The Park Road Pulpit

As soon as the stranger began to speak, she stepped from behind the stone column in order to hear, yet she remained hidden, discreetly, in the back of the crowd. “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way…” She listened intently as he spoke. But his religious speculation was to her ears just The Last New Idea[1] in a world of ideas.

Damaris[2] had learned her rhetorical skills from her father, who was a philosopher in the famous university in Athens. He had wanted a son, who could participate, publicly, in the court sessions and dialogues. An heir to carry his name. To defend his fame as an orator. But after five daughters, he realized that if he was to bequeath an intellectual inheritance, it would have to be to Damaris, his precocious and inquisitive youngest child. So, at night, without the approval or blessing of his Hellenistic culture, he taught a daughter to read and to write Greek. He raised her with bedtime readings from Plato and Aristotle. He trained her in the Socratic method of debate.

And Damaris turned out to be quite a student. She could follow the most complex argument. Identify inconsistencies in even the most difficult logic. As she listened, she was just one more face in a skeptical crowd, but she was impressed with Paul. But what scholar had ever come from Tarsus? And with what training? A Pharisee? In Judaism? And now he stood before Athens’ most erudite scholars, its most eloquent orators, defending a new cult. These “Followers of the Way,” as they were known, were a subversive cult, who had stirred trouble throughout the ancient world. In their philosophy, as she understood it, they proclaimed two deities. A male god named Jesus. And his female counterpart, the goddess, Anastasis.

As she listened, Damaris appreciated Paul’s rhetorical approach: he found common ground with his audience, he connected with their ideas; he even quoted their scholars and poets. She knew the work of the Epicurean philosopher, Epimenides, to whom Paul alluded. And when she was studying at her father’s knee, learning the tenets of Stoicism, the most popular philosophy of Greece, she had committed to memory the opening lines of the poem Phaenomena. As Paul quoted Aratus’ famous line, she mouthed the words along with him: For we too are God’s offspring…

But his rhetorical eloquence, and persuasive strategy aside, Damaris heard little that interested her. His was just another idea. And though she had been raised on a diet of intellectual argument, and had learned to love the mental stimulation of debate, she had begun to wonder if there was not more to this life than the exchange of ideas.

As she turned to leave, feeling a bit weary and disappointed, she heard again the reference to the deity, anastasis…but suddenly she realized that Paul was not referring to a goddess at all. Anastasis? No, she had heard that word… What was it? “Transformation?” “New birth?” … No, the word was “resurrection.” And she heard Paul anew, “In God we live and move and have our being… we are God’s offspring…and our assurance of God’s creative power, of God’s providential care,[3] of God’s righteous judgment… is not an idea. Our assurance is the man, Jesus. Whom God has raised from the dead.”

So instead of leaving, she turned and began to push her way against the flow. By now most of the skeptical council had heard enough. They had begun to mumble to one another and to walk away, leaving Paul with only a small audience. But they had all heard the Word. And they demanded more: “Tell us of Resurrection... Tell us of assurance... And, who is this Jesus?”

Today’s text comes at an interesting point for our congregation. “Living with the Resurrection,” this series we are in for Eastertide, has provoked a few thoughts. Stimulated a few ears. Perhaps it has ruffled a few feathers. Resurrection, you see, is a dangerous word.

But we have never known a congregation with your appetite for danger. With your openness. Your inquisitiveness. Your tolerance. We have never known a congregation with such diversity and with such love for one another. I hope I am not overstating the case.

If Paul were among us today, and standing before you, the faces in this crowd would not be altogether unlike that of the council he faced on the hill of the Areopagus. You are a crowd of intellectuals (believing intellectuals) in your own right. And there may be among us a cynic, a skeptic, even a heretic or two, who would grill Paul intensely, or just mumble, throw up your hands, and walk away!

Your delightful diversity and intellectual curiosity is one of the things that drew Amy and me to you in the first place. And I am talking to all of you. For even if you do not have an advanced degree and speak multiple languages (which most of us do not), you have been trained to listen and to think. Every one of you. And let me encourage you to remain so inquisitive. So open. So loving.

I believe with all my heart that loving God with all my mind means that I must not hide anything in fear. That I must not shrink from any questions. God does not need to be protected from our own intellect. If you can think it, it is not off limits to ask, to ponder, to scrutinize. We must use every tool at our disposal to ask our questions. By this I mean that we should appropriate the findings of the modern world into our faith-filled thinking: the probings of science, sociology, psychology -- the inquiries of every academic discipline. The Church has always been woefully behind in accepting the findings of the Academy.

