Someone once wrote that almost all religion begins with a simple encounter; with something that feels ‘holy’ or ‘transcendent.’[1] This statement is all the clearer and truer when it is applied to our encounter with the Lord. For a simple encounter, say around a bush that does not burn, or a tomb that once held a body that is no longer present, becomes ‘holy’ and ‘transcendent’ because of the revelation that accompanies it. The encounter becomes ‘holy’ because we can hear our name whispered in that moment of revelation.
The Apostle Paul had one of those encounters himself on the Road to Damascus and his encounter changed the entire arch of his life and his work for the Lord. While he started his journey on one mission, the revelation of God changed his story and his direction.
The arch of his story moved from accusatory, and it became evangelistic. When we encounter the Lord, our stories also shift from one perspective towards another. Today we will consider this how this change takes place.
Our text from Acts 17 is divided into two halves. The first half is Paul’s observation and conversation with the people. The second is Paul’s reflection on how they are living. But in both sections of the text, the revelation of God is at work, and it informs how the Apostle engages with God’s people.
Move 1- Idols
Notice that as Paul stands before the people, the first thing that he does involves a very important choice.
In chapter 17, Paul was sent, alone, to Athens. While Silas and Timothy remained in Berea. In this day, Athens contained a significant Jewish population, as verse 16 tells us, and previously Paul has reasoned and debated with them—too little… if any end. So as our text begins, Paul is doing the work of the gospel alone. And he notices something. . .
Well, we all have, and we all elevate them, whether we like it or not, Idols. The Athenians had them as well. The Hebrews in the city, those folks that Paul has argued and reasoned with in the previous section, they knew it and they dealt with this also.
These idols are everywhere.
They are in our pockets right now. In purses. In our homes. And I am not just talking about cellphones or some other form of technology that distracts you from the Lord. That’s the easy example or target that everyone accepts. Idols are everywhere.
On the streets of Athens, a cultural center of a polytheistic society, even if God’s church was present to some degree, these idols held a prominent place. In this city a person could find anything that they wanted to worship. The pantheon of gods was present and waiting for supplicants to come and offer worship… and so was this extra altar. The altar to the unknown god.
The idols of Athens were everywhere.
Back here in our day, we too have idols.
We watch them on TV, and we elevate them regularly rooting as hard as we can for their success in different arenas of performance. Music. Sports. Politics. Cinema. Artwork.
Thomas Merton taught the church that we should avoid an idol that many people forget, self-idolatry… placing ourselves above others. Idols can be bluntly-present before us and they can be sly, sneaky little things. Like the streets of Athens with its altars calling passers-by to come and worship here and there, in our day we have just as many opportunities to worship things other than the one true God who is ‘holy’ and ‘transcendent.’
For as back as Exodus, God has told his people to avoid idols, to get rid of them, and yet, since that very day as Moses taught the people, since we were told that our God is a jealous God, humanity has struggled with the elevation of idols into a place where God alone should occupy in our hearts and lives.
We are not that different from the people of Athens—in practice.
Knowing this, as the Apostle Paul walked around the city of Athens, and gathered in front of the Areopagus, he has a choice to make. Much like we do when the people of our community, and the families in our neighborhoods, demonstrate that their religious encounters are not always centered on God, we can judge, we can criticize, or we can try the response and make the choice that Paul did that day in Athens.
This does not mean that Paul was comfortable witnessing the people worship gods besides the one, true, Holy, God that you and I love and commit our lives to each day. Rather Paul hearing from the Lord in his heart, he did something different. He saw something different with his spiritual eyes.
He saw a people who were looking for their shepherd; people searching for the ‘holy,’ ‘transcendent,’ God that we love, and he labelled their practice in the second half of our text. But he could only do this because he himself made a decision on his own.
Move 2- the decision
While we do not know exactly how long Paul was in this city or how long he walked through it before Luke wrote these words down for us, we do understand his posture.
He deliberately and penetratingly gazed at the things that he saw in the city. This was a practice of spiritual discernment that Paul was engaging in, and while we might be tempted to insert some level or sense of judgement by the Apostle for things that he saw, Paul’s word choice, does not support this conclusion.
Paul was engaged in a deep cultural exegesis or examination of what he was seeing. Likely having to stop, or at the very least slow down, before these altars, Paul looked upon them slowly, deliberately, with attentive observation while suspending the judgement that we so often see and practice.
At every stop on his journey in Athens, before every altar, Paul had to make a choice to do this. And in the same moment, Paul would have to suspect his feelings of judgement that would be creeping into his mind that would have been easy to offer up about a people who do not worship our God.
One archeologist found that there were more objects of idolatrous worship in this city than there were people living in Athens. Yet Paul did not condemn these people. But he also did not praise them for their choice.
Instead, he just observed. He watched. And he learned. While he could have judged them, much like we might, Paul did not.
As he learned about their worship of something that is not ‘holy’ or ‘transcendent,’ the Spirit of the Lord gave him a message that he could teach to the people of Athens. That message comes in the second half of the text today and it is illustrated in verses 26-27.
Move 3- groping toward God.
The high point of the seeking of the people of Athens, and even if they do not know they are seeking directly for God, comes in verse 27, where we read:
“So that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him.”
That’s a strange word isn’t it…grope for him. To understand the word, let’s go back into the history of Easter and see where else famously the word occurred. And we find another more poignant example with our dear, hesitant, friend from Luke 24, Thomas.
In that verse, Jesus is speaking his disciples, and specifically he addresses Thomas. He says to Thomas, “See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see.”[2] The word ‘touch me’ is the same as ‘grope for him.’ It is one of the three places in God’s word where it is used, and it means to deliberately handle or to reach out to God. Not casually. Not accidently. But to, by our choice, reach out to God.
And this is what Paul says the Athenians are attempting to do by the building of this altar to an unknown God. Reaching out to God. Even if they do not know they are doing this at the time, they, like Thomas in Luke following the resurrection, Paul wonders if these people in Athen are reaching out, by the work of the Holy Spirit in their lives.
This is a strong word of evangelism to a people who might just be feeling the nudge of the Holy Spirit on their lives and in their hearts. Perhaps God’s seed of faith had been planted in them from a message that they heard from a different preacher. Perhaps the rumors of Paul’s teaching or the very gospel had spread to these people before Paul stepped foot in Athens. We will not know.
And perhaps the altar to an unknown god is just a ‘hedging of the bets’ by a people who will worship any god that a person can create.
But you cannot tell me that in your life, the Holy Spirit has not broken into a place where the miracle was thought to be long dead and buried and in a simple moment of encounter, God broke in. In a simple word from God, an evangelistic word, God showed up and transformation occurred.
None of this would have been possible if Paul was closed off from being with the people and watching them, without judgment, to see where God could be at work. If he was so fixed on judging them and criticizing them and labelling them as only idolaters and could not see that God was attempting to break into their lives, then Paul could not preach a message of hope to a people who needed to find and receive that hope.
Conclusion
So, I wonder, could God be asking each of us to pay attention, loving attention, the people who he places before us?
We might see their practices, their choice, and like the Athenians we could see only idolatry and sin. It is possible to look out and see that at every turn. But it is also possible to see God moving and working all around us. But only by taking time, dwelling with people, will we also find the room to evangelize and share how God is at work. For the evidence is there. Will we share it?
DM
[1] https://danutm.wordpress.com/2013/04/18/richard-rohr-idolatry-is-the-only-sin/ accessed on May 5, 2026.
[2] Luke 24:39 ESV.
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