Scott Stearman

Paris, May 7, 2000

Acts 14:8-20

Have you ever felt like a god? I know you are in church so you are supposed to say no – but you are in church and you are also supposed to be honest. There have been days, when you felt immortal invincible almighty and wise. Days when you had the world figured out, and you were Truth with two feet, blessing the world with your presence. I’ll confess to days (deep in my past) when I felt like that. And there have been other days. Days when I felt like the pond scum that Darwin says my ancestors came from. Days when I felt like being (not to say getting) stoned (pelted with rocks – just so there is no confusion).

For Paul and Barnabas these feelings hit on the same day. They were in Lystra – an eastern Greek city. They were on their famous missionary journey through Greece. They had a frustrating time in Antioch, but they persist on east and come to Lystra where Paul was instrumental in healing a lame man. The man had never walked in his life, and Paul saw that he had faith. He calls the man to walk. He does. The crowds are predictably amazed, but unpredictably they determine that Paul and Barnabas are not mere mortals. Barnabas must be Zeus, and since Paul talks so much, he must be the messenger named Hermes (who later began a famous scarf factory btw). P&B finally get the crowds talked into believing that indeed they are messengers, but human messengers, not worthy of worship. They were just guys with a message - mere road signs pointing to the truth, not the truth with two feet.

About the time P&B are successful in getting the crowds to remove then from the pedestal, Jews from Antioch come into town. These are the folks who caused P&B so much difficulty earlier. They convince the fickle folk that sure enough not only are these guys not gods, but they are false-messengers, who deserve death. So, with the full force of what we know of today as mob psychology, they stone them.

One minute they are worshiped like incarnate gods, the next moment they are reviled like embodied demons. One hour Paul is desperately imploring people to not offer sacrifices to him, the next he is seeking desperately to not become a sacrifice himself. What a day. One minute they are Greek gods then next minute they are dead meat.

I want us to examine this story, not from P&B’s perspective – as I said we have all had days when we felt, and maybe others felt we were either gods or demons - but from the perspective of the crowds. In this very dramatic story, we have a no less dramatic truth – at least it is a truth that can have drastic and dramatic consequences to our lives when understood.

• Cultural glasses often shade our vision of ultimate reality. Culturally colored lenses affect our sight of what really matters.
• Historical and cultural baggage weigh us down and often keeps us from traveling very far in our search of the truth. You can only carry so much when traveling, unfortunately many pick up the wrong bags.
• Our culture’s teaching about the particular and the tangible often hinder our spiritual grasp of the absolute and the intangible. We like things small, understood, and controllable. The "problem" with God is that God is not small, not ever completely understood, and not under our control. Human culture has a tendency to want to make god into our image rather than visa versa.

So to get the point, lets role play. Imagine that you are Greek. You have grown up being taught that Zeus controls the thunder, Poisiden the sea, Athena has all wisdom, etc. The gods are basically super-humans, who throw around their power willy-nilly. Here come two strange men. They talk about an unknown God, who created everything, and who worked in this person Jesus Christ to bring salvation to the world. And then something very strange happens. A lame man you have known all your life begins to walk at the command of one of these men. What would you assume. These guys are not human!

We can laugh at their reaction, but I doubt that we would reacted differently. Here was this experience – a man was healed. As a Greek of that time and place, you would have looked through your cultural glasses, and what would you have seen. The only thing you could have seen: Zeus and Hermes incarnate. But you would have been wrong, and that is the rub. Cultural relativists tell us that glasses are all we have, and that as a Greek you would have had no choice but to believe what your culture told you. Paul’s message is that God can heal your eyes so you don’t need those glasses.

Now, be a Jew of the first century. You are waiting on the messiah to come and save your people, but your culture has confused God’s desires for humanity and its desire for political victory – not an uncommon confusion, by the way. God told Abraham that he was special and was to be a blessing to all nations, but your tradition has focused on the former, but not the latter. You were in and among "God’s favorites" and God would send a military messiah to kick some Roman butt. But here comes P&B to say, no read Isa. 53. What we have is a suffering servant who is not about military victory, but about human victory. He is offering salvation, not just to Jews, but to the gentiles as well. Let’s read a section of their message to the Jews in Antioch:

Acts 13:47-48. For this is what the Lord has commanded us: "'I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.'"48 When the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and honored the word of the Lord; and all who were appointed for eternal life believed. 49 The word of the Lord spread through the whole region.

As a Jew you would have known gentiles, the things they worship, and things they do. Ugg. They don’t deserve salvation. Which is of course literally true, they don’t.

If you truly put yourself in their place, if you are empathetic enough, I think you will come to the same conclusion I did. As a Greek I would have built the pedestal, as a Jew I would have thrown stones. As P&B, I probably would have gone home. But not every Greek made that pedestal, and not every Jew threw stones. Some listened, reflected, and found the Truth. God gave them the ability to put down the shades of their cultural understanding, let go of the baggage of their presuppositions, to forget the small god of their human mind.