The church closed its mind to modern astronomy and tried Galileo for heresy. It closed its mind to modern medicine and held back the great movement for the relief of suffering. It closed is mind to evolution and classed Darwin among the malefactors of the race. But this can be said: Whenever the church closes its mind, it might as well close its doors. . . .[4]

The God who was the heart of Paul’s apologetic speech, his defense of Christian faith, is the God who is very much at home in our so-called “Quantum World”[5] -- God, in whom we live and move and have our being… is a God who is “the very affinity of our own universe toward life… the impetus of our own bodies to heal themselves…”[6]

Faith in this mysterious Source of Life, this God in whom we live and move and have our being is not a house of cards. Our faith will not come crashing down if we question. Ours is a vigorous faith, which will stand the test of time, and the intensely penetrating questions and the sometime brutally honest answers of any intellectual pursuit. Intellectual honesty, as a means of faithful living, is never inappropriate.

But Will Willimon observes, “natural inquisitiveness and delight in the novel and the strange, so prevalent in the academy, can be little more than the itch for some new graven image.”[7] Whether to the well-intentioned curiosity of a believing congregation, then, or the inexhaustible quest for more and better mental gymnastics of a secular academy, Christian faith proclaimed in such a setting will never be more than the announcement of The Last New Idea.

Ferris says of the Athenians, “They had the intellectual curiosity which makes for a good audience, but it was the curiosity that is content to remain in the abstractions of the mind.” [8] So most of the Athenians were disappointed by Paul’s philosophizing, because Christian faith is ultimately not an idea -- even The Last New Idea. Christian faith is not based on, or directed to an abstraction of the mind. Likewise, a Christian congregation such as ours, open and inquiring, will be left wanting, if the faith we proclaim is only an invitation to some kind of intellectual debate.

The subject, and object, of our Christian proclamation must always be this God in whom we live and move and have our being. But this description itself can sound like some kind of Athenian abstraction, can’t it?. Who is this God? And how will we make God known as more than an idea?

In the life, the death, the resurrection of the man, Jesus, whom we call the Christ, the idea of God becomes flesh. Jesus is face of a great idea. He gives hands to our best abstractions; feet to our noblest philosophy. In the words of my seminary professor of systematic theology:

This I know: Without the story of Jesus I would not believe in God. Or more probably, God would simply not matter. The story of Jesus enables me to envision God as One who genuinely cares for each and all of us. In Jesus, God confronts the Darkness face to face, Incarnate, for our sake. Jesus is Light to the gentle face of God. The story of Jesus says that God laughs with us in our joys and weeps with us in our sorrows. God strengthens us in the helplessness of our hoping, God stands with us in the uncertainty of our believing, and God waits for us in our yearning to be loved. Ultimately the lonely companionship of Jesus in the suffering of his passion made my painful journey a sometime story of faith.[9]

When Damaris finally heard beyond Paul’s philosophical words, the Word made flesh became the good news that she had longed to hear. Resurrection became reality, not philosophy. And Jesus became all the assurance she needed.

[1] The Interpreter’s Bible, “Acts, Romans,” G. H. C. MacGregor, 234. MacGregor translates verse 21 (“something new,” NRSV) as “the last new idea” -- in order “to bring out the force of the Greek comparative.”

[2] Nothing is known of Damaris except her name. She is mentioned only in this passage in all of the Bible. This introduction is historical fiction, taken from scriptural background studies, and out of the clear, blue sky (the preacher’s brain).

[3] Carl R Holladay suggests that these two ideas, God’s creative power and providential care, are the centerpiece of Paul’s theology in this speech. Preaching Through the Christian Year, “Year A,” 276.

[4] Interpreter’s Bible, “Acts, Romans,” Theodore P. Ferris, 232.

[5] I use this term loosely, to refer to our present world, and the understandings of modern science (which I don’t understand!) This term might be set against a “Newtonian World,” or a “Copernican World,” etc…

[6] This is a rough paraphrase of the words of Bishop Spong in a recent lecture. In his proposal to move away from a “theistic conceptualization of God,” Spong draws on the findings of a quantum world to affirm the mysterious “source” of life, which is beyond the scope of science to investigate.

[7] Interpretation, “Acts,” Will Willimon, 144.

[8] Ferris, 231.

[9] Frank, Tupper, A Scandalous Providence, 19. The phrase, “my painful journey” refers, specifically, to his wife’s death, due to breast cancer.