March 6, 2005 Sermon

Ordinary People
Acts 14:8-18

You have just reached the middle of yet another exhausting business sales trip. Every morning you wake up in a motel bed, not sure where you are until after you’ve rubbed your eyes and thought it over. The shower, the toilet, the mug from which you drink your coffee: none of them belong to you. God only knows who used them last.

You get dressed and head out into yet another day of slogging away, trying your wares to sell skeptical, sometimes hostile people. Your competitors dog you, follow you around, tell lies about your product. The helpers your home office sends out (and never often enough) mean well but don’t know the market nearly as well as you do. You get to your appointments early but have to cool your jets until your hosts finally deign to grant you a few moments. You paste a smile on your face, look ‘em straight in the eye, give ‘em a firm handshake, remind yourself that you got what they really need, and you launch into your pitch.

They get that look, that bored, distant look. Your manager calls it the “ME GO Look” (for My Eyes Glaze Over). Or they start shuffling papers. Won’t look at you at all. One of them actually takes a cell phone call. You leave knowing—knowing—you accomplished nothing.

Your itinerary occasionally forces you to travel through dangerous areas. You have to park underground in garages, have to step over drunks on the sidewalk, have to return to motels in strange cities after dark. You have gotten mugged. You become an expert in how to cancel credit cards. You have had to visit the emergency room.

On perhaps one day in ten, after perhaps one sales call in a hundred, the light bulb goes on over the head of one potential client. He sucks in his breath in that unmistakable “Aha! I get it!” way. He can’t wait for you to finish talking so he can place an order. You have sold him. You have sold your product. Your life has meaning again!

Welcome to the world of Paul the Apostle. We just read about an incident that happened to him in the middle of his first great missionary journey. He and his mentor Barnabas have walked from town to town in central Turkey . They have preached about Jesus as the Messiah in synagogues and marketplaces and on street corners. Jewish opponents have followed them around, arguing against their teaching that Jesus is the long-promised Messiah. Paul has been arrested and even stoned.

Paul and Barnabas slog into the town of Lystra and start preaching about Jesus. As Paul preaches he notices one man staring intently at him. Somehow the Holy Spirit communicates to Paul that here is a man with real faith. He has been crippled from birth. Paul does not likely know this, yet he tells him to get up and walk. He does.

Jesus did the same sort of impromptu healing; so did Peter. Those they healed did not always react with the expected joy. This time, however, not only the man but the crowd become overwhelmed by the power they have just witnessed. “The gods have come down to us in the likeness of men!” they shout. Barnabas they call Zeus, the chief of the Greek gods. Paul they call Hermes, the mouthpiece of the gods.

A little history will help us understand the response these crowds give Paul. Lystra is a small city in Lycaonia, a district in central Turkey . A local legend, recorded by the Roman historian Ovid, tells of an aging and pious couple named Philemon and Baucis. Some years (centuries?) earlier myth had it that these two had received Zeus and Hermes into their home, giving them hospitality before learning the true identity of their guests. The Lycaonians had built a temple on the spot of that couple’s home. Priests led worship services there, complete with animal sacrifice.

Now here come two “men”, preaching about a new god, Jesus. One of them performs a miraculous healing. The Lycaonians immediately recall the earlier local visitation by the gods. Here come the priests with oxen all decked out for sacrifice at the temple just outside the city gates. Paul and Barnabas do not speak the local language. It takes them a little while to understand what’s going on. Once they do, they recoil in horror. Paul cries out, “Why are you doing this? We are men, of like nature with you.” Let’s get it straight, he tells them. We are mortal human beings, not gods.

Why do we worship our fellow human beings? We know they do not deserve it. Yet even Michael Jackson has rabid followers. He is on trial, accused of sexual abuse of minor boys. Every morning a fanatical group waits outside the courthouse, yearning for a glimpse of him as he arrives and hustles inside. Their numbers dwindle as the trial goes on, yet a fairly large crowd still screams out its greetings to him each day.

And what of entertainers in general? Clarence Page asked an excellent question in his syndicated column published this past Wednesday: “Can anybody name even one actor from ancient Greece ?” The names of hundreds of ancient Greeks still ring bells today: Socrates, Plato, Aristophanes, Herodotus, Alexander, even Luke, who wrote the Gospel bearing that name and the very book of Acts from which we read this morning: we have heard of these people. And who were they? Politicians, teachers, philosophers, healers, historians. People who matter. People who contribute meaningfully.

But whom do we honor today? Michael Jackson, Martin Sheen, Susan Sarandon, Sean Penn. We eagerly ask for their learned insights into world issues. For some reason we long to know how they feel about the war in Iraq . We care, somehow or another, about their opinions about the Social Security mess. Matt and Katie treat them with more respect than they do the Secretary of State. If you believe the Gallup Poll more people in America today know how Britney Spears feels about the health care crisis than does the Surgeon General. (Can you even name the Surgeon General?)

How exactly do we differ from those ancient Turks who believed Paul and Barnabas were actually Hermes and Zeus? We cannot get away with dismissing them as ignorant pagans. There is plenty of ignorant paganism going around today. They worshipped mythological gods whom they were convinced inhabited human bodies. We worship stars—loosely defined as mythological gods inhabiting human bodies.

There is one God, and God is One. Worship Jesus only. Paul made this point quite clearly. “You should turn from these vain things,” he preaches, “to a living God who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them.”