Acts 17:22-31 Commentary

Trouble in the Text

The Apostle Paul had just taken the express train out of Berea. The Christians there showed him wonderful hospitality but the religious zealots from nearby Thessaloniki came into town to rough him up. So his peeps bundled him off to Athens, where Scripture tells us, he was waiting for Silas and Timothy to join him. Already in his missionary journey era, Paul has seen the remarkable power of the Gospel to reshape the contours of the Jewish religion — it’s why he preached in the synagogues everywhere he went. Paul and his company watched as God used the power of the Gospel to confront centers of political or commercial power. Now the power of the Gospel faced a new challenge — the hallowed halls of academia. Athens was the birthplace of Greek philosophy. It was the Harvard or Oxford of its time. How could the Gospel possibly flourish here?

As Paul waited for his companions, he toured the city. He got to know the people and the prevailing attitudes in the marketplace. What he found distressed him greatly. He found shrine after shrine, temple after temple dedicated to one Greek god after another. Central as a trading route, Athens was littered with memorials to goods from the east and the west. You couldn’t go anywhere in Athens without tripping over some strange obelisk or holy site.

But Paul went first where he always went first — to the synagogue. He argued with the people there from their own Scriptures to demonstrate that Jesus was the Messiah. Commentators are fairly agreed that the witness of the synagogue to the wider Athenian world was minimal, to put it charitably. They knew the culture around them was littered with idols and shrines. But they ducked their heads and skirted around them to get to worship at their own synagogue.

Avoidance is a popular technique in the Christian church too — let’s pretend that the objectionable parts of culture don’t exist.  If we don’t acknowledge it, perhaps it will go away.  Or, at least, we will stay pure and undefiled. There have always been Christians who have taken this approach: don’t get bruised or bloodied by running into cultural artifacts, idolatrous obstacles. But staying above the fray also means never seeing how the Gospel engages, flourishes, converts and, ultimately triumphs over all the kings of all of the earth and every idol in every culture.

Instead of avoiding obstacles, some Christians attempt to go hand-to-hand combat with them.  And then we get stuck in culture wars, which are always forever wars. Because even when you do manage to legislate your own way, people just work around it.  Or your body has adjusted to the adrenaline rush of outrage so you just keep looking until you can find your next hit.

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Parkour is an athletic discipline, a sport for some and an art form for others. It started in crowded urban spaces int he late 80s. The premise of parkour is this: use the environment around you in the most daring, agile, artistic way you can. Urban landscapes become like children’s playgrounds. Rather than running into or around obstacles, you look for a creative way to use them in your forward progress: vaulting, climbing, jumping, twirling, flipping. Here’s a video explanation if you are interested in learning more. But, for our purposes, I appreciate the image of Parkour as an alternative to the cultural avoidance or culture warring. What if culture is not something to avoid or something to combat but, rather, becomes the place we know well enough to carefully and creatively engage? What if, like practitioners of Parkour, we learn to see the environment around us differently? Is it dangerous.  Certainly. It is something you have to train for in order to navigate well? Also yes.  But can it be a place of beauty, flourishing and triumph?  Yes, indeed.

Grace in the Text

Given the options of avoiding or warring with culture, Paul chose Parkour.  Paul went to the marketplace. When the philosophers came and told him their ideas, he ‘debated with them.’ He engaged, asked questions and gave them new information that made room for the good news of the Gospel. He caused them to be curious—just like we are when we watch parkour artists—how does she do that?!

All of Paul’s previous speeches are sermons to a gathered religious community. His opportunity at the Aeropagus (or Mars Hill) is the first instance we see of him specifically addressing a crowd of the curious and the un-churched (well, un-synagogued.) He doesn’t avoid the shrines or the artifacts. He doesn’t ignore the Athenians’ misdirected worship. Instead, he uses the obstacles. He uses the culture’s idolatry. He engages it — in order to turn it on its head. Beginning with all that is dead and foolish and misdirected, God’s Gospel truth becomes alive and beautiful and triumphant.

You have temples made by human hands?

The world is a more glorious temple made by God’s won hands.

You think you need to reach out to your gods?

No! God has reached out to us.

You think that you serve the gods because they need you?

God doesn’t need us. In fact, God gives us everything we need:

God gives us life.

God gives us breath.

God knows the times set for us.

God gives us the exact places where we should live.

You are so afraid of doing it wrong that you worship everything—including what you do not know?

Our God tells us we do not need to be afraid because in God we live and move and have our very being.

Do you see what Paul just did? Parkour! He adapted to his environment. He couldn’t argue from the Torah, like he did in the synagogue. He had to engage the Athenian culture and catapult off it into the good news of the Gospel.  He took their obstacles and shrines and temples and memorials.  And, in the power and wisdom of the Holy Spirit he dodged, leapt, somersaulted, balanced and landed.

There is no obstacle that God cannot use and transform.

Therefore, Parkour!