May 5, 2002
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church of San Francisco.
By now I have learned that men and women think differently. That’s the reason why the world is seemingly different. Now half of you here (all the women) think that the way you see the world is the right way. You think you are smarter than men! But rather, the different ways men and women think leads us to put the world together differently. For instance, men tend to think in linear progression (first A, then B, next C). Women are more holistic, think things in context, connecting different elements (C, connected to A leads to B).
In other words, when I go out, I would fill up my gas tank in Mill Valley, stop by the Post Office for some stamps, and pick up a carton of milk at the 7-Eleven on the way home. Now Joy would buy the milk at Mollie Stone’s and pick up some bananas to go with the cold cereal. And since she’s there, she would pick up dinner as well and get the stamps at the supermarket checkout.
We have difficulty understanding our world because we are thinking so differently. Perhaps that’s the difficulty we have in thinking about Easter. The world is in the grip of death, yet Christians have seen the defeat of death in Easter.
As a preacher, I want you to come to church and to help you think about God. But it’s not easy. Immediately, as I begin to talk you begin to think—sometimes on things totally different from what I might be saying. You come here with certain convictions about what can and can’t happen, what is expected and reasonable in the world. So I find myself groping for illustrations that would speak to you.
Familiar Situations
When I was in my seminary preaching classes, they told us to always begin where your hearers are. Start off with a relevant story or a funny joke—something that your congregation knows and understands before you attempt to move them toward anything new or unfamiliar.
One of the first things I noticed when I came to San Francisco is how I am so unfamiliar with some of the most important and transforming experiences in your lives. While I grew up in Boston’s black community, many of you grew up in Chinatown, joined the Y, and attended Commodore Stockton School. While I lived most of my life in the East Coast, most you are long-time “Californs.” While I have seen many sunrises over the Atlantic, you have seen mostly sunsets over the Pacific. Sometimes, I find myself groping for illustrations!
The famous preacher Harry Fosdick once said, “People don’t come to church burning to know whatever happened to the biblical Jebusites.” You come to hear a familiar illustration.
You want help with everyday problems. So, I start with everyday illustrations, then to Scripture seeking answers to your modern questions. I try to begin where you are.
But what if the good news is good because it is NEWS; that is, it isn’t something you have come up with but something that has come to you? What if it’s something that you have never experienced yet but you are asked to still trust that it will happen? What if my job is more than simply to come up with answers to your questions, but rather to give you new questions to ask?
What if my job, as preacher, is not simply to help you think about the world in a new way, but rather to show you a new world, thereby to convince you that you don’t know yet how to think?
Paul in Athens
In today’s Scripture Paul has been traveling all over the known world, preaching. He’s had a good bit of success. He was familiar with his surroundings. But can the good news of Jesus make it in an educated town like Athens? Here we have sophisticated thinking people with Ph.Ds.
In Athens, Paul is at the cradle of classical civilization. He looks on the Partheon, the Erycheon, the Apollo Belvedere, and the Elgin Marble, and sees, “a city full of idols.” But frankly, he was not impressed.
So Paul started to argue in the synagogue, then he argues out in the street, down in the marketplace, everywhere he can start an argument with anybody. Some people scoffed him off. Others who were more open-minded said, “He seems to be talking about gods.”
So they brought him to the Areopagus where they had their big philosophical debates, and they ask Paul, “What is this new teaching?” You see, Greeks spent all their day doing nothing but learning about new things.
Paul gets up and like a good preacher begins by flattering his hearers, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way.” (Like the way I said, “Women are smarter than men!”) Paul helps them to see that the unknown god that they worship is the God who made the world and everything in it. Paul is observant and takes the familiar statues of the Greek gods and leads his hearers to understand something new.
Paul tries to relate with the Athenians by saying that we all have come “From one ancestor.” We all have common human origins. Then groping for another illustration, he quotes from a poet, “For we too are this offspring.”
But then he says, “God has overlooked the times of human ignorance” and has fixed a day we shall be judged by a standard higher than that of our own devising. And that God has proved all of this by raising Jesus from the dead.
And with that, Paul’s sermon ended. “When they heard of the resurrection of the dead,” some people scoffed and mocked him. Others found Paul’s teaching so interesting that they wanted to discuss this again sometime.
