LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 2007, Page 99

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3. One Message—Christ!
A Message of Truth in a Postmodern World—Acts 17:16–34
Introduction
Almost ten years ago, a film titled The Truman Show gave
us the tragic situation of a man whose whole life, unknown
to him, was a television program. His family and friends were
all actors, playing roles. His world was lived under a huge
dome, a gigantic sound stage he thought was real.
At the end of the film, Truman finally figures it out as
his sailboat runs up against a wall and he ascends a staircase that promises to take him from this fantasy world to
what’s real and true. It’s then that the director of the show
breaks in to try to get Truman to stay. “Was nothing real?”
Truman asks the director. “You were real,” says the director, “That’s what made you so good to watch.” And then the
director says, “Listen to me, Truman. There’s no more truth
out there than there is in the world I created for you. Same
lies. The same deceit.”

I. We Live in a Non-Reality World
And with that, we’re given a vivid statement of our culture, what it is like to be trapped in world where real truth
is an illusion; the rabbit out there six inches ahead of the
chasing dog.
Film after film—The Matrix, Wag the Dog, Groundhog
Day, The Sixth Sense, Bulworth (the list goes on)—gives us
this idea that the real and the true are absolutely an illusion and absolutely elusive.
And then there are the reality shows that end up being
anything but real—singers on American Idol who can’t
sing, and we’re supposed to believe that eating maggots or
being overrun by rats is somehow “real.” Language in such
a culture can morph into a secret code to where someone
walks up to a Starbucks counter and says, “Double
Ristretto Venti Nonfat Organic Chocolate Brownie Frappuccino Extra Hot with Foam and Whipped Cream Upside
Down Double Blended.” And what scares me is that some of
you know what that looks like.
It’s in that culture we live, and it’s to that culture we’re
sent —a culture seeking a staircase, a door, to some truth,
some reality that sticks. It’s a culture that turns those
doors into a “Let’s Make a Deal,” as one truth, one reality,
and then another vie for our attention and loyalty. So a
woman has a cross, a crescent, a Buddah, and a star of
David placed on her gravestone, accepting them all as true
and calling herself a true believer. Truth becomes diluted
and threatened by a self-driven relativism. Because people
say something is true seems to make it true, at least for
them. Abe Lincoln once asked the question, “How many
legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg?” His answer:
“Four, because calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.”

into opinion. Bash, dash, and cash. Or we can do what the
church has always been sent to do: transform the world,
testifying to the truth and reality of Jesus Christ.
For that task, that sending, there is no better model
than Paul on Mars Hill in Athens. In Paul’s day, Athens
was no longer a great city, but it was still seen as a place of
great ideas, where truth was considered and tried by some
of the brightest people anywhere. As Luke tells it in verse
21, the Athenians were taken with just about any new idea.
Newer was better.
There, in Athens, we get a lesson in Christians transforming the culture. Let me walk you through the text.
First, notice at the start of verse 16 that Paul was in
Athens waiting for his traveling companions to catch up
with him. Here is a rare occasion when Paul stands alone.
Sometimes Christians stand alone in witness. So often, our
witness to the truth is one-on-one. It’s a “Here I Stand” enterprise. And yet, like Paul, when we speak, we are lifted
by the prayers and encouragement of other Christians.
When Paul spoke in Athens, he had partners in the church
across the Mediterranean world in prayer for him. He also
had the grace of Jesus Christ. Paul knew the laws of
rhetoric alright, but it’s likely he was not all that engaging
a speaker in person. Early depictions show him short, baldheaded, with a hooked nose. Yet there in Athens, the overwhelming number of idols and the grace of God made him
speak, alone but not alone.
Second, notice in the opening verses of the text how Paul
was a player in his culture. In verses 17–19, we see Paul first
in the synagogue, then in the marketplace, and then in the
Areopagus. Paul was on the field, in the game. He didn’t hurl

II. How to Relate to a Pagan Society
So how does the church relate to a pagan society forever
after elusive truth and reality? We can bash it, forgetting
we’re a part of it. We can dash from it, escaping to our own
safe harbor. We can cash in and sell out, morphing truth

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2007 Convention Proceedings