Futility of Idolatry

Acts 17

So a Jews for Jesus evangelist walks into a bar full of Greeks. Of course, you already know that the Jews for Jesus evangelist was the Apostle Paul and that the bar full of Greeks wasn't even a taverna in Athens, but the place for public debate, the Areopagus. But it was too good an opening to pass up.
The Greeks gathered at the Areopagus were a highly educated bunch who loved to discuss and argue theology, philosophy, and politics, which, in their understanding of these terms, was largely one and the same thing. From that perspective, the Athenians were very religious folks,  just like most of the folks here in Dover.
"Wait a second! How can he think that people here in Dover are very religious when such a small percentage come to church, synagogue, mosque, or temple, even on high holidays?" you may be asking yourselves.
Well, Paul said so himself in this morning's lesson, and I agree for the simple reason that both he and I think of religiosity as the behavior of people who believe strongly in something, people who are passionate about what they believe and pour themselves into it, body, mind and soul, people who want to believe strongly in something and therefore ask a lot of critical questions as they seek to find their way into a sustainable and defensible belief system. Seen in that light, you can see how very religious our neighbors truly are. Even the ones who profess a total disbelief in religion of any kind, do so very religiously. They may not be churchy or Christian by any stretch of the imagination, but their religiosity often exceeds that of many who profess an organized religion.
Anyway, in walks Paul and starts talking theology with Nick the Epicurean, Pete the Stoic, George the Platonist, and John the Academic. Epicureans like Nick were materialists who believed that the gods were distant, unintelligible, unreacheable, and that life was about finding pleasure in a modest life through wisdom and curtailing desires. Stoics like Pete believed that the gods were all around us and within us and life was about controlling emotions and developing virtue to guard against destructive behavior and errors in judgment. Platonists and Academics like George and John believed in bits and pieces of what Nick and Pete believed, but they were generally skeptical that there was enough evidence for us to tell whether gods even exist or not, and, if they do, what, if anything, they want from us.
Sounds pretty familiar, doesn't it? The sort of thoughts that pass through our minds from time to time, the very things our non churchy neighbors will say about why they don't like organized religion. On top of this, however, these Greeks mostly fell into one of two categories, what a scholar named N.T. Wright has called "closed agnostics" and "open agnostics." Agnostic means "not knowing" and it most commonly applies to not knowing God, but a person can be agnostic about just about anything. Closed agnostics admitted they didn't know about God, but they brought sacrificial offerings and did their ritual praying anyways, just in case, to cover their bases. Open agnostics also admitted their lack of knowing, but they were open to finding out, open to connecting, hoping to find out and connect, even when nothing seems to be happening. They were, and are, open to the possibility. You can decide which approach you find more rational or irrational.
Still very familiar and plausible, isn't it? This could be us. This is us. Into this taverna walks Paul with his "new teaching," a new teaching being a bad thing in a place that honored tradition, this new teaching about Christ and the Resurrection. Even though they admitted they didn't know about their gods and practices, they still liked what they knew. And Paul cuts right to the quick, then and now, for I would argue that Christ and the Resurrection are as new teachings today in our town full of religious idolatry as Athens was 2000 years ago. Paul wades in on this "unknown god" people worshipped and the ignorance around the religiosity of Athens. By ignorance, he was not being condescending or insulting, merely pointing out the fact that these folks didn't know. They were groping in the dark and they knew they were.
which is the same today with all of us with all our idols. We worship them religiously, as in passionately, as in body and soul, as in devoting our critical intelligence to them, even though we don't know. Actually, that's not true. We do know that our idols cannot deliver what we hope they can, that they are all futile. We it because our gods make us anxious and fearful...why don't they deliver?
Take Aphrodite: youth, sexuality, eros, a common idol throughout human history. She is alive and well in our culture, but we know we're all going to get old and disinterested and ultimately die at some point. And yet, our worship of youth, sexuality and eros is huge. Or how about Fortuna, the god of wealth, success and achievement? Isn't that "the" religion of our culture? We strive, work longer hours, study and network, achieve much, earn more, but we all know that we'll never know when it's enough, let alone that we can't take it with us. Or how about Mars, the god of power and and militarism? Our leaders talk about our country becoming impregnable, totally unassailable, the dominating leader, and that finally, we will be safe. They just have to spy on us and torture and assassinate people. We spend a huge proportion of our nation's wealth on this religion. We get angry when anyone questions this religion. And yet, we know that every war has lead to the next, that power begets rivalry, that nothing can subdue the will of the individual. Just ask the British, the French, the Spanish, the Arabs, the Romans, the Greeks, the Macedonians, the Persians, Medes, Babylonians, Egyptians, or any other society that worshipped this god and now is either very diminished or is a pile of fallen down temples of power.
So a Jews for Jesus evangelist walks into a bar full of Greeks and says, "The joke's on you. All this energy and enthusiasm and devotion is misspent. You say you don't know about God, but I say you can, that God has revealed himself to us in the person in Jesus. We can know what God is like, what God desires from us, and where God is headed with the whole shebang. And what's more, with Jesus' Resurrection, God has set us free from fear of death because we will not end in futility as our devotion our idols does, but also because Jesus' Resurrection is God's first move in the judgment of all creation, the process in which God sets right everything that has gone wrong.
This is why it's called the Good News of Jesus Christ. My friends, just like the Athenians of old, we are  deeply religious and passionately devoted to our gods. The first step towards salvation is recognizing our delusion and the ultimate futility of our ways, and then start allowing God in Jesus Christ to redirect all of our passion towards the very foundation of our being.