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The new God of modern society! 6th Sunday in Easter : 1st May 2005 Acts 17.22-31 | 1 Peter 3.13-22 | John 14.15-21 This is part of what has been known as the “Farewell discourses” - it’s a bit like Jesus’ last will and testament to his disciples - 10 important things you need to know before I go. The bit we have today is the promise that the Holy Spirit will be sent to help the disciples. As the teaching unfolds we realise that the Holy Spirit will guide the disciples into all truth, will comfort them, will stand by, defend them and argue their cause (as a legal advocate would), will “parent” the disciples, and will bind the disciples to Jesus and the Father. The Holy Spirit will animate the disciples, making Jesus real to them and he will speak through the disciples, declaring God’s truth. In the reading from Peter’s letter the disciples are always to be ready to give an account of their faith when they are asked “Always be ready to make your defence to anyone who demands from you an account of the hope that is in you”. And in the reading from Acts we see Paul addressing a meeting of the Areopagus - he’s there because the Athenians have caught rumour of him and his teaching and they have invited him to their “ideas forum” - he is being asked to “give an account of the hope that is in him”.
And so, in the power of the Holy Spirit, Paul addresses the Athenians. A difficult crowd, who spend their time discussing the latest ideas. They are an intellectual bunch, but it seems that they don’t readily make the connection between believing and behaving - they are interested in ideas for ideas’ sake, not ideas as a way of living or changing. They are more interested in knowing about God, than knowing God. Paul starts with something he’s noticed in their culture and tries to explain to the Athenians the truth about the God they can’t name but try to worship... Often our challenge is to name Christ when we meet him in other people and strange situations, so what can we learn from Paul’s encounter with the sophisticated Greeks. In some respects Athens 2000 years ago was not dissimilar to the culture we’re living in: it was mixed, cosmopolitan, lots of ideas were in the melting pot, people seemed to select the ideas they liked. The Athenians were very religious people - it might be that they were using their religion as an insurance policy - they had altars to every god they could think of, then (to make extra especially certain) there’s even one to an - as yet - unknown god! It might also be that despite all their religiosity they felt that there was still something missing... whatever it was their religious activities were giving them wasn’t fulfilling or satisfying. What's lacking in modern culture then?
Famously St Augustine highlighted this in his prayer: “Lord you have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you”. Putting it another way he also said “You have put salt in our mouths that we may thirst for you”. Following St Augustine people have talked about each human being as having a “God-shaped hole” in their make up. And because it’s a God-shaped hole only God can fill it and make the person complete. I don’t know whether anyone’s ever said to you “You’re not all there!” (they have to me!!), but maybe that’s another reflection of how we were designed and made to operate in relation to God. So the Athenians had an emergency cover-all insurance plan to make sure they hadn’t inadvertently offended a god they didn’t know about - and yet still that wasn’t giving them the peace they sought. There is debate as to whether Paul’s mission in Athens was successful or not - very few became followers of Jesus, and nowhere else in Acts do we see Paul taking this kind of approach, but then maybe the small following in Athens was par for a place where ideas were the main currency, and where the audience was already sceptical and cynical. To the Greeks the message of the cross is foolishness - as Paul later wrote to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 1.22-24 - where he went next with much more success). Following the manufacturer's instructions...
The new one is a bit more sophisticated than the last, and the instruction booklet with the multiplicity of programmes available is quite bewildering at first. But to get the best out of our new saviour-in-the-kitchen we needed to read and follow the maker’s instructions. When Mr Bosch built the machine he intended it to run on dishwasher powder, or those natty like tablets: not petrol. Or Washing up liquid. Or heating oil. Or lard. Other things run well on petrol, washing up liquid or heating oil, but dishwashers don’t. No doubt you could try running the machine with oil, petrol or lard in it, but you wouldn’t get the best results, and I suspect it might not last the full 4-5 years we were promised. It’s a crude illustration, but human beings were designed to run with God in the God-shaped hole, not to have something else wedged it to make do - there are lots of alternative philosophies and lifestyles which vie for our attention, compete to have pride of place in our thinking and in our lives. The danger facing today's society
We live, we’re told, in a consumerist society. We define ourselves no longer by what we as a nation or an individuals produce, but by what we consume... Choice, rather than progress, is now the watchword of our society. The freedom to choose is seen as an inalienable right... We have all become consumers. Do you live to shop or shop to live? Everything has a price put on it; we know the cost of everything and the value of nothing... Everything is disposable, not repairable. You are supposed to buy a new dishwasher every 4-5 years - it’s actually cheaper than getting the old one repaired... We talk about “retail therapy”. Shop until you drop! There’s an addictive quality to consumerism... may be it’s a desire to have something tangible, maybe its about personal choice, or maybe we get our status from what we have. You don’t just buy a car now: you buy a BMW, or a VW [if only everything in life was as reliable...] or a Peuguot [the ride of your life], you buy shampoo “because you’re worth it”... We’re identified by the products we have because of the IMAGE that goes with them. Look at the adverts - they tell you very little about the products, they tell you that if you buy this product it will make this statement about you: you will be cool, have lots of friends and life will go well with you. Cheap nutritiously questionable junk food? “I’m lovin it!”.... Training shoes made by cheap labour in Indonesia? “Just do it”... And consumers have rights. In fact everything becomes a delegation of responsibility - somebody else is responsible for everything which happens to you. You trip in the street? Sue the Council. (Story about nanny & broken arm). The religion of me, me, me!
