Today’s post will serve for today and tomorrow, and is written by the Rev. Mark Slaney, of Bamber Bridge Methodist Church and Trinity Methodist Church in the South Ribble Circuit in Lancashire, England.
Track Two Reading for Dec 24 & 25: Acts 17.16-34
Japanese Theologian and Missionary Kosuke Koyama tells of the impressive Swedagon Pagoda Temple atop a hill in Rangoon, Burma (scene of religious and political protest earlier this year). Koyama points out that there are two routes to the Temple. First, there is the tourist route. Tourists step into air conditioned lifts which swiftly raise them the 300 metres to the summit plateau where they step out, walk along air-conditioned glass tunnels and into the temple courtyard where they can take a tour as well as photographs before escaping the heat and humidity back in the tunnels and lift. Then, there is the pilgrim route. The pilgrim path winds and spirals its way right around the mountain, contouring ever higher until after three hours of barefoot walking in the stifling heat and humidity the pilgrim arrives at the plateau and courtyard, exhausted but welcomed to make prayer. One feature of the path is that the pilgrim cannot see the temple itself until almost reaching the top.
Paul was always a Pilgrim, never a tourist, prepared for the heat and hard work of Christian spirituality and mission. In Athens he had some time off, but tourism was the last thing on Paul’s mind. He looked around the city and ended up in the Aeropagus. His time in Athens as recorded for us in Acts 17 offers a great model for incarnational mission today :
v.16 – he looked around the place and understood it.
v.17 – he would discuss it with anyone who’d listen.
v.18-20 – he was prepared to accept the invitation onto another’s territory.
v.21 – he understood these people, they liked to gossip about new ideas.
v.22 – he understood these people, they were very religious.
v.23 – he took an everyday object they all knew to communicate the gospel.
v.24-26 – he reasoned an argument in their own mindset.
v.27 – he offered an end to the search.
v.28 – he quoted their own poets.
v.29 – 31 and a new perspective on what they already knew.
v.32-34 – you win some, you loose some.
What kind of Christian are you going to be – Tourist or Pilgrim?
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