Naming The Presence Of Christ
May 4, 2008
22Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. 23For 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. 24The 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, 25nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. 26From 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, 27so 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. 28For ‘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.’ 29Since 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. 30While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31because 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.”
Acts 17:22-31
I can remember as a child growing up in my Southern Baptist church, about once or twice a year, we would have different missionaries come in and speak on Sunday morning. And I don't know if it was because I was young or because I was from a small town like Douglasville, but listening to those missionaries always fascinated me. I can remember one missionary in particular. He was from India. He had a funny accent. And he told all these great stories about winning souls and helping people find Christ and doing all sorts interesting things. And for me, as a little 10 year old boy, being a missionary seemed like an exciting and exotic job.
Now, I know we didn't grow up in the same place, but my guess is that many of you in here can remember listening to missionaries come and speak at your own churches over the years. And I would also guess that if you grew up in a good Southern Baptist church like I did, you formed a very definite idea in your mind of just who a missionary was and what they did. Missionaries were the people who went to places that no else wanted to go. They were the people who traveled to deepest, darkest Africa to convert the heathens. Normal folks like you and I might share our testimony at Training Union on Sunday nights, but we didn't really talk to anybody about Jesus outside of church. That was up to the missionaries. The missionaries were the ones who were out there in the world, saving souls. Sure, we helped because we gave money a little bit of money to Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong every year. But in the end, it was the missionaries we were counting on to spread the good news.
Does that sound familiar to you? What I have just described is the old school model for missions in the Baptist world. It's the model we grew up with, the model that has dominated the way we think about missions for the last 50 years. And some of us in here are content to continue operating under that old model. Some of us still have those romantic ideas about missionaries who work in exotic, far-away countries to win the lost.
It reminds me of the story about the three missionaries who were captured by cannibals. One was a Southern Baptist, one was an Independent Baptist, and one was an American Baptist. And the chief of the cannibals told the missionaries that the only way they could avoid death was by passing a trial. So, since they didn't have a choice, they all agreed.
The chief told them the first part of the trial was to go out and bring back 10 pieces of the same fruit. So, the Southern Baptist went out, found 10 apples, and came back. Then, the chief told him that he had to swallow all 10 apples whole, without uttering a sound or changing expression. The Southern Baptist missionary managed to swallow the first apple, but on the second, he choked and they killed him.
The Independent Baptist came back with 10 berries. And the chief gave him the same orders…Swallow the berries whole, without uttering a sound or changing expression. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-, the Independent Baptist was almost done when all of the sudden, he busted out laughing, and they killed him.
Well, the Southern Baptist missionary and the Independent Baptist missionary met in heaven. And the Southern Baptist turned to the Independent Baptist and said, "You almost made it, brother. Why did you start laughing?" And the Independent Baptist said, "Well, I couldn't help it. I saw the American Baptist coming back to camp with an arm load of pineapples."
That's not one of my better jokes, but the point is, a lot of us still think about missionaries in that way. Missionaries are the ones over in some remote corner of the world, teaching cannibals about Jesus. It has yet to sink in with some of us that there are probably as many people in the United States who don't know Jesus as there are in Africa. That's because some of us are still caught up in that old model of missions. In our minds, a missionary is somebody who has to go far away.
But I think our Scripture today from the book of Acts demonstrates several fallacies with that old way of thinking about missions. In this passage, Paul is in Athens on one of his missionary journeys. Now, at that time, Athens was the equivalent of Oxford or Cambridge in our world today. It was a seat of learning. In the ancient world, Rome was the center of the government. But Athens was the center of culture. Athens was the city renowned for its schools and its philosophy and its art. Athens was the home of the great teachers like Socrates, and Plato, and Aristotle. If you wanted to be a great general, you went to Rome. But if you wanted to learn about the latest ideas, you went to Athens. And of course, in the year 50 or so, one of the latest ideas was that a poor Jewish peasant in Palestine also happened to be the Savior of humanity.
That's the message that Paul came to Athens to preach. And Paul wasn't preaching to the heathens or the cannibals. Paul was preaching to the smartest, most sophisticated people in the world. Can you imagine what that must have been like? Fortunately, I don't have that problem today. But these were folks who studied philosophy all day long for a living. And they were very devout. In verses 22 and 23 of this passage, Paul mentions that the Athenians were very religious. Athens was full of temples and shrines to the gods they worshipped. In fact, there were so many different gods that they even had an altar to an unknown god, just in case they left one out by accident.
