| I’ve never been able to resist a good poll! Somewhere between my fascination with the science of statistics and my fascination with what makes people tick I’ve gotten hooked. So just as in the daily newspaper some of us read pretty much cover to cover say, the Arts Section, or the Sports Section, or the Business Section, or the Obituaries, that’s about how intensely I read polls, especially when they’re surveying people’s feelings and attitudes about religion.
Now, when comparing polls of people in the United States with polls of people in other industrialized nations, I’m always totally amazed at how extremely religious we Americans say we are. And of course as one who teaches religion, and preaches religion, and communicates religion on the radio, that pleases me. I mean, in what other major megalopolis in the Western world would you find a three-hour radio program on religion whose Arbitron ratings are up there in the top 5% of all the programs broadcast during its time slot? And “Religion on the Line”-Sunday mornings from 6 to 9 (tune in next week!)-is actually, by far, the #1 rated radio show for all of Sunday morning in one of our city’s boroughs-well, maybe not Manhattan! But you wouldn’t believe how religious Staten Island is! Now, way back in the Roman Empire of the first century A.D., in the days of the apostle Paul, the people of the Greek peninsula thought of themselves not only as the most philosophical folk around but also as the most religious. And among the peoples on the Greek peninsula, the most religious of them all were those in Athens. True, the Golden Age of Athens had been some 500 to 400 years earlier, in the days of Socrates and Plato and Aristotle, of Sophocles and Pericles and Thucydides. So the Athens of the first century A.D. was admittedly well past its prime. But it was still widely regarded as the most intellectual city of its time, and thinkers from far and wide came to it in order both to share and to learn great new ideas. As for religion, according to the reports of travelers, there were more statues of gods standing in Athens than in all the rest of Greece combined. Visitors would joke that in Athens you could meet more gods than people. There were images of Zeus, and Hera, and Aphrodite, of Ares, and Athena, and Hephaestus, of Apollo, and Poseidon, and Hestia-yes, statues, statues, everywhere! Well, we come to this morning’s Second Lesson from the Acts of the Apostles, a book written by the same author as the Gospel of Luke. In the verses immediately preceding our lesson (vss. 16-21), the apostle Paul arrives in Athens to proclaim there for the first time the message of Christ. Inside, in the synagogue of Athens, Paul debates his fellow Jews, arguing that Jesus is the Messiah for whom they’ve long been waiting. Then outside, in Athens’s public square, Paul debates some Gentile philosophers-both Epicureans and Stoics. Now, the Epicureans were, in truth, not what we would call religious. They reasoned from the presence of so much suffering in life that whatever gods there are must be quite remote from the world, living in their own realm of bliss, inaccessible to reason and oblivious to human need and its remedy. So, according to the Epicureans, well-being and peace of mind are attained not by praying or offering sacrifice to the gods but by cultivating the simple pleasures of life. The Stoics were much more religious. They believed in an eternal rational principle stemming from the mind of Zeus and permeating the universe, manifesting itself as “soul.” So happiness and well- being are attained by cultivating first this rational soul and then everything else that can’t be taken away from one’s own control-like the thought-process, and honor, and a sense of duty. So in Athens’s public square, its marketplace, Paul begins to proclaim to these Epicurean and Stoic philosophers the good news made known through Jesus and through God’s raising of Jesus from the dead. Now to these philosophers Paul’s thoughts seem novel and different, if puzzling. Indeed they seem to think he’s speaking of a new pair of gods named “Jesus” and “Resurrection,” the latter being Jesus’s female consort! Intrigued, if confused, they want to hear more. So they lead Paul up the hill rising above the public square, to the Areopagus-a site near the place where Socrates had defended his views centuries earlier, a forum whose rock-cut seats are better-suited to lengthy listening than is standing in the marketplace. Assuming the stance of a Greek orator before a seated audience, Paul speaks, and Jerusalem and Athens meet. Hebrew thought makes contact with Greek thought. Paul skillfully adduces features of Athens’s own culture and builds upon them to lay the groundwork for proclaiming to his listeners the truth that the savior of the world has been born, crucified, and raised from the dead-far across the Mediterranean, to the south-east, in Palestine. Paul begins his speech with sincere praise: “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are.” Among all the divine statues in your city, I even saw one inscribed, “To an unknown god.” Let me tell you about that “unknown god,” whose existence you have intuited but whose attributes you have not identified. Let me tell you about the God made known of old to Israel, the God whose reign has now been brought to earth by Jesus, by a man who has taught us to love each other and empowered us to do so. Let me tell you about this God, who may be unknown to you but who in fact is the Creator of heaven and earth, One who cannot be confined to any image or statue. Paul continues: Long ago, even before Socrates, one of your Greek writers, Epimenides of Crete, spoke of a god in whom “we live and move and have our being.” Then several centuries later, one of your poets, Aratus of Soli, said of Zeus, “we too are his offspring.” Well, these thinkers had the right idea but the wrong god. It is the true God, made known of old to Israel and made known now to us by the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus-it is this God in whom “we live and move and have our being.” And it is this God, the Creator of all, whose offspring we are. You see, Paul is here welcoming Greek philosophy and religion as a valued partner in dialogue about God. Paul is recognizing that Greek thinkers have been searching for God for centuries and have correctly reasoned and intuited many things about God. But Paul now wants to gather up the deep yearnings of this “extremely religious” people. He wants to gather them up in order to point these Athenians to the Risen Christ, for it is through knowledge of Christ that they can come to understand their Creator so much more fully. Anyway, as I said at the outset, I never have been able to resist a good poll! And one thing that polls make crystal clear is this: like ancient Athenians, we Americans are “extremely religious”; and like ancient Athens, America