Sermon – Thank You, Epimenides
Job 12:7-10; Acts 17:22-31
5/10/26
Oh, you are in trouble today, friends.
Welcome to my home. Today is a day to celebrate classical learning. Before H-SC, I took 5 years of Latin, most of which was actually with a Longwood alumna who received her Latin at H-SC. During my time at H-SC, perhaps for lack of knowing what else I might want to do, I doubled down on the Classics. I added Greek to a major in Latin and Greek and found Greek even more enjoyable than Latin. Ancient Philosophy, History, Culture, and Language were a great deal of my education, and after graduating, I took a job teaching Latin in Chesterfield and (as I mentioned recently) in Prince Edward. In that brief time, I also led two educational tours to Italy and Greece with some of my students and travelers even being familiar to some of you. All of this is to say that you get to jump into the Classics with me today.
But this is because Paul has jumped first, feet first, as a matter of fact, into the lions’ den in our reading. Of all the places that he has visited so far in the Book of Acts, none of them has been so full of pagan worship and obvious idolatry as this one. Statues and temples were everywhere. No other place in the ancient world would come close outside of Rome, itself, but he has not travelled there, yet – not yet. Today, he is wandering around Athens, the most prominent city in Greece and the place that contributed so much to how we think and act in America and beyond. Their learning inspired our own; their entertainment inspired our own; their culture inspired our own. Science, music, math, warfare, rhetoric, language, medicine, religion, and politics are all somehow tied to this place. When Paul arrives, he is immersed and troubled in a different world that requires special words. Ordinarily, I do not like sharing specialized words because I don’t want to lose people, but some of these words are important to today’s story. We begin with Stoics and Epicureans. I am not going to explain them, but these are two ways of seeing the world and the gods. We have both of these words in English, too, because they are important ideas, but these folk did not care for Paul. They at least did not know what to think about him. He was different with different ideas, and Athens, Greece was all about different and new ideas. They wanted to understand him better, so they had him come to the Areopagus to explain himself. Could this be a trap? It was at least an opportunity for him to defend himself.
The Areopagus was a difficult place where people could be put on trial by the city council, but it was a hill in Athens which was also famous in that day for a play that was set on that hill in which there was a trial and the Greek god Apollo confessed that there was no resurrection from the dead. That is where Paul stood to make his defense that there was. In fact, resurrection is key.
What is incredibly interesting is that Paul draws from the world around him in his speech to those listening. He needs the Epicureans to know that there was a God here with us in this world and life, actively engaging us in loving ways (which they did not believe), and he needs the Stoics to know that there is a God who is drawing our hearts and interests to seek God’s goodness (which would have been difficult for them). The brilliance of Paul’s speech is using Greek culture, religion, and philosophy to support these “new” ideas. Standing there on this place of judgement, he does not claim the pagan people to be bad or corrupt or evil, not even so much misguided, but just missing the bigger picture. They have a notion of God that is bigger than their names or stories. They have a hunger for God that is bigger than Mt. Olympus or Edith Hamilton’s Mythology. They know there is more to God than what they could identify, and Paul takes them right to that God.
This God is not gold, though. God is not silver, either. God is not wood, stone, glass, or gems. God is greater than the work of our hands, even the ideas we think. Yes, God is bigger than even our ideas. That’s especially difficult in the capital city of ideas.
We have ideas, also. God is not actually in a book, a building, or a flag. God is not even in a cross. God is not in a bumper sticker, a Tik Tok, a piece of real estate, or a movie. God might speak to us through any of those things, but they are not God and do not contain God. God is where the children of God dare to share the Spirit of God. God is where the gospel is experienced. God is among us, living things, God’s children. Where the children need God, there is God. Where the children need our parent, there is God. Even if the parent must give their life for the child, the parent will do that because the parent loves the child. And death cannot end that love. God is a God of resurrection.
The Greeks also believed that they were children of God. That’s what Paul was quoting from one of their philosophers. For us, however, we would go further. God’s love for us in Christ has made us family and gives us the blessing of being God’s children just like Jesus himself. God has adopted us. We are even made in God’s image, by the way. We are adopted as full family, all of us. So it is hard when we act less like family and more like enemies.
The same God who gave his life for us wants us to live better together. The same God who sacrificed what was most precious needs for us to understand what it means to live for others. The same God who made us and through whom we live and move and have our being wants us to enjoy good lives of grace instead of miserable and isolating selfishness.
I would have been sure that somewhere else in the Bible Paul got that idea that in God we live and move and have our being. It feels like a Christian mantra, and I am sure you have found that expression before. It is not biblical, however, until Paul says it right here. He was most likely drawing from another Greek thinker, a person named Epimenides. I have no idea how Paul had all of these different references to bring. Maybe it was the Spirit inspiring him. That seems right, but Paul was a very bright fellow, also. He connects us all in the life of God because we are all in the life of God. We would have no life without our God, no life at all – let along life together, yet that is exactly what we are made for. Even the Greeks can point us there. Thank you, Epimenides.
Athens was a place full of gods and temples and idols. People could follow different gods as they wished. We are a land full of gods and temples and idols, too. Ours are often more carefully disguised, but they can control our hearts just as much. They call us to treat some people differently and call it Christianity. They call us to live in ridiculous excess and name it due abundance. They call us to worship things instead of God and say it is faithful. They say to act one way on Sunday and do whatever we want the rest of the week and call it normal. They say as long as the right people win, it does not matter what kind of sin we excuse. They say worship ideas and call it patriotic.
Athens was a place where new ideas and ways of thinking were all the rage. There were philosophical schools for anyone who wished. There was even one where people denied everything and lived on purpose in the street like dogs. We are a land flush with the hunger for new ideas, now more than ever. Everything is AI – artificial intelligence, and it will directly connect with every single one of us. It probably already has. It will change our lives in all kinds of ways. We will have helpful new ideas and new ideas that will hurt, but God, the light of our minds and spirits, does not change. In our God, we still live and move and have our being. No idol, no idea can change how much we are God’s children.
The big problem with idols is that they are dead. They have no life. They never did and they never will. We might give them life in our ideas, but they are actually empty and lifeless. What is actually alive? We are. The children of God, the family of God – we are alive. We share life now and for all eternity because God is the God of life who even came back from death to prove that it cannot hold us. Yes, in God we live and move and have our being together in the love of Christ. To God be the glory. Amen.