Acts 17:22-31
The way to conversion is in your hands and at your feet. Being religious, indeed seeing God and acknowledging him is not something extra terrestrial, far away or made of sacred movements or strange beliefs. I often say that God is readily available if you just open your eyes. This is the message from Paul today as he spoke to the Greeks.
How many poeple have I met that say they are spiritual but not religious. While the essence of that seems fine you may know that I find that sad , if not stupid. But be that as it may, the idea of spirituality is quite easy and an excellent starting point for a conversion of heart.
As we are made in the image and likeness of God, we are drawn to him in every fiber of our being. The whole world is drawn to him and everything in the world proclaims and exhibits some facet of his being. The diversity of the world attests to him. The beauty of world attests to him. But even without looking around, we feel an emptiness without God because we are not complete without God.
The commonality of our human search for our creator and the revelation of God's created world and love is everywhere and is found in every generation and in every place on earth. Even beyond earth we see the glories of God. We all experience this and so it was not difficult for Paul to explain to the Greeks the commonality and kinship they really had. What Paul was trying to explain was the answer that comes in the form of Jesus Christ as the supreme witness of Love and truth.
In the time of Paul, the fledgling church had none of the pomp and circumstance and none of the astounding number of 'canon laws' or holy days of obligation. The circular logic and intense mental gymnastics of religious fervor had not yet invaded the faith or overcome it. The church was pure for the most part and its connection to Jesus was close and it's core beliefs were set. There was no proliferation of hierarchy and cover ups.
In the beginning there was naked religion so to speak. When Paul spoke to the Greeks he spoke from the heart and with sincere faith in Christ and little else. This is why the faith spread and why it was so welcomed. It would much harder to spread today with the top heavy hierarchy and it's removal from the purity of the beginning.
So many people abandon religion because the essence of faith is so mired in the rubrics of religion. People get the connection to the world and express it as spirituality rather the get drowned in the quagmire of modern religions.
My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord (Luke 1:46) because I have now have the richness of a religion that gives form to the practice of my faith but also the freedom and joy to know that God and his simple yet boundless love is so close. I get this from being an Episcopalian. A true blessing. I am home. 'I am spiritual' and I have my religion too. Not mutually exclusive. I am sad for those that only have the spirituality because there are religions out there that have removed themselves so far from the essence of the faith, the essence of the message Jesus proclaimed and lived. For myself, I am happy to be home.
Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, "Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way.
For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, 'To an unknown god.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.
The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands,
nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.
From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live,
so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him--though indeed he is not far from each one of us.
For 'In him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your own poets have said, 'For we too are his offspring.'
Since we are God's offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals.
While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent,
because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead."
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