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I'll Have to Think About That (Acts 17:22-33)
Some people enjoy the capacity to consider
swiftly and soundly new ideas and arrive quite quickly at a good
preliminary assessment and decision. In everything, from job offers
and business opportunities through personal relationships to religious,
political or abstract philosophical concepts, they are sharp, informed
and quick-witted. I admire this in people but know from experience
that I am easily impressed and need to take time to arrive in the
same place of decision. The best piece of advertising I ever saw
was a slogan that stated, "I never made a decision that couldn't
wait 24 hours" and I think that's me.
If we put ourselves in the place of those who first heard the good
news of Jesus Christ after that first Easter we begin to realise
how very challenging, even peculiar this message was. To the Jews,
who quite correctly insisted that there was one God, it seemed blasphemous
to ascribe deity to Jesus; to Gentiles, most of who believed in
a plethora of deities, this notion of one God over all was strange
and dangerous. Yet, barely twenty five years after the crucifixion,
Paul was writing confidently to Christians in Rome that Jesus was,
"declared with power to be the Son of God,
by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord" (Ro.1:4).
Even earlier, as we saw last week,
he wrote to Christians in Corinth one of the earliest summaries
of essential Christian teaching, an already established tradition
("what I received"):
"What I received I passed on to
you as of first importance; that Christ died for our sins according
to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the
third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter,
and then to the Twelve" (1 Cor.15:3-5)
As Christians, even nominal Christians, we are so familiar with
these ideas that we forget how very peculiar they can sound when
heard for the first time by people with quite different world views.
When Paul preached in pagan Athens there were three reactions to
his message:
"When some of them heard about the
resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said,
'We want to hear you again on this subject.' At that, Paul left
the Council. A few men became followers of Paul and believed" (Acts
17:32-33)
Of course, there will always be those who sneer, and praise God
for those so prepared and quick enough to hear and become followers.
"But others said, 'We want to hear
you again on this subject.'" What
of these? When Paul spoke earlier in Thessalonica a crowd was whipped
up against them, "When they heard
this, the crowd and the city officials were thrown in turmoil" (Acts
17:8). But later in Berea, when Paul
preached in the Jewish synagogue:
"The Bereans were of more noble
character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message
with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see
if what Paul said was true. Many of the Jews believed, as did also
a number of prominent Greek women and Greek men" (Acts 17:10-12)
In times when ignorance of the Bible is not uncommon even inside
the church and when secular and spiritual ideologies abound we face
similar crowds, from the fiercely monotheistic Muslim, through the
secular disciples of scientism, to the confusing and seemingly endless
variety of New Age gods and ascended masters. "We want to hear you
again on this subject" is not such an unusual response to the gospel
and, while we praise God for the response of faith that follows
"immediately", let's be prepared to stick with those who insist
on searching every day to see if what we are saying is true. It
produced a great harvest in Berea it seems.