LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 2007, Page 100

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100

CONVENTION BIBLE STUDIES

missiles from the safety of his house church. He earned the
right to be heard. He got outside the walls of the church and
into the culture’s debate. In a real sense, that’s one of the reasons we’re here, not to turn in on ourselves but to say a word
to the culture, a word of real truth. We’re meant to be players
in our culture. That means we have a prophetic voice that
needs to be heard. We have books that need to be written in
the popular vernacular of our culture. Our theologians at our
seminaries need to break outside the walls of academic theology into the world of public witness, testimony, and apologetics. Our pastors and lay leaders need to go where the culture’s
idols stand and where its longings are heard. The Early
Church didn’t circle its wagons. It charged into its culture
with the truth of Jesus Christ.
Third, we can expect to be misunderstood; Paul was.
They call him a “babbler” in verse 18. The word actually
means “seed-picker.” Today, we might say, “bird brain.”
They were so taken up with idols, they thought he was introducing two new gods, Jesus and the Resurrection—taking the Greek word for resurrection, Anastasis, to be the
name of another god. So Christians can expect to be called
intolerant, exclusionary, duped, and out of touch. When
Paul mentions the resurrection at the end of his speech,
some sneer, others politely ask to hear more, and still others believe. We can expect different responses. Our task is
to present, leaving the response to the Holy Spirit. One of
the blessings of Ablaze! is its clear understanding that the
results, the eternal yield of witness, are all a matter of
God’s grace.
Perhaps the most practical lesson we can take from Paul
in Athens is how he breaks open the cultural icons of his day
and fills them full of new meaning, Christian meaning. In
verses 22–23, Paul has spotted an altar with the inscription,
“To an Unknown God” (Greek, AGNOSTO THEO), he says
he will tell them about the god they do not know. And later, in
verse 28, in making the point that since we are all created by
God, God cannot be our creation, he chooses to quote wellknown classic Greek poets, Epimenides, Aratus, and Cleanthus, loading their words with new Christian meaning. The
church has always broken open the language of the culture
and redefined it from a Christian perspective. The word
sacrament, for instance, was a secular word for a pledge of
loyalty, recast by Christians to apply to Baptism and the
Lord’s Supper, the Lord’s pledges of loyalty to us.
This breaking open of the culture’s icons means we need
to know our culture—its poetry, its books, its novels, its
magazines, its art, its cartoons, its coffee shops. Our culture’s language and music and so much more are waiting
to be broken open, interpreted, not giving them a spin, but
filling them with truth from our Christian perspective. We
have to know our culture. I spoke recently at a pastor’s conference and said I had a list of 10 secular books published
since 2000 that every pastor should read because they reveal our culture. Within a week, I had received over 100 requests for the list. Pastors get this.
A fifth lesson comes as we watch Paul present God as so
much bigger, so much greater than the gods of the Athenians.

2007 Convention Proceedings

Look at verses 26–27. The true God is bigger and more dangerous than the god and the truth of our culture. Paul’s God—
and ours—establishes and moves nations according to His
will and for the sake of His salvation plan. Then, at verses
29–31, we hear how Paul’s God—and ours—raised Jesus
from the dead and so made certain the urgent reality of a
coming judgment. That looming judgment hovers over Paul’s
witness, giving it an authentically urgent character. Is that
urgency here? Do we feel it? Do we see it on the horizon?
A sixth lesson comes with Paul’s witness to the resurrection (v. 31). The truth and reality of Jesus rides on His
resurrection. In the end, Paul’s message was a message of
eternal proportions, a truth, a historical reality corroborated by a risen Jesus Christ, whom Paul himself had seen
and heard. In the end, the truth we speak, the truth we live
and die for, is the truth of Jesus Christ: His perfect life, His
suffering in our place, His atoning death, and His return
from death. This is Jesus, who said, “I am the truth.” This
is Jesus, whose life was not some fantasy, not some divine
show in the mind of a writer, but Jesus in history, the real
Jesus, exploding from death to life, still present among us
here, here now, at a church convention! (Imagine that!)

III. The Truth That Matters
In the end, the truth we long for most is the truth that
looks death in the eye and says, “Death, you are defeated.
Death, you cannot have me!” In the end, the truth about
Jesus, the truth Jesus is, stands or falls on His resurrection. Even the spiritually shallow are taken by this basic
tenet of our faith. As one wag put it, he wanted to be buried
in Jerusalem because that city has the highest resurrection
rate of any city in the world.
And finally, notice that at verse 34, individuals matter
in the record of the church’s witness. The flock increases one
sheep at a time. Dionysius and Damaris are mentioned by
name. The Kingdom grows one by one. We can dream of
movements, pray for the multitudes to know Jesus, but one
by one they come in. Why? Because the church, set ablaze
by the Spirit of God, speaks the truth, and grace works
faith, faith in the One who said, “I am the way, the truth,
and the life.”

Questions for Discussion
1. Where in our culture do you see self-focused, do-ityourself truth at work?
2. When have you found yourself standing “alone” for the
truths of your faith?
3. Where do you see opportunities for the church to
“break open” cultural icons?
4. What keeps the LCMS from being a more visible
player in our culture’s debate of ideas and truths?
5. What aspect of Paul’s witness in Athens is most significant for our church today?
Dean W. Nadasdy
Third Vice-President
The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod