Scripture texts: Acts 17:22-34, Matthew 15:11-20
I’ve said before there seems to be a cycle to Church history. Every 500 years or so, the Church undergoes a transformative moment. A large part of the reason I’m doing this preaching series is because I believe that we are in just such a moment now. The world’s largest Christian nation is undergoing massive change and transition. The American church isn’t quite certain what to do with itself.
But this isn’t the first time the Church has gone through this sort of transition and transformation. That’s the benefit of studying history. It’s the benefit of looking at the book of Acts and the stories of the church in circumstances very much like today. But there are also lessons to be learned from the first of these great transformative moments; from the era of Augustine and Patricius in the 5th century.
Patricius, or Patrick as he’s more widely known, has a holiday that we will celebrate in just a few short days. We know his name. We know he has something to do with Irish history. But for most of us, that’s the extent of our knowledge. The rest of it is lost in shamrocks, leprechauns, and green beer.
From the National Catholic Reporter
But Patrick stands out as a great paragon of our faith. In a time when evangelism was often accompanied with violence, either because the Church used the power of the Roman Empire to enforce its will or because the intended recipients of the faith had a fondness for murdering missionaries, Patrick managed a feat unheard of in those times: the bloodless conversion of an entire nation. Those people were the Irish and that made it even more amazing. The Irish of that era were made up of vicious warmongers and slavers. A modern equivalent would be for one Christian missionary to go to ISIS and then convert the whole lot of them without a single drop of blood being spilled.
How’d he pull it off?
He took a lesson from St. Paul, most likely the very text we have as our Acts lesson today. Paul has come to Athens, then as now the capital of the Greek world. As was his wont, he seeks out a place of prayer in the city, which is the Aeropagus.
Now the Greeks of this era had a very pragmatic approach to religion. They are a polytheistic people, believing in many gods. Those of us who have studied mythology (or watched Disney’s Hercules) know their names: Zeus, Athena, Ares, and the like.
But this is also several hundred years after Alexander the Great had nearly conquered the world in the name of Greece, so they’ve now become a very cosmopolitan culture. They’ve encountered many other peoples with many other religious understandings. As such, they have begun to incorporate or at least acknowledge the gods of other peoples. In the Aeropagus were not merely the shrines dedicated to their own gods, but also to the gods of Egypt and Persia and other lands the Greeks had encountered. And, to make sure they didn’t miss any, they put up an altar to “the unknown god.”
Paul sees his chance and begins to talk to the crowd about the god they claim is unknown, but is known to him. He speaks to them of Jesus Christ.
What is remarkable about this encounter to me is how respectful of the Greeks Paul proves to be. He introduces them to Jesus on their terms. And that, I believe, is the lesson Patrick takes with him to Ireland 400 years later. When he introduces the Irish to Jesus, he does so on their terms.
It works and it has created for us one of the most wondrous expressions of our faith that we have. Orthodox, devout, and yet beautifully unique, Irish Christianity still inspires people today with their symbols and stories. The Celtic cross, the legend of the shamrock as a symbol of the Trinity, the Breastplate prayer, and Irish hymnody like “Be Thou My Vision” continue to inspire and encourage people’s faith today.
But none of that would have happened if Patrick had made the mistake of which we Christians are so often guilty. When we refuse to accept that Christianity and belief in Christ can appear in very different ways than our own and be just as right, proper, and orthodox.
You see, I spoke last week about how different has become dangerous for many of us. And that’s not all that new to the human experience. For far too often, we have seen being Christian as “being like us.” Again, as I said before, diversity is not our strength and large part of the reason for that is that we demand conformity in nearly everything. Not simply belief.
We’ve come up with all sorts of excuses and rationales in our minds for why those seeking God need to abandon nearly their entire identity in order to meet him. Gays must become straight. People who read Harry Potter must burn their books. People who love rock-n-roll must give it up. Foreigners must speak English. Give up all that you are that is of the devil. These might seem extreme examples, but I’ve seen them all in the church and they are more common than we’d like to admit.
Paul makes no such demands of the Greeks, nor Patrick of the Irish. Perhaps because they both understood Jesus’ lesson in our Gospel that what matters is not what goes into a person, but what comes forth from the heart.
I remember when I was a teenager being shocked one Sunday that one of our Vietnamese refugees that I spoke of a few weeks ago came to worship in a Megadeth T-shirt. I was beside myself with indignity. Doesn’t he know how inappropriate that is, to walk into the house of God with this grotesque character leering off of his chest? I would certainly never wear a t-shirt to worship and even if I had, it would have been of a nice wholesome Christian group like Petra.
Such a pleasant image.
I didn’t get it. This man had already given up so much and here I was, immature in my own faith, demanding that he surrender more to make me feel better about myself. And yet, nothing that he was wearing or listening to had changed the fact that he was there, in worship, singing praise to God.
Of all people, I should have known better, having listened to people tell me my hobbies were of the devil for so long. What went in did not matter. What came out was praise to God and that was all that mattered.
And all this was before I knew that most of the members of Megadeth are devout Christians themselves. One is (presumably) an ordained LCMS pastor. Wrap your brain around that for a minute. The members of one of the most successful heavy metal bands in the world are Christian. Talk about how different we can be one another.
People are who they are and God comes to each one of us where we are. Respecting that truth goes a long way to winning people for God. Yes, God loves you as you are and not as you should be (as Brennan Manning so eloquently puts it) Perhaps more accurate for our purposes today is to say that God loves you as you are and not as I think you should be.
Paul won over the Greeks by respecting who they were. Patrick won the Irish by respecting who they were. Neither man worried about what they thought of these “others,” but cared only for God thought of them. And what did God think? Well, he sent Jesus to die and rise again for them. It was enough for them. Perhaps it should be enough for us. Amen.
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