And that's where we begin to see how Paul's message to the Athenians challenges our old school model of missions. For starters, Paul doesn't begin his preaching from a place of condescension. Unfortunately, I think that's what happened quite frequently in our mission work over the years. We saw ourselves as the civilized Christians who needed to go share the benefits of our better breeding and education with the poor masses. And in the last 300 years, the vast majority of the globe was conquered and colonized with that very idea that we white Christians need to save the heathens who don't know any better.
But do you see how that idea of missions and sharing the gospel begins with the presumption that we are better than most folks? In that model, we almost don't need Jesus because we set ourselves up to be the Savior. We think that we are the ones who are carrying Jesus to the rest of the world and it wouldn't happen without us. We think that we are the ones who are saving folks.
But Paul knows better. In this passage, Paul doesn't insult his audience by claiming that they've just been wondering in the dark until he came to town to save them. On the contrary, Paul commends the Athenians for already being so religious. And then Paul goes to say that this unknown god they have been worshipping is in fact the same God who created the entire world and sent Jesus. Paul tells the Athenians that they are already worshipping the Christian God; they just didn't know it. Isn't that interesting?
That's a very different idea of missions than the one we grew up with. We were taught that unless we send our missionaries, folks will never experience Jesus. But could it be that Jesus is already present in the world without us taking him there? Could it be that Jesus is already at work in the world even before we send our missionaries? I am convinced that we in the church, and particularly we in the Baptist church, have misunderstood missions for the last 500 years. We've confused our role. We have been under the false impression that it is up to us to take Jesus to the world.
But this morning, I've got news for you…Jesus is already in the world. It's not up to us to bring Jesus from our godly, Western countries into those pagan foreign lands. Because it's unnecessary. That's not our job; that's Jesus' job. It's who our God is. I read a great quote this week from a theologian named David Bosch. He said: "Our mission has no life of its own. Only in the hands of the sending God can it truly be called mission. The missionary initiative comes from God … Mission is thereby seen as a movement from God to the world. There is church because there is mission, not vice versa."
Did y'all catch that? There is church because there is mission, not vice versa. We are not the missionaries. God is the missionary. God is the one who sent his Son to save the world. That's the good news. And we're not on mission to bring Jesus to people, since we have no control over that. We are on mission to tell people that Jesus is already with them.
That may seem like splitting hairs to you, but that's a huge difference in the way we think about missions. If we really believe that Christ is everywhere in the world, with or without our help, and I do, than it has profound implications for the way we do church. We've gotta stop seeing ourselves as the Savior of humanity and start realizing that the Savior is already out there. We've gotta get rid of our condescending attitudes that people can't experience Jesus unless we are there to make it possible. Of course, they can. They can, and they do. Even the Athenians to whom Paul was preaching had experienced Christ. They just didn't who it was.
And that's our job. Our job is not to save people. Our job is to tell people that Jesus has already saved them. We are to name the presence of Christ. That is what it means to be a missionary. It is to proclaim the unknown God to people who have already experienced him, but just didn't know who he was. You know, we hear a lot of talk about why bad things happen to people. And those are important questions to ask. But it's always interested me that we never hear much speculation on why good things happen to people. I guess we just take the good things for granted. But there is a reason good things happen. Jesus is the reason. The good things in our lives come from Christ. The reason that every person in the world gets up in the morning is Christ. The reason that people in our world are healed and changed and loved is Christ. But a lot of them don't know that. A lot of people attribute their good fortune to luck, or fate, or chance, or even some other god.
But we know the truth. We know that good things happen because of Jesus, and only because of Jesus. And so, it's up to us to name that presence. It's up to us to give a name to the unknown god. I want you to do something for a minute. I want you to think about the most popular movies and books in the last 20 years…Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter. All of those stories have one thing in common. They are all stories about an unlikely group of people overcoming impossible odds. They are all stories of love and friendship. They are all stories of the triumph of good over evil.
Now, let me ask you a question--Do those themes sound familiar to you? They should. Because that's the Christian story. That's our message. And it's a story that the world already knows because they've heard it in our most popular books and songs and movies. They've been worshipping this story, but they don't it by its real name. And so, it's up to us to give a name to that story. The name is Jesus Christ. And this morning as we name his presence together, let's continue to participate in his mission to the world. AMEN