Sunday Sermon - 10th of May
Particularly Universal - William Gibson
On the front of your order of service you will see a piece of art. It’s called Pentecost by the Thai artist Sawai Chinnawong. Sawai had grown up inspired by the Buddhist artists he had seen painting in temples, and he went on to study art in Bangkok. During his studies he converted to Christianity and ended up going on to study theology in Chiang Mai in the North of Thailand. Upon his conversion he began to tell the Christian story in this distinctly Thai style, using the same techniques he saw the Buddhist artists using.
When asked about his work he said this “I believe Jesus Christ is present in every culture, and I have chosen to celebrate his presence in our lives through Thai traditional cultural forms. My belief is that Jesus did not choose just one people to hear his Word but chose to make his home in every human heart. And just as his Word may be spoken in every language, so the visual message can be shared in the beauty of the many styles of artistry around the world.”
I first encountered Sawai’s work while in Chiang Mai last year for the world communion of reformed Churches general council. I find myself continually coming back to his artwork because I find it to be such a moving example of the ways in which the good news of Jesus expresses something universal and cosmic in scope in the language and imagery of the particular.
One of the most moving moments in Chiang Mai was when all of the delegates were sent out to visit different Churches in the area. I was sent with a small group to this rural church about an hour outside of Chiang Mai just down the road from this massive Buddhist temple complex. There were only 2 or 3 members who could speak English and yet we were able to communicate without words.
Whether it was the elderly man who greeted me and placed a necklace of Jasmine flowers around my neck with a smile, the young boy who looked no older than 10 who sat on the drum kit to help lead us in worship, or the women who brought us outside after the service and without a single word of English made known to us the love and hospitality of God in Christ as they laid out on the table the most incredible meal. I found myself welling up with emotion and this real tangible sense of the presence of God in our midst. As we left, the minister, one of the few people who could speak English in the church, made clear that if we ever returned to Thailand that we had a family there, a home.
In our reading from the book of Acts today I see the same attitude in Paul as I see in the work of Sawai and the welcome of Nong Buoa Sam Church. Paul stood in Athens at the Areopagus, the place where the supreme council of Athens would gather, eventually becoming a court dealing with homicide and religious offences. In Greek mythology it was here that the war god ares was put on trial by the other gods for the murder of Poseidon’s son. It is here that Paul enters stage right after debating with some philosophers from two different branches of Greek philosophy, the epicureans and the stoics.
Paul looking for a point of contact with the Greek culture through which to bring the good news of Jesus doesn’t start with the beautiful architecture, sculptures or mosaics, he didn’t start with the polytheistic myths and cults of the gods on Mount Olympus, or with the stories of redemptive suffering like the tragedies of Sophocles or Homer, or the philosophers like Socrates and Plato, instead Paul finds his point of contact between Christianity and the Athenian world in the altar to an unknown God.
He goes on to say that this unknown God is the God he is talking about. The God that made the heavens and the earth an idea familiar to the followers of Plato in the crowd, this God is the one who cannot be confined to human temples, the one who is the source of our very breath. This God is not far from each one of us, a common Stoic belief. He quotes the Greek Philosopher Posidonius when he describes this God as “the one in whom we live and move and have our being” and a Stoic philosopher Aratus when he says that “we are God’s offspring”.
I am sure that at this point they were probably all nodding their head. Paul seems to be describing the Logos, the divine wisdom and word behind the universe, the transcendent reality which humanity reaches for but can never fully grasp. But then Paul comes in and goes from this universal big picture idea of God to the particular. He rejects the images made up in the imagination of mortals that fill the city, calls the people listening to repent, and focuses in on the man who has been raised from the dead.
A man who lived at the edge of the Roman empire in the land of Palestine, from the family of a tradesman, who was a Jew, and was put to death on a Roman cross. Paul is claiming that this universal God that goes beyond all language and all culture is somehow at the same time connected to this individual man. Jesus Christ.
How did the Athenians respond? Well a few of them believed but most of them scoffed. They turned their nose up at this God man, this universally particular God. This God that Paul proclaimed was one who did not sit distantly among the pantheon of Greek gods, this God was not an abstract philosophical idea, this God was active in history and seen most clearly in the crucified and risen Christ. As well as being the God who goes beyond human words and the sustainer and source of the universe.
I like the way that John Mark McMillan puts it in one of his songs called the road the rocks and the weeds when he says “Aphrodite would not weep, nor Zeus would suffer for the weak, but have you come to stand inside my pain. And all the things I’ve begged you for eternity and evermore are hidden with me here beneath the rain”.
This passage raises all sorts of questions for us especially about Christianity’s relationship to culture. Theologian Richard Neibuhr describes five different ways that we could view this relationship between Christianity and culture but I am going to focus on two today:
- First, the Christ of culture. This is when Christianity is absorbed into the culture and in some ways becomes its own religion or ideology. We might describe MAGA as this type of Christianity. The language and symbols of Christianity are draped in the American flag, baptised in coca cola, and we end up with the God bless the USA Bible which you can get for the low price of $59.99. But this is also true whenever Christianity comes to be used to unquestioningly justify any political or cultural project.
