Sermon for the 6th Sunday of Easter: Obey!

Acts 17: 22 – 31

22 Then Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious; 23 for as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription:

TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.

Therefore, the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you: 24 God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. 25 Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things. 26 And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, 27 so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; 28 for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’ 29 Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man’s devising. 30 Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, 31 because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.”

John 14; 15 - 21

¹⁵ “If you love me, keep my commands. ¹⁶ And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— ¹⁷ the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. ¹⁸ I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. ¹⁹ Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. ²⁰ On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. ²¹ Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.”

How are you with authority?

I have to confess I struggle with being told what to do, I find experts to be insufferably dull, I ignore instruction manuals, I even receive well meaning advice as patronising, ...and Bishops set my teeth on edge.

I clearly have much repenting to do.

Think back: how many people in authority have truly earned your respect?

For most of us, that list is short.

I don’t think human beings are well suited to being in charge, the exercise of authority is demanding, and it exposes your personality to public scrutiny - all your faults become visible.

As the saying goes, ‘the higher up the tree the monkey climbs the more the crowd below can see its bottom.’

Authority is the right to exercise power.

So for instance, a mugger may have the power to stop you in the street and search your pockets, whereas a police officer has the authority to do so.

Power without authority is usually considered immoral.

Might does not confer right.

Most of us obey most of the time.

We drive on the correct side of the road, queue in shops, take our medicine, and pay our taxes.

Not all of us do these things all the time, but enough of us do them enough of the time for us to all get by.

We might do as we are told because of the threat of punishment, or because we believe it is the right thing to do, or our behaviour may just be normative.

Brute force is not enough long term to get people to obey, power needs legitimising, as Boris Yeltsin once said, ‘you can make a throne of bayonets, but you can’t sit on it for long.’

So what legitimatises power?

Due process? Law? Democracy? Utility? Tradition? Ideology? Custom?

Jesus gives a different answer, “If you love me, obey my commandments.”

I think we miss, or forget, just how different an understanding of power and authority the life of Jesus presents to us, the Kingdom of Heaven works in a radically way different to the Kingdoms of this World.

God is all powerful, and has absolute moral authority.

In God might and right are united.

As King David prayed in 1 Chronicles,

“Yours, Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendour, for everything in heaven and earth is yours.” 

Yet we read in Mark that Jesus, “.... did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many”

The Kingdom of Heaven upends earthly ideas of power and authority.

Here is the system in the Kingdom of Heaven, in John 13 Jesus says, “If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you.”

The religious and political elite of Israel failed to recognise Jesus as the Messiah because he was not the warrior King they expected.

They wanted God to show His awesome and terrible might.

They were confounded when God revealed Himself as a vulnerable, humble, servant.

Don't be too critical of them, we often make the same mistake, so often we want a shoot ‘em up hero to sort out the bad guys, give ‘em what for, and 'em show who’s boss.

Paul, on the Areopagus, debating with the men of Athens, would have been surrounded by altars to muscular Olympian deities.

The Areopagus, was a mount named after the Greek god of war, and there were altars to Poseidon, the 'Earth Shaker', and to the The Furies – who were goddesses of vengeance and retribution.

The Greeks wanted gods who could 'kick ass!'

On the mount of the god of war, Paul speaks of the One God, creator of all good things, in whom we might find brotherhood because He is the Father of all peoples, and whose power is made known through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Paul spoke of the Prince of Peace on the mount of the god of war.

A Greek god would have sought vengeance for crucifixion, Jesus sought healing and forgiveness.

If you look around the world today, who are our gods of war?

In whom do we trust?

The Patriot missile system? The Iron dome? Suicide belts? HIMARS and Howitzers? Hyper-sonic missiles? Improvised explosive devises? Military Drones? GDP? The intifada? The Dollar? The Yen? Oil?

In the Kingdom of Heaven the only nexus between God and humanity, and between human beings, is to be Christ-like love.

A love that sets aside domination and status, for service and humility.

The way of Jesus looks like foolishness to the wise of this age, those who sit upon the Areopagus surrounded by the gods of violence. They fail to see that, as Paul writes, ‘the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.’ 

May we be characterised by the foolishness and weakness of God, may love govern our every action and intention, so that the Kingdom of Heaven may be made known here on earth.