Sometimes when interpreting this text the Greeks are painted as stupid polytheistic natives, and the Jews as evil power-hungry control-obsessed people. In one sense this portrait is accurate – as long as that sense includes the awareness that they were no more stupid, or no more evil than you and I often are.

I’m sure most of you have heard the European vision of heaven and hell. Heaven is where you go when you die, and find that you have a French chef, an English butler, an Italian lover, the transportation is run by German engineers. Hell on the other hand is where your chef is English, your butler is French, the trains are run by Italians, and your lover is German.

These stereotypes are funny and fascinating, and as someone who has lived in Europe for over 5 years I’m glad that cultural differences exist. The world is a rich and fascinating place because the French can cook, and the Germans can run trains and build great cars. This is not what I’m talking about today. If your culture has given you a love of fine cuisine or classical music, or punctuality, that is interesting, but not ultimately significant for your spiritual life.

What is significant, is whether you allow your culture to shade your eyes from God’s Truth. Often God’s truth contradicts what you have been taught.

Two examples. One is historical, and the other is contemporary.

Let’s start with history, from my own religious tradition: Southern Baptist Convention. The SBC is the largest Protestant denomination in the US. There are about 15 million – although the FBI couldn’t find about half of those on Sunday morning. This 15 million support over 10,000 missionaries and do amazing work all around the world. Not everyone knows that this great group of very active and mission sending people, began with an argument over slavery. The SBC was for it. Well, not exactly for slavery, but against the abolitionist movement to rid the nation of this horrid institution. Basically the Baptists in the South, got tired of the preachers in the North telling them how horrible they were for having slave owners in their churches. So , in 1844 the southern Baptists split from the northern Baptists on the basis of this issue. I have read some of the sermons from that era. Many quoting Paul’s encouragement of Onesimus to go back to his master as condoning and even establishing slavery. As you well know, the southern economy and culture was built around the institution of slavery. Many of these bible-believing, and God-loving people could not see how God could be against something so essential to their lifestyle. They good news is that now the SBC has some of the fastest growing black and multi-racial churches in the US. Things have certainly changed in 150 years.

Now a contemporary example. It is often talked about in Christian circles how "the French" are so indifferent to spiritual things. Literally this is not true, as the amazing number of people involved in the occult demonstrates (50,000 voyeurs and 30,000 RC priests in 1997). But we know that there is little interest in Christianity.

I risk over simplicity here, but let me tell you the observation that many make. The French Roman Catholic church played such a destructive, rather than constructive, role during the pre-revolutionary and revolutionary days, that people can’t stomach hearing about love from a church that was so hateful. The message of Christianity is confused with the messenger of the RCC and the "cultural memory" wants nothing to do with either.

My first real encounter with another culture was about 12 years ago when I spent a summer in China teaching English in Xinjiang. I was in an area of China which was half Muslim, and half Chinese. On the trip there was another guy who was as tall as I and were quite the town attraction. I remember discussing with my Chinese students about belief in God. "But you can’t see God." They said. Neither can you see electricity, but you still plug in your radio, I said. If you hear music you know there is electricity.

I hope I left them something to think about, but I was taught as much as I taught. What I carried away from that summer has been confirmed as I’ve traveled ever since. Human beings are human beings. We laugh when we are happy, cry when we are sad. We love and are frustrated by our parents. We love and are frustrated by our kids. All around we world, we are amazingly alike. DNA scientists have recently confirmed that our genetic makeup is practically identical. We can trace the genetic history back to a common momma (Eve) and daddy (Adam).

But as much as we are genetically alike, we are handed glasses when we are born into a culture. "This is what the world looks like. Here is truth." I said a moment ago that God take our glasses and heals our eyes. The truth is that he cleans our glasses. I mean that none of us – until we reach the other side of Jordan – will ever see without some cultural filtering. But God allows us to see what matters.

How? Paul says a couple of things which we must all keep in mind.

First, is a message about the human messengers: we are only men, - human like you. We are not infallible, not incapable of error, not super humans. But we come with a message, and that message is to look to the true messenger.

Be careful about investing anyone with infallibility – only God has that characteristic. Your home culture, your grade school teacher, your mother, your preacher, may all be wrong. Even me.

Second, God is the true messenger. There is more to say about this than I have time.

But we can be sure that God is at work in human hearts in ways we know not. Don’t assume that because a person is of a different color or language that they don’t know God. God is at work in the simple things like rain, to bring joy to the human heart.

He is also at work in your heart. Take Paul’s advice. Turn from worthless things, and turn to the truth. This is a life long objective, but it begins with a decision to follow him, even if that is against the tide of your culture. Let God clean your glasses, and allow him to be your vision.