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Today, all that is left of Mars Hill is the hill. There are jagged stones you can walk around and sit on, but that’s it. However, as you walk up, there’s a plaque, in Greek, of the very passage we read from Acts today.
When we got to the Areopagus and before we went up, Bill Wortman, the teacher who went with us on this trip, stopped and went through this passage, explaining it’s meaning as well as it’s religious significance. Bill is a very devout Christian. He was actually the teacher who first taught be Biblical Hebrew. He also taught Latin, Greek, and Philosophy at our school, so he was well equipped to explain this passage with just the Greek plaque of it right in front of him.
A really interesting thing happened as he explained this passage. Our group, of course, was listening. We were more or less a captive audience, and Bill was a good teacher and knew how to keep us captivated. But as we looked around us, we could see other people gathering around, listening to what Bill had to say, not quite unlike the people listening to Paul in his day.
It all goes back to that longing to “search” for God and that “groping”, to use Paul’s words, after Him that Paul speaks of today. Our desire and hope, whether we realize it or not, is to be in relationship with God. As human beings, we search for the truth and what is real, even when that may seem allusive to us. The ultimate truth, as we learned last week, is found in God, in Jesus.
In Acts, we see that desperate search of the Athenians. Though they had a great pantheon of gods covering just about everything you could possibly think of, there was still the sense that there was something more, which is what Paul gives them.
Even though God is beyond anything the Athenians could have imagined as Creator, not a created thing, God is still present and very near to the Athenians as well. Paul even quotes the Greek philosophers to point out such truths as “in Him we live, move, and have our being” and “we too are His offspring.” He uses these truths found in philosophy to help lead the Athenians further than they could have done so before or even on their own.
All of this, though, is not to say the Athenians have been on the right path. They have not, though they have been searching. Paul is there to show them the way and to reveal to them that their search is over. That mystery they were trying to solve is finished, and the hole they were trying to fill has been completed. God as revealed in Jesus Christ is the answer they have been actively searching for their whole lives, which they can now know at the end of the journey.
The same is true for us today. Many are searching for answers and meanings. Sometimes people do so through self-help and pseudo-spirituality. These things can seem to provide answers, just as the Greek Pantheon once did, but in the end there is still a hole to be filled and a mystery to be solved.
Sometimes people make their search for truth through tried and true methods, like that of philosophy, but as we see with Paul, these methods can only help start us on the way. We need Jesus to help bring us through to the end.
All these things are like that inscription to the “unknown god”. They can let us know there is a search, and some of these things can help get us started on the journey, but they can’t show us the rest of the way.
Fortunately thanks to Paul and countless others, we do have the means to reveal the path that leads us all back to God. Just as Paul revealed that path to the Athenians so long ago, we continue to share that path with those around us who care to journey with us.
People will still gather around us today to hear what we have to say because what we have to say is what they have been looking for always. People have always had a question deep inside, and the answer to that question has always been Jesus.