Looking Forward to April 29, 2018 -- Easter 5, Paul in Athens

Because the Youth Group is leading worship the first Sunday of May we will be celebrating Communion this week instead of May 6.

The Scripture reading for this week is Acts 17:16-34

The Sermon title is The Unknown God

Early Thoughts:  How do you explain Christianity to people with no idea of the background?  What if they have a totally different culture, different poets, different understandings of the Divine, different thought processes? Would simply tell the story and hope it sinks in?

Paul shows that he knows a different way. Greek philosophical types are not likely to be swayed by references to Jewish Scripture (which is the tool used early in the book of Acts by Peter preaching to people in Jerusalem) so Paul shapes the message in ways that will interact with what they know. And apparently it piques their interest, at least for some who say they want to hear more.

This has been the challenge for any faith that tries to spread itself beyond the place where it was founded. How do we cross a cultural boundary? How do we make ourselves relate to this new people without insisting that they become like us? Christianity has a mixed record on that. At times, like Paul in Athens, the church has done it well. At others it has been a little heavy handed. Other times it has opened itself to accusations of cultural appropriation (from a modern viewpoint at least).

I think that the question is opening itself again. For generations, even centuries, in the Western World we have assumed that people had some familiarity with the story. We assumed that we shared enough culture that we could tell the story using all the old tools and people would be drawn in.  I suspect we have over-estimated how true this is for a few decades now--and that it is getting less true all the time.

Earlier today I saw this picture, it reminds me of the attitude we need to bring if we want to share the Christian story, message, and hope with a culture that is differnt from what we know, or what we want it to be: 

How do we tell the story today? What new images do we need to borrow and recast? What new poets do we need to quote in a new light? God remains known only in part, God remains unknown (and unknowable) in part. What is our message about the Unknown God in the marketplaces of Grande Prairie?
 --Gord