Sermons for the Month

The Truth about Idols
DATE: April 27th, 2008
SERVICE: Sixth Sunday of Easter
TEXT: Acts 17:22-31

“To all of you Saints here this morning, grace and peace to you from God our Father, from His Son, Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit. AMEN

I would imagine that most of us have been tourists at one time or another in our lives. When I visited Bolivia, Egypt and Guatemala, I really stood out as a tourist. This was so true in the Andes Mountains that tiny women with dark, crease-lined faces would stare at me, and one even approached to tentatively touch my cheek. My identity was a foreigner was obvious.

My most recent experience as a tourist was in Savannah a week or so ago where I said, "I beg your pardon", every few minutes, unsure that the language that was being spoke was actually English. One morning my friend Anne and I were walking in the "Victorian" section of the city when we approached a bus stop. The man sitting there took one look at us and said, "Y'all from heh?" It wasn't really a question; I'm sure it was obvious that we were not locals. So - judging that I could out run him if my response took a negative turn - I replied that no, we were visiting. "Well dahling", he drawled, "Y'all arh walking in the wrong direction." It turned out that "down yonder" was an unsavory neighborhood, or so he said.

We heeded his advice. I figured that strange people in strange lands need not draw undue attention to themselves. The Apostle Paul did not agree with that philosophy, evidently, because as a strange person in the strange land of Athens, he was far from unassuming.

Scholars say that Paul was a tourist in Athens. He was escorted there by some of the believers from Berea following an uprising against him, and was waiting for his companions Timothy and Silas to join him there. It does not seem that Paul had planned to evangelize in Athens; while he was waiting for his friends he was a tourist going about the city, soaking up its history and culture and visiting its sights and attractions.

But Paul could not just be a tourist. He did not focus on the beauty of the city, or the fact that it was one of the great cultural and intellectual centers of the world. The thing that made an impression on Paul was the abundance of heathen idols. And, he was really drawn to the one for the "unknown god".

There's a rather bazaar history behind that god. First, though, we have to realize that Athens was the "god capital of the world", there were so many that the Athenians needed Yellow Pages to locate a specific one. Well, in the sixth century BC, a plague devastated the city of Athens. It was assumed that one of the city's gods had been offended, but all efforts failed to determine which one it was.

An expert was consulted who concluded that it was an as yet "unknown god" who had been offended and an elaborate plan was concocted to determine where altars to this "unknown god" should be erected. After numerous altars were built the plague subsided. Over the years, these altars began to deteriorate. But one was restored a preserved to commemorate the removal of the plague by calling upon the "unknown god". (1)

That's the altar that captured Paul's attention. Now, had he been a good tourist he would have listened to the guide's story of the plague and filed it away in the trivia part of his brain. But not Paul, like all good preachers he worked with what he had. Paul used that altar in his sermon to the philosophers of Athens who were not all that impressed with him, but interested in anything new around which to wrap their minds or to debate. So, Paul took advantage of the situation and of the altar to the unknown god. Since there was no representation of a god - no actual idol - on this altar, Paul was able to co-op it.

He says that the God of whom he is speaking is the god who they called "unknown". This god, THE God, is the ONE. This God does not live in shrines and needs nothing from them; while people may search for and grope for God the irony is that he is never far from away. In other words, the plethora of gods is a waste of time. The only God they need is among them, and has come to them in "a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has give assurance to all by raising him from the dead." No more idols are required, Jesus meets the need.

Some scoffed at the very idea, but others believed. I'd say that's a fairly good summary of what still happens when modern-day idols are challenged with the proclamation that Jesus meets the need. Some people scoff, and some believe. Yet, idols still abound in our world; they may not be as crude as the mountain top idols in Athens, they are more disguised, yet present.

It's interesting to me that the word "idol" has come into common usage in recent years, all because of the TV show "American Idol". I've avoided talking about that program because I have never watched it and because so many of you do, and enjoy it. But, the idea intrigues me.

As one of you pointed out, it seems to meet our need to see one of us "make it". We like the idea that a young person from the North Carolina countryside could show up at an audition, be picked from the masses to move up the ranks, face adversity in the form of _______________________ and still win the hearts of millions of people who vote to make that one the Idol of that season.

And, yet, there also is in many a secret desire to see that person fall, to bet on how long it is before his or her name is not on the tongues of every other person because we know in our hearts of hearts that no human idol can really meet our need to be a part of something bigger than ourselves.

But that's just the tip of the idol iceberg. We turn people other than those TV competitors into idols and bask in their beauty, success, power or ability to touch our hearts and move us. They are bolder than we are, so we boldly admire them, until they too fall short.

Or we seek idols that move us beyond ourselves, help us to forget and to feel better, idols that we horde or buy, desire or taste, inhale or swallow, that at some point leave us empty and hungry.

The idols of this age and the idols of old have the same purpose, to help us feel safe and to meet a need within us to be other than what we are. And, they will fail, because an idol, according to Webster's, is an imposter, a false god. The one who is the true God, if we would just realize it, is the one in whom we live and breathe and have our being. Jesus is the one who loves us and meets our need to be a part of something bigger than ourselves. He has sent us the Advocate, the Spirit of truth, who abides with and in us, empowering us to bask in who we are with no need for escape.

I guess we should not be too critical of Paul's lack of proper tourist behavior. He was vexed by all those idols because he knew the true God who was bigger than the shrines made by human hands. I imagine if he showed up in the 21st century he would be just as perturbed because we still struggle to understand that no idol transforms us like the one for whom we needlessly search and grope, and yet is not far from each one of us, making every idol obsolete.

AMEN

(1) "The Apostle in Athens, Preaching to Philosophers" by Bob Deffinbaugh, www.bible.org

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