Not many people were moved or converted on that day except a few including Dionysius and a woman named Damaris.
Once Paul made his points about the resurrection of Jesus and the day of God’s judgment, he lost his hearers. They didn’t have anything familiar to understand what he meant. How can they think about things that have no analogy in their experiences? Paul was groping for an illustration.
Our Thinking Today
In our world today, it’s almost like “We are the center and source of all judgments.” Don’t worry about the Bible, or other people. If it seems right to me than it must be okay. “Who are you to question me?”
In our world today when something dies, it stays that way. How are we ever going to be able to think of God’s victory over death and in the resurrection of Jesus? It’s not in our range of experiences. The defeat of death is another way of thinking that is beyond both men and women’s ways of thinking about the world. We have no analogies or illustrations to help us to understand.
This incident of Paul in Athens is like our experiences today. It’s a story about our thinking after Easter. In your bulletin today, it reads, “Sixth Sunday after Easter.” We put that in there to remind us to think about Easter. We can relate with Easter bunnies and Easter eggs. And even though we have celebrated Easter with the singing of “Alleluias” and “He is risen, indeed!” the victory over death is outside of our understanding.
As a preacher, I want so badly to be heard, to be understood. I want you to understand. But it’s hard to understand when the matter for understanding is Easter.
I, like Paul, try to take you as far as I can down the road toward understanding. I grope for relevant illustrations every Sunday.
But then we get to a point where past experiences and present understandings of the world just breaks down. None of us have experienced the judgment of God or seen the resurrection of Jesus.
We think that we can reason or think hard enough to believe. But reason can only take us so far. After that, faith is required for the rest of the way. Faith is the gift and grace that enables us to go beyond our thinking to believe.
Groping for Repentance
Almost everybody that day when Paul preached in Athens didn’t get it. But some did. Dionysius got it, and a woman named Damaris got it. They came forward to be disciples. Instead of groping for facts and analogies to believe in, they heard about Jesus Christ and what he did for them. They heard about the day on which God will judge the world. They heard about Jesus’ resurrection. And with that they turned from their own ways and repented for their sins to believe. They discovered a new way of seeing the world.
Jesus proclaimed in Mark 1:15, “The time has come; the kingdom of God is upon you; repent, and believe in the gospel.” From repentance our faith grows. By turning to God, we begin to see an entirely different understanding of the world.
Paul said it this way in Romans 12:2, “Adapt yourself no longer to the pattern of this present world; but let your minds be remade and your whole nature thus transformed. Then you will be able to discern the will of God, and to know what is good, acceptable, and perfect.”
When we proclaim the gospel, calling for repentance is at the center of our mission as a church. The first church apostles called people to repentance, baptized them, and shared a common life in prayer and the breaking of bread. We can have a new understanding of the world and begin to identify with the meaning of the day of judgment and the resurrection of Jesus by turning toward God in repentance.
Why do we celebrate the Lord’s Supper today? It is an invitation for you to repent of your sins and to turn to God in thanksgiving for what God has done for you in the gift of Christ.
Perhaps it’s really not that important for me to struggle every week, groping for just the right and relevant illustrations to make my point. When we come willingly and honestly to God seeking his guidance and will for the world, we repent from our sins and are giving the insight of better understanding God.
Paul said in our Scriptures for this morning, “They would search for God, and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us.”
You and I don’t need to grope for illustrations anymore. Perhaps the best illustration is “you.” Like Dionysius and Damaris, you are only a small percentage of the people in the Bay Area. When you come to church every Sunday, you are proof of Easter! The evidence of the resurrection is you. The illustration of God transforming real lives is you.
Faith is not the result of your intellect to solve certain mysteries of life. Faith is not how meaningful my illustrations are. Faith is a gift. It’s God’s grace to you.
Let us pray.
O God, bless us with a repentant heart so that we may come to understand you and your grace in the world. Lead us to trust you with our lives to do your will. And may our word and deeds signify your love for the whole world. In the name of Jesus Christ whose birth, life, ministry, death, and resurrection reveal who you are for us on this sixth Sunday after Easter. Amen.