. Those terms simply would have meant nothing to these people.

In our Disciples of Christ in Community program, we have been talking about how to re-envision many traditional Christian terms so that we can understand them better, and so that we can share the faith without using "stained glass" language. That language, which I call, "blood of the Lamb" talk, carries terrible baggage for a lot of people and just doesn’t make a lick of sense to many others. Practice speaking of your faith in regular language that isn’t "churchy." It takes practice, but it will also challenge your understanding of some of the "stained glass" terms we use in this room, which is not a bad thing.

Paul meets them where they are and doesn’t try to do too much. In this case, he knows that where they are is that they don’t know who God is, or that there is only one God. So that’s what he focuses on. It’s very interesting that Paul does not talk much about Christ He mentions Jesus and the Resurrection only as proof that God’s judgment is righteous. That’s very uncharacteristic of Paul, who talks about Christ pretty much all the time everywhere else we hear him. But he knows that this audience consists of folks who believe in Zeus and lots of gods, and he doesn’t try to do too much at one time. Paul knows that it just isn’t going to work to talk to them about the Son of God until they know who God is.

Notice, for example, that Paul doesn’t talk to them about the difficult ethical requirements of Christianity, one of which is in our reading from The First Letter of Peter: "Do not repay evil for evil or abuse for abuse; but, on the contrary, repay with a blessing." Now, I cannot overstate how important I think that concept is; it is repeated by Jesus and Paul as well as Peter. But many devoted Christians struggle with it, including me. Not repaying evil for evil is like a graduate course in Christianity; Paul doesn’t go there with these kindergartners.

Listen to where the people you meet are in their faith journey. Don’t be impatient, and entrust them to God. When I think I’m in charge of their development, I always try to do too much. Try to help them to the next step, and trust that God will continue the process.

Paul lets them come to their own conclusions, which is always more effective than telling people what to conclude. He never tells them that they need to believe in just one God. If he had, they certainly would have shut their ears. But he does say that this "unknown god" made everything, is responsible for their life and breath and being, is Lord of the heavens (which, of course, would include Zeus), and will judge the world. When he’s finished, his "unknown God" has filled up the entire universe and there’s simply no room left for Zeus. But he lets them figure that out. We don’t have to tell people they’re wrong. We can tell them what we believe to be right.

Finally, I’ll add one to Paul’s list (he does this elsewhere): share your vulnerability, your humanity. Share your pain, your doubt, your fears, the ways you fall short. That will not diminish the impact of your evangelism; it will strengthen it. The person you are talking to will know that they are talking to a real human being, not some stained glass figure with no more depth than the glass itself. And they might well become your friend. We believe in evangelism based on friendship, and friendships are best built by sharing vulnerabilities as well as strengths.

Okay, that’s a lot to do to be a good evangelist: (1) Be respectful and don’t insult; (2) listen for an opening; (3) don’t talk "churchy" talk; (4) don’t try to do too much; (5) tell them what you believe and let them draw their own conclusions, and (6) share your humanity. That’s a lot, but you can do it.

In two weeks, on Pentecost, we will be baptizing, and we will stand and recite the Baptismal Covenant. Don’t wait until then. Go out now into that "Greek" world and practice, by word and example, being an evangelist. We all proclaim something. We are all called to proclaim the Good News of God in Christ.

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