Part of the problem is that if we allow - or attempt to cram - consumerism, or a consumerist outlook into the God shaped space, it masks spiritual hunger: it makes it more difficult for us to see our need of God, and indeed to SEE God. God gets ignored in favour of things. Consumerism also breeds disappointment. It has to in order to keep going - otherwise you’d never buy another stereo, or computer, or pair of shoes because you were happy with the one you’ve got already. I wonder if Paul was wandering round the UK today the altar might be to the great god Consumerism? The other great danger with consumerism is that eventually people are reduced to the same level as objects. So relationships are conducted in order to bring me satisfaction. The idea that there is give and take, and that you might have to make sacrifices and compromises along the way, or not always have things all your own way, is becoming more and more rare - less and less tolerated. Just as the idea that you might have to save up until you can afford an item you want seems to have been rejected in favour of the instant fix, have it now pay for it later approach. ...and will the politicians change anything?
The real answer lies in getting our priorities straight - and this is an increasingly difficult activity when the pressures are all around us all the time. 2000 years ago when faced with the similar pressure about food, clothes and the like Jesus said “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be given you as well... where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” [Matthew 6.33 & 21] Feeding the hunger, getting the priorities right
Maybe our job, as people who claim to have the God shaped hole filled by God, is to be aware of the dangers of looking at life and everything without God... It maybe that you know people who are hungry to find peace, love and joy, but they can’t seem to find that. Maybe we feel like that ourselves sometimes. Let’s not make the mistake the Athenians made. Let’s not look for God in the wrong place - if we have a God-shaped space in our lives, the best thing to fill that space is... God!
PRAYER
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Do
you want to know God or just know about Him?
Our
culture often mirrors this: we’re actually very interested in spirituality,
but we’re not that interested in Christianity... we’d rather trust in
horoscopes, or tinker with crystals, or take on some pick and mix version of
bits of religions we’ve heard of, and so marry a bit of Buddhism, with a bit
of popular psychology, with a bit of paganism, and a bit of folklore and
popular sayings, and kind of mould it to fit us - to justify whatever thing
we want to do, or feeling we can identify.
Last week was quite an expensive
one for us... our much depended on dishwasher finally gave up the ghost
after a good 6 year stint of sorting our mess out on a daily basis. After
the requiem and solemn thanksgiving we popped off to Comet to get a
replacement. We were told that these days dishwashers are expected to last
about 4-5 years... “Built in obsolescence” as my mum used to call it...
One of the most dangerous
philosophy which faces us in the UK at the moment, and which is proving
perhaps the greatest and most insidious threat to the Christian faith is...
consumerism.
In a consumerist view of life the
question you ask about Christianity is not “Is it true?” but “Will I like
it?”. Sociologist Alan Starkey wrote: “Consumerism is the chief rival to God
in our culture”
On Wednesday of this week a large
group gathered in the Phoenix Arts Centre for the CTS Election Forum. The
issue of debt came up and some staggering figures were relayed to us about
how much people have spent what they haven’t got. And to be equally fair to
the politician parties, non of them have got the answer to this, and in
reality the boom in consumerism has benefited so many of us that really we
don’t want to challenge the down side of it too much - we’re reluctant to
rock the boat too much in case our material things are taken away - we can
cope with people in debt as long as we don’t have to give up interest free
credit...
The altar to the unknown god
suggested a hunger for the Living God which the Athenians were slow to
recognise, or which they tried to satisfy by looking in the wrong place. I’d
suggest that Consumerism is the outlook of a people hungry for God, but also
trying to find God in the wrong place - in things and objects, rather than
in the Church or in the scriptures or in other people; it suggests a people
who have got their priorities out of order.