April 17, 2005 Sermon

Demetrius and the gods of Silver
Acts 19:21-41

If you really want to provoke people, threaten their faith and their income at the same time.

We met Demetrius in the passage from Acts we just read. A silversmith, Demetrius led a rich life. He lived in Ephesus , a great port in western Turkey and the home of the Temple of Diana , one of the Seven Wonders of the World . (Demetrius and his fellow Ephesians called it the Temple of Artemis , the Greek name for Diana, the mythological Roman goddess of the moon, love and hunting.)

Centuries before Demetrius lived something rocky fell out of the sky at Ephesus . Scholars believe it may have been a meteorite. This something looked like a woman from the waist up. And we must be honest: this woman in the rock appeared to have several, uh, mammary glands. Somebody (excuse the expression) conceived the idea that this rock came from the gods. Obviously it represented Artemis. Obviously it deserved a place of great honor. Obviously the people of Ephesus needed to build a temple in which to enshrine this gift from the gods.

Obviously, there was money to be made.

The Ephesians erected a magnificent temple in honor of Artemis. Built of silver and carved stone, it became a model of architecture studied in design schools the world over. It also became the hub of a lucrative business. Pilgrims came to Ephesus to worship the object from the heavens in that temple. They needed tiny little silver statues in the shape of the object to lay at its feet. They needed places to stay and food to eat. They needed transportation, medical services, protection from thieves. And they gladly paid for it all. Men like Demetrius made a very nice living off of Artemis.

Then the Christians came along and threatened to end the Artemis business. They worshipped Jesus, not a rock. Paul the Evangelist had come to Ephesus some years before and preached powerfully about Jesus. Many people were baptized in his name. They stopped worshipping other gods, including the rock of Artemis. Paul himself had told the philosophers of Athens that the Most High God did not live in temples made by human hands, nor in images or statues. He repeated himself in Ephesus .

The word got out: these Christians did not support the Temple trade. Demetrius called a meeting of his fellow profiteers. He told them, “Men, you know that we get our wealth from this business…This Paul has persuaded and drawn away a considerable number of people by saying that gods made by human hands are not gods. And there is danger that this trade of ours may come into disrepute.” In other words, Demetrius tells his fellow businessmen, “We had better get rid of Paul and his fellow Christians before they kill our profits!”

Let us not be naïve. This sort of conversation goes on all the time. Where do we worship? What offerings do we purchase to lay at the feet of which gods?

My wife Linda has tremendous scorn for baseball players who “earn” millions of dollars a year. Nobody loves a ballgame more than I, but face it: attending a major league game costs a hundred bucks or more. Figure in the ticket price, food and drink at wildly inflated prices, parking, and for those of us living away from a major league city, restaurants and motels. All so we can scream our heads off in support of men, most of whom do not care about their team’s city or its people.

We left St. Louis in 1990. The football Cardinals, an NFL team, had just left town. The mayor and various local and state politicians moaned and groaned. They claimed that the metropolitan area would lose billions in revenue over the next few years. They passed resolutions in the legislature and worked to lure another team to town. In the end they succeeded—but only by convincing the people to tax themselves billions of dollars in order to build a brand-new domed, indoor stadium on a plot of condemned land they wanted to pave over anyway.

Lonely voices pointed out that most people in the St. Louis metro area would not benefit from bring a new team to town. Why not spend those millions in tax revenue on training young people to get good jobs in high-tech industries? Or why tax themselves at all? In the end, the stadium got built, the team came to town, and three groups profited handsomely: the business people doing their honest work; the politicians, who got reelected because they had done something about the terrible loss of football to the community; and the team’s owners, who got a sweetheart deal on profits from the stadium. Most of the people who paid for it all got nothing.

Let me ask it again: what offerings do we purchase to lay at the feet of which gods?

Let’s talk about another great Temple in modern America : the shopping mall. There we purchase clothing, furniture, eyeglasses, hot tubs, music. Or so we think. Actually, we visit the mall to purchase youth, coolness, reassurance that we fit in to the hip segment of the population. These gods with a small “g” do not really exist. Part of us knows this, but we spend our money on them anyway. And the amount of money we spend on them dwarfs what we throw at ballplayers. American women spent four times more on lipstick in one recent year than our entire population gave to the churches.

What offerings do we purchase to lay at the feet of which gods?

Demetrius and his fellow business-owners called a rally to try to whip up the population into driving the Christians out of town. The rally turned ugly. The people chanted (like sports fans at a big game) and grew violent. An Ephesian official finally stood up and warned the mob that unless they went home their Roman masters might shut them up by force. Had he not done so Demetrius and his buddies might have persuaded them to torture the Christians and to intimidate them into silence.

What offerings do we purchase to lay at the feet of which gods?

The Apostle Paul did not attend this riot. He wanted to, but friends with better judgment kept him away. After all, Demetrius had named Paul to his business associates, saying, “This Paul says that gods made by human hands are not gods at all.”

In fact, Paul had much more to say. What he said tells us which God we need to worship. He met some Christians in Ephesus and asked them whether they had received the Holy Spirit. They had never heard of the Holy Spirit. He baptized them, and they immediately experienced the power of the living God. He then taught them about the Kingdom of God .

We worship the living God. The Holy Spirit is the power of that God working in us. Have you experienced the Holy Spirit? Have you received the gift of faith from the Spirit? The Kingdom of God is Jesus ruling in peace and unconditional love. Do you know the peace and love that come from letting Christ rule in your heart? If sports and shopping and the other gods with a small “g”—false gods who come in forms like rocks—run your life, you need to pray. Pray that the Spirit might go to work on you. Pray that you might worship Jesus, the living God, the Solid Rock.