- Second, is Christ as the transformer of culture. In this view culture is both under God’s judgement and under God’s rule. Those parts of culture that are ruled by death, sin, and violence are transformed by Christ through resurrection and the love of God. The parts of culture that are beautiful and good and true are not erased but included in Christ’s Kingdom.
It is this last view that I think Paul is most closely aligned with in Acts. He is taking the good and the true and the beautiful aspects of Greek and Roman culture and using it to point beyond the culture to the ultimate good found in the God revealed in Jesus Christ.
This is an approach that I think we need to learn from. Recognising that Christ is already working in cultures and places, in art and music and poetry and people that we don’t immediately think of as “Christian”. But maybe we only fail to recognise Christ at work in these places and people because in the West for a long time the Christ of culture has been dominant and not Christ the transformer of culture.
We have had the Christ that was exported through colonialism and slavery, the Christ that attended Church for social status and as a networking opportunity, the white skinned, blue eyed, fair haired Christ that has been kicking and screaming as the remnants of Christendom have crumbled.
Not going down without a fight there are those today who continue to support this Christ. As a mascot for British values, as one who insists that this is a Christian country while the poor suffer and the stranger is demonised instead of welcomed, as one who is on our side but not on theirs. This Christ of culture will point to the vague idea of Judeo-Christian values while shouting stop the boats. This Christ is like the idols made by human hands that Paul encountered in Athens.
We would do well to turn our attention instead towards the God in whom we live and move and have our being. The one who destroys our idols. The creator of heaven and earth, who made all people. Who cannot be confined to a singular language, culture, or people group. And who also comes to us as a poor man crucified as a criminal and raised from death to set us free from the demonic forces which continually push us further and further away from the particularly universal truth of the Christian faith. That God is love.
Jesus in the gospel reading from John today promises his followers another advocate, who will be with us forever. The Holy Spirit, who the disciples anticipated and waited for ahead of Pentecost. This spirit pours out God’s love into our hearts, producing within us the fruit of love towards others, and transforms us into the image of Christ who was sent because God so loved the world.
What we will see in the next few weeks as we come to Pentecost, the celebration of the coming of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the Church, is that God does not erase our cultures or distinctive identities but transforms them. We see when the disciples receive the Holy spirit, that they begin to spontaneously speak in different languages so that every person who heard them could hear their own native tongue. Yet at the same time amongst the many voices there was one message, the love of God revealed to us in Christ and the call for us to turn our lives around and participate in the work of God that brings about forgiveness and reconciliation.
It is this participation in the life and work of God that Jesus promises in the gospel of John when he says that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. This participation looks like obeying the commands of Christ, to love our enemy, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the prisoner, welcome the stranger. To not hide our light but let it shine, to turn the other cheek, and to love God and neighbour.
The measuring stick which we use to determine whether a particular expression of Christianity is true or not is not the measuring stick of a particular cultural expression such as the dominant White American or European expressions. The measuring stick is whether or not we have come to love God and our neighbour more as a result of knowing Christ. Do we bear the fruit of having received the Holy Spirit. This is why despite Christ’s historical context as a 1st century Palestinian Jew it is not wrong to depict Christ as having many faces. This is why in art we see depictions of Christ as African, Asian, Pasifika, European, middle Eastern, and Latino.
As Paul says God made all people to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live. This is the particular cultural contexts we find ourselves in. And at the same time this God revealed in Jesus Christ is the unknown God at Athens that goes beyond words and cultures and who has been given the authority to judge the world by the measure of love.
It is the particularity and universality of Christianity that allows for Sawai Chinnawong to depict the biblical stories in the style of Buddhist artists, or George Bandele to do the same in the style of traditional Yoruba West African wood carving, or for theologian James Cone to juxtapose the cross of Christ with the lynching tress of the United States.
It also allows for a rural Thai church to welcome a group of strangers from all over the world and to tell them that they have a home and a family there, and for Christians in the UK to cast down the idol of the Christ of culture found in the rhetoric of the far right, or for a community of Christians living and worshipping in the West End of Glasgow in 2026 to be a place for all to belong, for all to encounter the transforming power of the love of God revealed in Christ, and to live out that love in practical ways in our community.
So if we have limited the work of Christ to our particular experience of Christianity in the Church of Scotland or the United Kingdom, may we repent. If we find ourselves guilty of claiming Christ for us but not for them, may we repent. If we have failed to love God and neighbour, may we repent. And let us wait upon the Holy spirit who transforms and challenges us, forming us every day to be more and more like Christ.
Amen.
Before we go on to sing our next hymn here are 3 ways that you could respond to the sermon today:
- Throughout the week this week spend time looking at and reflecting on the art of Sawai Chinnawong or another artist from a non-western culture.
- Donate to or volunteer at a local charity like refuweegee who are working to help refugees and make them welcome in Glasgow.
Spend time in prayer this week and simply ask that the Holy Spirit will work in your life to make you more like Christ. Start with that spoken invitation and then spend at least 5 minutes in silence waiting for God.