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doin' real well

A sermon on Paul's sermon in Athens, of all places

Paul’s missionary endeavors landed him in Athens. Athens, that birthplace of democracy. And hometown of Socrates, to boot. So, with a little time to kill, Paul took a walk around while he waited for his companions to join him. However, all Paul found in that seat of culture and scholarship was a bunch of religion! 

And the worst kind of religion, too! The idolatrous kind. The kind of religion with a lot of talk. A lot of talk that has nothing to say when you’re down and out. The kind of religion that has no teeth! The kind of religion that’s the worst kind of substitute.

Has that ever happened to you? Have you ever got some cheap substitute when you were expecting the real deal? I know when I was out East, I was never pleased when the crab cakes I ordered were made from imitation crab meat instead of the real McCoy.

And, of course, the converse is true, too. Getting the goods when all you were expecting was an approximation has a way of elevating things. Lifting you beyond the confines of your ordinary surroundings!

Which is precisely what Paul is trying to do for the Athenians! Their plight, as far as Paul sees it, is dire. The Athenians’ predicament isn’t just that they’re settling for poor substitutes. It’s that they don’t even know there’s something better out there! So Paul tries broadening their palate.

And he does this the way he always does, by preaching. Paul preaches that sweet menu of grace! He preaches the benefits of God’s love in Christ that sustains life, nourishes the Spirit, and uplifts everything it comes into contact with, too!

But like any toddler unaccustomed to rarified cuisine, the Athenians hold their noses at the offering! They protest this new dish! They demand cut-up hotdogs when Paul’s offering them a somburger with that special mustard and all the fixens, too!

And that’s the rub. Isn’t it? For all their sophistication, the Athenians couldn’t imagine anything better than religion in its most crude form! And neither can we…

They say religion is a death-denial fantasy. And some religion may be. But whatever else Christianity is, it’s most certainly not that. After all, Christ himself sits at the beating heart of Christianity. Christ! Christ, a middle-eastern man, younger than me, put to death by the best of forces humanity has ever concocted, religion and politics!

People like us would never dream up Christianity! A savior who dies?! A savior who summons us to die with him?! A savior who warns that a life lived with no higher goal than preserving one’s own life is the surest way to die without ever having lived?! No, we would never concoct something like that.

Whereas religion is nothing more than a sin and salvation management program, Christianity is of an entirely different order! Christianity is birthed out of Jesus Christ’s death! Christianity is a summons, not merely to imitate Christ’s life, but to find your life hidden in Christ’s death!

Christianity is that always new, first step after the sermon declaring that Christ has taken the futility of religion, and the rest of it too, unto himself! Christianity is what sits on the other side of religion. Christianity is what gets started when religion comes to a screeching halt!

…And as Lutherans, you and I are direct beneficiaries of this. Martin Luther was a man who had been chewed up and spit out by religion. He had worked the system of religion. Really worked it, too. It was no mere lip service Luther paid to the religion of his day. 

When Luther had reason to believe he was on the wrong side of religion, he entered the monastery. And when he found himself taking shortcuts or harboring sins there, he confessed and made amends. So much so that he tired his confessor out! Luther reports that he was told to go and commit a real sin before he dared to come back to the confessional booth!

The trouble, Luther learned, though, was that the more he worked religion, the less religion worked for him! In fact, there was an inverse relationship between his exertion and his relationship with God! The more Luther tried to appease God, the more Luther came to despise God!

Here are Luther’s own words: Though I lived as a monk without reproach, I felt that I was a sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience. I could not believe that he was placated by my satisfaction. I did not love, yes, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners, and secretly, if not blasphemously, certainly murmuring greatly, I was angry with God, and said, "As if, indeed, it is not enough, that miserable sinners, eternally lost through original sin, are crushed by every kind of calamity by the law of the Decalogue, without having God add pain to pain by the gospel and also by the gospel threatening us with his righteousness and wrath!" Thus I raged with a fierce and troubled conscience.

…Would you be surprised to learn, though, that Luther’s not describing when he lost his faith? No! On the contrary, he’s describing when he finally found it! And faith didn’t start for dear old Luther until everything religion peddles proved bankrupt!

And no less is true, proclaims Paul, for the Athenians. And, for that matter, you and me! Faith begins when you and I hit the wall of religion. 

Whereas all religion has to offer is dos and don’ts, Christianity has a savior who willingly steps foot on the wrong side of all those dos and don’ts. A savior who steps out onto the wrong side of all that folderol and gets started right there! 

And then, when we took our rage out on him for such an offense, he simply did the wrong thing all over again! He declared his unmoving forgiveness of sin upon us all once more and all over again!

Christianity isn’t one more thing to add to your to-do list. It’s the end of it! Christianity is what happens when all those obligations out there can’t do anything for you anymore! Christianity is what happens when you can’t do anything for yourself anymore!

Christianity is the always unexpected Good News that when you find yourself on the wrong side of all those dos and don’ts, Christ saddles up right next to you! And he doesn’t tell you how to shape up when he meets you in such dire straights, either. No, that that would be just more religion when what you really need is a savior! 

No, what Christ does when you can’t work religion anymore, is work his salvation upon you! He gives you what creates faith! And he gives it to you right where religion has nothing to offer you anymore!

…There’s no shortage of religion out there. You can even get it out of the church these days. There’s the religion of parenting, politics, career, finance, relevance, beauty, fame, youth, and what have you. In fact, that’s how the idols supposedly worked back in Athens. Turns out the new religion is a lot like the old religion. 

Today, though, Paul storms into our pantheon of idols and shouts the obvious, all our religion isn’t working. And it’s never going to, either. But this is no cause for consternation. On the contrary, it’s cause for great joy! 

Now that you’re at the end of religion, you’re ready for faith to begin! Now that you know Christ offers the goods, you know you can demand the real deal! And Christ, good savior that he is, is more than ready to hand it over, too! 

In a bit, you’ll be invited to this table. And it won’t be mere religion, an imitation of the real thing, you’ll be offered. No, you’ll get the genuine article, Christ himself, his body and his blood! he holds nothing back from you! He gives you the complete fulfillment of religion once and for all. 

And when you receive all that, heaven will come crashing in, too! You have no more need for religion! No, you have the real thing at long last! And with that, the great adventure of faith can finally begin!

I could say plenty more, but that’s just more religion. Isn’t it? And you don’t want more religion. Do you? So let me just say this: Go ahead and take Christ up on this offer! In him, your life is no longer a distraction from faith. It’s the home of it! It’s right where Christ meets you! And gets started on you!

To begin this adventure, there’s nothing to do but get swept up in this miracle Christ is right now working! So let’s get started by doing what the awestruck always do! Let’s sing!