Monday 22 May 2023

Psalm 48:1-8

Background

The glory days of Athens may well have been in the past by the time Paul arrived there, but it was still a city of great wealth, great learning and more gods in one city than in the rest of Greece put together.

Paul began to speak about Jesus. He spent time in the religious places and public spaces and one day got into a discussion with Epicureans and Stoics, two very different groups of philosophers. (v. 18)

The Epicureans believed that this life is all that there is and if ‘gods’ exist, they certainly aren't interested in how humans live. So their philosophy was basically 'enjoy life, pursue pleasure'. The Stoics were at the other end of the hedonistic spectrum. They believed that everything was divine and that everything that happened was the will of the divine and so simply needed to be accepted without complaint. The Stoic philosophy might be summarised as ‘endure life’.

‘Enjoy life without constraint’ or ‘endure life without complaint’ – these are two very different positions, leaving a huge gap in the middle. When Paul is invited to address the Areopagus (an elite council of around 30 people) he took the opportunity to highlight this gap and to show that even in a city of myriad and diverse gods, the people knew instinctively that something was still missing.

He said “I found among (the objects of worship) an altar with the inscription, 'To an unknown god.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you." (v. 23)

Paul proclaimed“God who made the world and everything in it” (v. 24), which refuted the Stoic claim that ‘everything is God’.

He proclaimed the ‘God of the resurrection’ (v. 31), which rebuffed the Epicurean idea that this life is all that there is and so it doesn’t matter how we live.

And he proclaimed the ‘good news about Jesus and the resurrection’ (v. 18), meaning Jesus is so much more than a philosophy, but is the God whose name and nature can be known by every person.

To Ponder:

• What opportunities have you had in the past week to share in a conversation about faith?
• If someone asked you to explain who Jesus is for you, what would you say?

Prayer

Lord God, help me see and take the opportunities to speak of my faith when they come, and give me the words I need to say. Amen.