Fighting the tide of monkeys
This week's scripturetastic lesson is on the book of Acts 14:8-18:
In these verses, God allows Paul and Barnabas to perform a miracle and heal a crippled guy. Nothing gets people talking like something freaky and supernatural. People love telling stories about ghosts, or bigfoot, or the Loch Ness Monster, or even alien abductions. You could listen to a hundred speeches about religion, but the one you're going to talk to people at work about is the one where a guy gets up out of his wheelchair in the middle. With miracles, they're not just different and supernatural, but they point the way to God.
But what happens if you think you already know who God is? The Hellenistic Lycaonians were sure they knew all about God. To them, he was a collection of giant humanoid philanderers and drunks who lived on Mount Olympus and occasionally got trees and various waterfowl pregnant. When Paul spoke out God's miracle during his speech, they didn't think "Oh, what is this? There must be a God, and this guy knows where to find him!" Instead they tried to squeeze it through what they already "knew". "Hmm. Something supernatural. What do I know that is supernatural...Aha! Zeus and Hermes are supernatural. It's them! Have the boys go get the bull out of the shed, and tell cousin Dorothy to start making wreaths quick! It's time for a sacrifice!"
Paul and Barnabas found themselves in a difficult situation. Instead of getting people to worship God, they were worshiping them instead. Luckily Paul and Barnabas weren't the sort of people to put their own glory before God's work, so they risked their lives to set the people straight. But even after they talked at length about how God was God, and they were just two foreign dudes, the people still wanted to sacrifice to them as gods. They barely got them to stop. That's how powerful people's traditions can be to them.
This is the part where I talk about monkeys. I love monkeys. I think they're God's way of making fun of us. They look a bit like us, and they act a bit like us. People act like monkeys when they're thinking on autopilot. Almost no amount of talking or reasoning could shake these Lycaonians out of their delusion that Paul and Barnabas were gods. It's as if they didn't hear a word of what they were saying and just picked and chose stuff they saw to strengthen the ideas they already had. Blah blah two guys blah blah words words miracle blah blah blah God. Monkeys.
In order to see God, we have to fight that part of our nature. It's not just the organized church that clings to traditions and ideas of men, but even people completely outside of it can be trapped. Our secular society has some very strange ideas about God and those who believe in Him. Saul had to be blinded and struck down before he could shake out of those ideas. Other early Christians struggled with different things. Peter was all weird about gentiles. And here were a bunch of people whose best effort at coming to terms with what they saw was to go get some bulls and do some killing. That's us. We're those people who respond to God with our own bull, and maybe some wreaths for good measure.
Pray that we can shake our human nature and inability to cope with new things. The "old garment" Jesus talks about looks just like a bunch of knife-wielding guys with shaggy beards and a very scared cow. We don't want that. We want the new garment that is fresh. Pray that God opens our eyes, and keeps us from missing his message because of what we think we already know.
Paul and Barnabas were a tag-team evangelism team that went around Asia Minor (ancient Turkey) looking for people to talk to about Jesus. Since all of the people of Asia Minor were Hellenistic pagans, actually finding people who hadn't heard of Jesus wasn't the hard part. The problem was the centuries of tradition and culture. Those made it hard for them to see that there could be anything different than what they already knew.
In Lystra there sat a man crippled in his feet, who was lame from birth and had never walked. He listened to Paul as he was speaking. Paul looked directly at him, saw that he had faith to be healed and called out, "Stand up on your feet!" At that, the man jumped up and began to walk.When the crowd saw what Paul had done, they shouted in the Lycaonian language, "The gods have come down to us in human form!" Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul they called Hermes because he was the chief speaker. The priest of Zeus, whose temple was just outside the city, brought bulls and wreaths to the city gates because he and the crowd wanted to offer sacrifices to them.
But when the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard of this, they tore their clothes and rushed out into the crowd, shouting: "Men, why are you doing this? We too are only men, human like you. We are bringing you good news, telling you to turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made heaven and earth and sea and everything in them. In the past, he let all nations go their own way. Yet he has not left himself without testimony: He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy." Even with these words, they had difficulty keeping the crowd from sacrificing to them.
In these verses, God allows Paul and Barnabas to perform a miracle and heal a crippled guy. Nothing gets people talking like something freaky and supernatural. People love telling stories about ghosts, or bigfoot, or the Loch Ness Monster, or even alien abductions. You could listen to a hundred speeches about religion, but the one you're going to talk to people at work about is the one where a guy gets up out of his wheelchair in the middle. With miracles, they're not just different and supernatural, but they point the way to God.
But what happens if you think you already know who God is? The Hellenistic Lycaonians were sure they knew all about God. To them, he was a collection of giant humanoid philanderers and drunks who lived on Mount Olympus and occasionally got trees and various waterfowl pregnant. When Paul spoke out God's miracle during his speech, they didn't think "Oh, what is this? There must be a God, and this guy knows where to find him!" Instead they tried to squeeze it through what they already "knew". "Hmm. Something supernatural. What do I know that is supernatural...Aha! Zeus and Hermes are supernatural. It's them! Have the boys go get the bull out of the shed, and tell cousin Dorothy to start making wreaths quick! It's time for a sacrifice!"
Paul and Barnabas found themselves in a difficult situation. Instead of getting people to worship God, they were worshiping them instead. Luckily Paul and Barnabas weren't the sort of people to put their own glory before God's work, so they risked their lives to set the people straight. But even after they talked at length about how God was God, and they were just two foreign dudes, the people still wanted to sacrifice to them as gods. They barely got them to stop. That's how powerful people's traditions can be to them.
This is the part where I talk about monkeys. I love monkeys. I think they're God's way of making fun of us. They look a bit like us, and they act a bit like us. People act like monkeys when they're thinking on autopilot. Almost no amount of talking or reasoning could shake these Lycaonians out of their delusion that Paul and Barnabas were gods. It's as if they didn't hear a word of what they were saying and just picked and chose stuff they saw to strengthen the ideas they already had. Blah blah two guys blah blah words words miracle blah blah blah God. Monkeys.
In order to see God, we have to fight that part of our nature. It's not just the organized church that clings to traditions and ideas of men, but even people completely outside of it can be trapped. Our secular society has some very strange ideas about God and those who believe in Him. Saul had to be blinded and struck down before he could shake out of those ideas. Other early Christians struggled with different things. Peter was all weird about gentiles. And here were a bunch of people whose best effort at coming to terms with what they saw was to go get some bulls and do some killing. That's us. We're those people who respond to God with our own bull, and maybe some wreaths for good measure.
Pray that we can shake our human nature and inability to cope with new things. The "old garment" Jesus talks about looks just like a bunch of knife-wielding guys with shaggy beards and a very scared cow. We don't want that. We want the new garment that is fresh. Pray that God opens our eyes, and keeps us from missing his message because of what we think we already know.
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