is a meeting ground where many religions make contact with each other and enter into respectful dialogue. To name but a few of our many religions: Christianity (in its Protestant, Catholic, Evangelical, and Orthodox versions), Judaism, Islam, Mormonism, Native American religions, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sikhism. The most recent poll exploring Religious America was conducted just a month ago for the PBS program “Religion And Ethics Newsweekly” and by the magazine U.S. News And World Report. Some things in the poll were not really surprising to me: nearly two-thirds of all us Americans say religion is “very important” in our lives, and some 20% more say it is “somewhat important.” That totals 87%, a statistic that’s held steady for many years. Then, too, only a mere 14% of us Americans say we’ve “never” “experienced God’s presence or a spiritual force that felt very close,” whereas a whopping 46% of us say we’ve had such an experience in our lives not just once, twice, several times, but “many times.” We are an extremely religious people. But what about our attitudes toward other religions. Do contemporary American Christians, like Paul of old, find virtue and/or truth in other religions’ quest for God? And how do we frame the Christian truth-claim in our dialogue with other religions? Well, one-third of all us American Christians say we are “very tolerant” of people of other faiths, and another 48% more say we are “somewhat tolerant.” Combined that’s a huge 81%. It has to be noted, however, that non-Christians register a somewhat different assessment of Christian tolerance. Only 54% of non-Christians think of Christians as being tolerant, whereas 81% of Christians think of ourselves as being tolerant. Still, tolerance is clearly the American Christian ideal. And fully three-fourths of all us Christians affirm the statement that “America’s religious diversity is a source of strength and vitality to individual religious beliefs.” Indeed, 77% of us Christians affirm this statement: “All religions have elements of truth.” So the responses to a follow-up question should not surprise us. We Christians were asked to choose between saying, “Christians have a duty to convert people of other religious faiths to Christianity,” and saying, “Christians have a duty to be tolerant of people of other religious faiths and leave them alone.” Only 24% of us say we’ve a duty to convert others to Christianity, whereas 70% of us say we’ve a duty to be tolerant of persons of other faiths and to leave them alone. Actually, I don't like the choices the poll offered. I wouldn't want to affirm either statement as phrased. Had I been conducting the poll, I would have added a third option, to see how many others of us would affirm the statement that I would want to endorse, rather than either of the two that were given. I would want to mark my “x” next to: “Christians have a duty both to be tolerant of people of other faiths and to engage them in respectful religious dialogue.” I’m with the 77% of Christians who believe that “all religions have elements of truth,” but I also believe, with the apostle Paul, that Christ is the fullest revelation of God the world has ever received. And that’s such good news that I want to discuss it with others, affirming the rich insights into God that other religions have had, allowing those insights to illumine and freshen aspects of my own faith, but still wanting to share with others the treasures of my own Christian religion. And that’s a whole lot of the reason why I’m as devoted to radio ministry and college teaching as I continue to be. For those are places “in the public square” where I can actively practice tolerance of people of other faiths while engaging them in significant religious dialogue, learning from them and also sharing with them. How have I illumined and freshened aspects of my own faith through religious dialogue with others? Well from Jews I have learned what it means for a community of faith to trust in the goodness of God, even in the face of incomprehensible communal suffering at the hands of a raw and demonic evil-like enslavement in ancient Egypt in the days of Moses, like the Holocaust during World War II, and, on a much smaller scale, like 9/11. And from Muslims I have re-learned the value of practicing prayer and the presence of God amidst the routines of daily life. Prompted by Native Americans I have freshened my commitment to an ancient Christian teaching that we humans are called to treasure the natural world created by God, not exploit it. And Buddhists have illumined for me the importance of freeing oneself from the dominance of ego and of harnessing the inner power of mind and awareness. And from Hindus I have learned to emphasize what many Christians have long underemphasized, neglected, forgotten, or even rejected-the truth of the incarnation of God, the truth that God has actually come to live among us. Those are some of the ways I’ve been helped by people of other faiths. Now, in what ways have I sought to help them in return, by sharing some truths about God made known in the figure of Christ? Well, I have sought to share with others our Christian understanding that the incarnation of God in history has been singular and unique and that it took place in the figure of Jesus, who embodied for us not only the perfection of human nature but also everything we’ve been seeking to understand about God’s nature. For as a Christian minister, I believe that Jesus was the human we are all created to be-a human living in perfect harmony with the Creator's will. And I also believe that Jesus reveals to us the true nature of God-creative, transformative, and loving. And as a Christian, I have also sought to share with others the heart of this morning’s First Lesson-the commandment given to humankind by Jesus, the imperative to love one another just as Jesus has loved us. And I have furthermore sought to share with others the confidence and the lack of fear Christians are able to experience in the face of death, because of the promise of eternal life that God has offered to humankind through the resurrection of Jesus. These thoughts are the good news that Paul sought to share with those of other religions in Athens, and they are the good news that I believe we are able to share with those of other religions in America. Tolerance for others, coupled with respectful religious dialogue. It was the right way to be extremely religious in Athens, and it’s the right way for us to be that way today. Let us pray: O God, in whom all of creation lives and moves and has being, all of humankind are Your offspring. Lead us, in company both with other Christians and with persons of different faiths, to ever fuller knowledge both of You and of Your will for us. This we pray in the name of the Risen Christ. Amen. |
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