Because
of a Table
Caleb Campbell grew up in church, but as a teenager he became resentful toward Christianity. At the time, he understood the gospel primarily as a negative message, a list of don’ts: “Don’t do these bad things, or else God will punish you.” But Caleb noticed that many people who went to church were also doing things on the don’ts list: smoking, drinking, dancing, R-rated movies. In his adolescent mind, Caleb decided Christianity was a farce and its followers hypocrites.
One night at a party in high school, a group of tough-looking guys invited Caleb to join them: “Hey bro, come here. Have a beer.” Caleb felt “a thrill at being seen and chosen and eagerly took up their offer.” These guys were neo-Nazis, and before long Caleb had shaved his head and joined their crew, happy to be accepted without a purity test, happy to have found what seemed like real camaraderie. Of course, some other stuff came with the territory: getting into bar fights, heckling interracial couples, proclaiming white supremacist propaganda. But for a while, it felt worth it to Caleb. It felt like a family.
In his 20s, however, Caleb saw cracks in the surface of this happy community. “As I surveyed my skinhead peers,” he says, “I saw they had no real joy, financial stability, or actual strength. Instead, they were running from the law, ruining their careers, and destroying their families.” Disenchanted, Caleb gradually drifted from them and found himself in a lonely place once again.
Today, Caleb is a pastor. He remembers with awe and wonder what changed everything for him. A church had seen his information in the local classifieds for musicians (Caleb was a drummer) and had called to ask if he’d help out with their music. He did for a little while, figuring even if he didn’t believe in Christianity or the church, it was something good to do. But eventually one of the guys on the music team, Seth, invited him over for dinner. And then again the next week. And the next. “No agenda, no pressure,” Caleb recalls. “Just warm hospitality.” Finally, when Caleb was ready to talk, Seth asked him about his anger with Christianity. The floodgates opened. Caleb had so much resentment that it all came tumbling out. Rather than argue with him, Seth simply nodded and agreed. He said, “I share some of your concerns. I think Jesus does too.” Over time, Caleb came to hear a different gospel than he had before. Not the fearful old story of a punishing judge, but the genuinely good news of a God whose unconditional love was changing everything. Caleb’s heart softened, and he became a follower of Christ.
And not, he insists, because of an argument or a debate. But because of a table.[1]
From
Contempt to Compassion
16 While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was deeply distressed to see that the city was full of idols. 17 So he argued in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and also in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there. 18 Also some Epicurean and Stoic philosophers debated with him. Some said, “What does this babbler want to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign divinities.” (This was because he was telling the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.)
Remember how Paul (previously named “Saul”) used to treat with contempt the people with whom he disagreed? How he “breathed threats and murder” against those Christ-following heretics (Acts 9:1)?
We see a completely different person today. The translation we have, which includes words like “argued” and “debated,” can be a little misleading. The Greek words themselves can also simply mean “discuss” or “converse”—one of the Greek words, symballo, literally means something like “to throw back and forth,” suggesting that the dialogue is a friendly game of conversational catch.
What’s most revealing to me is what Paul says in these games of conversational catch. “He was telling the good news about Jesus and the resurrection” (Acts 17:18). That is a far cry from “threats and murder” (Acts 9:1). Paul’s transformation in Christ—“it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” he writes in one of his letters (Gal 2:20)—this transformation manifests in a dramatic change of attitude. Toward those with whom he does not see eye to eye, Paul no longer shows contempt. He shows compassion. He no longer breathes curses against them, but blessing.
He desires that they hear the good news of God’s love.
“It
Sounds Rather Strange to Us”
19 So they took him and brought him to the Areopagus and asked him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20 It sounds rather strange to us, so we would like to know what it means.” 21 Now all the Athenians and the foreigners living there would spend their time in nothing but telling or hearing something new.
What do you think sounded “rather strange” to the Athenians?
I imagine the idea of a crucified God struck them as rather strange. In a letter to the Corinthians, Paul himself acknowledges that the crucified God seems like weakness and foolishness to the world (cf. 1 Cor 1).
The Greek tradition is no stranger to the idea of the divine. Greek mythology is full of gods and goddesses. But they behave very differently than the crucified God. They frequently act like petulant children, impulsive and prideful, putting themselves first and giving little thought to the consequences of their actions. What we learn from the Greek pantheon of gods and goddesses, is not unlike what we learn from our popular culture today. Greek mythology teaches lessons like: it’s a dog-eat-dog world. Better to strike than be struck. Better to be feared than loved. If you want peace, get ready for war.
So yeah, when Paul starts proclaiming the good news about a crucified God, whose compassion for the world is so great that he endures death rather than to inflict it on a single soul—I imagine his audience are scratching their heads.
Paul
Believes in the Athenians
22 Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. 23 For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as
unknown, this I proclaim to you. 24 The God
who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth,
does not live in shrines made by human hands, 25 nor is he served by human
hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life
and breath and all things.
