American Areopagus

By John Page

It always seems odd to me when I observe people trying to “evangelize” others by quoting Scripture at them.  There’s a presumption that the content of Scripture is recognized by non-Christians as somehow relevant to them.  But why should that be?  Why would people who do not see themselves among the people of faith from whom, about whom, and to whom the Scriptures were written, consider the witness of Scriptures to be meaningful to their own lives and experiences?

St. Paul seems to have recognized this point himself.  During his missionary journeys, according to the Book of Acts, he routinely visited the Jewish synagogues to worship and witness to Christ, pointing to the Jewish Scriptures to argue that Jesus was the Messiah the prophets had long anticipated.  At that time, Christianity was still understood as a Jewish sect, and it made perfect sense that Paul would worship among fellow Jews and communicate with them in the context they understood and found meaningful.

But when Paul visited Athens, and stood in the Areopagus among people who were neither Jewish nor Christian, he took a different approach.  Arguing his point from the witness of the prophets would not have been very meaningful or compelling to pagan Athenians, for whom the Jewish prophets were total strangers, and the narratives of Israel’s people and their historical experiences with God were of little or no import.  Instead, Paul appealed to what the Athenians already knew.  Starting with the common experiences of all people, as it were, Paul was able to make the particular experiences of one people more relevant. (Acts 17:16-34)

Some time ago, I read that America is becoming an increasingly pre-Christian society.  Pre-Christian implies before Christianity became widespread and commonplace, as distinct from the term non-Christian, which simply implies that one is not now Christian, even if one may have been at some time.  There was a time – a time in which many of us alive today actually lived – when most Americans could reasonably assume that everyone around us had some knowledge of and experience with Christianity, even if they weren’t active church-goers themselves.  But that assumption is no longer valid.  Surveys in recent years suggest increases in the percentages of people who have never been Christians, have never received any instruction in the Christian faith, and whose experience of Christian worship – if it is worship – is limited to the occasional wedding or funeral of an acquaintance.  What these people may know of Christianity is largely what they observe in the popular media, which may well explain why Christianity is in decline; the headline hogs don’t typically offer flattering or accurate depictions of the Way of Jesus of Nazareth.  While the percentage of pre-Christian and non-Christian peoples increases, the percentage of Christians in America declines.  We are more and more likely to find ourselves today, and in the near future, in St. Paul’s position in the Areopagus.

So, how might we witness to the good news of Jesus Christ in the American Areopagus?  Here’s my go at it…

We are Christians. 

We believe that there is one God who created all things, and that God’s love is the sine qua non for understanding the relationship between God and creation.  God created humankind in God’s own image, to bear God’s love in the world as both stewards of creation and beneficiaries of creation’s gifts and God’s abundant peace.

This was, and is, God’s vision and intention.  But realistically, we all know how far removed the world is from that vision.  Strained relationships, violence, poverty, sickness, greed, injustice, and indifference abound.  No one completely escapes the consequences of our present circumstances; people, all living things, and the earth itself suffer.  Even natural disasters testify to the magnitude of the chasm between God’s vision and the reality of our condition.

We recognize that much of what we and all of creation suffer is the consequence of our own human actions.  We bear responsibility for what we do and what we leave undone, and all actions and inactions have consequences.  The consequences may affect us now, but may just as well affect generations to come.  We may see the cause-and-effect relationships clearly or not so clearly.  We may even willfully turn a blind eye to the relationships to disingenuously deny our responsibility.

As people of faith, we understand that we must own up and accept responsibility.  Strained relationships, violence, poverty, sickness, greed, injustice, and indifference are not the consequences of loving relationships; they exist because we become indifferent, or even hostile, to love as central to creation’s order.   Whether by accident or design, in abandoning love, we have effectively rebelled against God and God’s vision. 

But God does not abandon what God loves.  We know this from our long history of recognizing God active in our lives and in the lives of our ancestors in faith.  God’s love is willful and intentional; time and again, God reaches out to humankind to set our relationships right.  God is determined that God’s vision will be our reality.

From among all the peoples of the earth, God called a wandering Aramean named Abraham to serve God, promising that from him and his wife Sarah a particular people would be the instruments of God’s reconciliation with all of humankind.  Some two thousand years ago, that promise came to fruition when God came into the world in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, one of Abraham and Sarah’s descendents.  That singular event in history inaugurated the process by which God puts all things right by God’s own decisive action.  God calls all people to be recreated in God’s image, specifically in the image of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, who, sharing our humanity with us, draws us back to God and makes us the people we were meant to be from the very beginning.  This is what we mean when we say we are to “put on Christ”.

This is the good news of Jesus Christ: God loves humankind and always will, and through the person of Jesus, God assures us that God’s peace will be a reality in this world.  Through Jesus Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit, God recreates us to be God’s image-bearers in the world, commands us to love all as we have been loved by Christ, and commissions us to share this good news with everyone by word and by deed.

And this, by the way, is why we at Zion summarize our own mission with the words: Love God, Love your neighbor, Tell the world!