Remember how at the start of today’s scripture, Paul was “deeply distressed” by all the idols he saw around him. On top of that, his audience shows perplexion toward his message, referring to it as “strange.” I imagine that the old Paul (which is to say, “Saul”) would have reacted with bitter accusations and denunciations, telling these idol-worshipping Athenians they were godless and destined for God’s wrath.
But this new Paul, transformed by Christ, begins instead with an affirmation, with words that might even be construed as praise: “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way” (Acts 17:22). Some readers think that Paul is cunningly employing a rhetorical strategy. He’s buttering them up, ingratiating himself to them, only so he can pull them more persuasively to his side in just a moment.
But what if his words are no strategy? What if they are genuine? To me, Paul’s affirmation of the Athenians’ religiosity is a beautiful expression of love. Remember how Paul writes about love in his letter to the Corinthians: “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Cor 13:7)? Well, here we see Paul believing in the Athenians. Put more colloquially, he’s giving them “the benefit of the doubt.” He believes that they are faithful, even if maybe they have misplaced their faith a little bit. (Paul, after all, is no stranger to misplaced faith, as we might recall from his earlier days as a zealous persecutor of Christ-followers.)
All this to say, Paul builds a bridge between himself and his audience. “We are both people of faith,” he seems to say, before going on—“Let me share a little more about mine.” And then he shares his faith in the one God who created all things.
Pointing
to the God Already There
26 From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, 27 so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. 28 For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said,
‘For
we too are his offspring.’
For me, today’s scripture provides a model for how we as Christ-followers might relate to our surrounding culture. Tragically, the prevailing model today seems to be what is known as “the culture wars,” where the idea is that Christianity is losing ground in our culture and must fight back to preserve its dominance in society. Hence the legal struggles and legislative battles and bitter debate, as Christians seek the force of law to impose their way again on society.
But what we see in Paul is not a denunciation of the surrounding culture nor an argument against its misguidedness, but rather the spirit of a companion who begins by affirming the truth he sees. Paul quotes twice here from Greek tradition, both times to shore up his assertion that God is indeed near.
Paul’s response to culture is neither fight nor flight. Instead it is a patient discernment of where God already is already at work in the culture. Paul points out how God is already present. Paul does not presume to bring God to the Athenians. He has already been at pains to emphasize the misguided idea of idols: no one can hold or handle God. Paul’s role is not to introduce the Athenians to God, but to point out where and how they are already acquainted with God—and to invite them deeper into that relationship.
I can’t help but think here of how Caleb was graciously welcomed into the church. How the friend who hosted him for dinner week after week did not try to change his mind or correct his thinking, but rather how he affirmed the truth of Caleb’s experience and suggested that Christ was already with Caleb in this experience. Perhaps Christ was also disappointed with the superficiality and hypocrisy that Caleb saw in much of the church. Perhaps Christ also wanted something more than that. At that dinner table, Caleb discovered Christ was already with him—and it changed his life.
For the
Salvation of the World
29 Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. 30 While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31 because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”
It is difficult to read this passage and not immediately imagine a scene of punitive judgment. It is difficult to read this passage and not envisage Caleb’s childhood picture of Christianity, namely “Do what’s right, or God will punish you.”
But I am convinced this is a case of our domesticating scripture according to our own ways. I think that this picture of punitive judgment is one that we humans, who are prone to judge and condemn, have superimposed on scripture. We have made God in our own image. In the gospel of John, Jesus insists, “I came not to judge the world, but to save the world” (John 12:47), and “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:17). In other words, when the world is “judged in righteousness” by Jesus, it is not for the condemnation of the world but for its salvation.
The Greek word for judgment (krino) refers literally to a process of discrimination or discernment, a process of determining what is good and bad, of keeping what is good and letting go of what is bad. Christ is judge not as a punisher but as the criterion that shows us what is good and what is bad. The strangeness of Christ (whose vulnerable way of love seems weak and foolish) surprises us: what we thought was bad is good. What we thought was weakness is strength. What we thought was losing is winning. As Caleb discovered in his transformation from neo-Nazi to follower of Christ, it is not power and fear that bring life, but patience and compassion. It is not fistfights and force that bring life, but a table and hospitality.
So when Paul calls his audience to repent, it is not with a threat hanging over their head, but with a promise that pulls them forward. He is not breathing “threats and murder” as he did in his earlier life, but “good news.” And the good news? It’s “rather strange.” A crucified God whose forgiveness covers the sins of the world and brings life from death. A crucified God who comes not with contempt but with compassion, not with condemnation but as a companion. A crucified God whose kingdom gains ground on this world not on a battlefield, but at a table.
Prayer
Christ of the cross,Christ of the empty tomb,
Who is near to each of us,
Whether we know it or not
…
Grant us eyes to see
Your strange spirit
At work in our world,
And hearts hospitable
To others,
That we might affirm your presence with them already
And share the good news of your love.
Amen.
[1] This story comes from
Caleb Campbell, “The Gospel Comes for a Neo-Nazi,” https://www.christianitytoday.com/2025/05/gospel-neo-nazi-skinhead-christian-nationalism-pastor/,
accessed April 27, 2026.
No comments:
Post a Comment