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Great Hungers Part 3: Wholeness

Sermon by Rev. Doug Pratt — October 14, 2007
 

Introduction
This fall I am presenting to you four messages entitled GREAT HUNGERS OF THE MODERN WORLD, identifying those inner longings that all people have — whether they are conscious of what they’re searching for or not. God our Creator, out of His great love for us human beings, has made available the means to satisfy these needs — which are every bit as much “hungers” as the rumblings we feel in our stomachs when we’re late for a meal. The message of Christ and the new life He offers to everyone not only takes care of our eternal destiny, but also is soul food to satisfy those deep longings.

We’ve been using the New Testament’s “Book of Acts,” the history of the earliest days of the Christian movement, to identify some of these hungers and their fulfillment in Christ. The reason I chose this particular book is that it is, in many ways, the most contemporary and relevant of all the historical books contained within sacred Scripture. Acts was written in the midst of the cosmopolitan world of the first-century Roman Empire. This time was more like our own than any other age described in Scripture — more so even than the ancient Egypt of Joseph and Moses, ancient Israel in its Golden Age of David and Solomon, and Ancient Babylon and Persia as described in Daniel. In many ways Western Civilization required over a millennia to recover the social and technological sophistication of Rome, once it had fallen at the dawn of the “Dark Ages” in the fifth century.

The Rome of the Book of Acts was a highly urbanized world of great cities, of commerce and business and travel. It was a world of well-educated and literate people, with a great flowering of art and literature, science and economics. It was a melting pot world, where people of different races and cultures moved and intermingled and spoke a common language. It was a world of clashing faiths and values, desperately searching for meaning and truth, hungry for the message the followers of Jesus brought to it. It was a world much like our own.

Scripture
Our specific text today is Acts 17. As we lift the curtain we find the brilliant Apostle Paul arriving in the intellectual capital of the world of his day: Athens, the center with the greatest university and the finest scholars. It could also be characterized as the athletic capital, for the great Olympic Games and competitions, along with the training of athletes, were headquartered there. But spiritually we find a city that is bankrupt. Let’s pick up the action in verse 16:

      While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. ¹⁷So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there. ¹⁸A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to dispute with him. Some of them asked, “What is this babbler trying to say?” Others remarked, “He seems to be advocating foreign gods.” They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. ¹⁹Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? ²⁰You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we want to know what they mean.” ²¹(All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.)
      ²²Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. ²³For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.”

Acts 17:16-23

The Athenian Goal
In the Golden Age of the city of Athens there flowered the greatest and highest ideals of the ancient world. The goal of the Athenians, for every man and woman among their citizens, was summed up in the simple phrase, “A sound mind in a sound body.”

The physical and the mental (or intellectual) aspects of life were given equal emphasis. Athenians put a great deal of time and effort into achieving physical perfection, through sports and games and exercise and physical training for their youth in all their schools. It was a concentration on the human body and on maximizing its potential and performance such as the world had never seen. And Athens was also the greatest center of learning and culture of its time. In the university halls were laid the foundations of modern science, mathematics, history, philosophy, poetry and drama. Geniuses like Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Pythagoras burst forth.

When the Apostle Paul arrived in Athens he knew its reputation. And he also knew what it was missing. The Athenians had neglected the spiritual dimension of life in their pursuit of the physical and mental. Whatever religion they practiced meant little more to them than public rituals and celebrations, national holidays on which to give lip service to the supposed gods and goddesses and, above all, a great excuse to party. As John Belushi famously chanted in Animal House: “Toga! Toga!”

The Neglected Third Dimension
What the people of Athens lacked, for all their athletic and intellectual success, was a personal relationship with the living God who created their bodies and minds. And that’s what Paul shares with them in the rest of Acts 17, beyond the part we have read. He opens up to them the third dimension of human life. We are not just a body and a mind. You and I, Paul tells them, also have souls. The Greeks even had a word for this, though they didn’t understand the concept: the word “psyche” from which we get our word “psychology.”

Within the soul dwell the deepest feelings and stirrings that make us human. It is the soul that houses our self-image, whether healthy or distorted. The soul produces our emotions — of love and hate, shame and joy. It’s the soul that allows us to have intimate relationships with one another. It’s the soul that contains our conscience, our sense of right and wrong. And, supremely, it is the soul that longs to know our Creator and have a love relationship with Him.

The Modern World
In many ways I believe that when we look honestly at our current situation, in the modern world of the 21st century, we can see ourselves living in a modern Athens. And many people today are making the same mistake as the Athenians. We put a huge emphasis upon the body and the mind, and yet our society pushes the soul and the spiritual life aside — ignoring it or isolating and confining it to one hour on Sunday mornings.

Think about how this is true for us. Our bodies are frequently temples of our own self-worship: the billions of dollars and millions of person-hours spent on clothing, beauty products, exercise and fitness, and orthopedic and plastic surgeries. Our heroes and celebrities are people with beautiful or athletic young bodies. We use dyes and creams and Botox to look younger. We push our kids into organized team sports at an early age. We have a national obsession with our bodies.

And, along with the body, we worship the powers of the human mind. Our great universities and research labs produce staggering technological breakthroughs. The internet and bookstores and libraries are crammed with more knowledge than existed in the ancient library of Alexandria by a factor of 100. Our scientists probe the mysteries of the atom and the universe, while our artists and writers and filmmakers and musicians blaze new trails. America is the higher-education superpower, as gifted students come to our campuses from around the world.

In comparison, our contemporary society badly neglects the third dimension of life. The spiritual and moral experiences of so many people today lie in ruin. People are confused, unsure, feeling guilt and shame, living in broken and non-functioning families, wondering why they’re unhappy and empty. What we need so badly is to correct this imbalance, as Paul did for the people of Athens. We need to be called back to the third dimension — the life of the spirit.

The Spiritual Hunger for Wholeness
I believe that scripture helps us to identify our inner hunger for Wholeness — a wholeness that encompasses all three aspects of our humanity. Health and completeness in body and mind are good. But what the Athenians were missing was clear to the Apostle: they had neglected to develop a “sound spirit” to accompany their emphasis on the “sound mind and body.”

Their confusion about God is perfectly demonstrated by the pillar Paul found in the center of Athens: “TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.” The Creator and Lord of all, who is also our Father and our Savior and our Eternal Friend, was a mystery, a cipher, an unknown to them. In spite of their great learning, they dwelt in utter ignorance of the eternal and invisible dimension of the soul.

The only way to be spiritually sound, and thus to experience true wholeness, is through a personal relationship with our Creator — so that the “Unknown God” becomes One whom we not only know about, but know personally and intimately. I am convinced that, 2000 years later, the secular world we live in today is just as lost in ignorance of the true God, just as needy and desperate to find true biblical Wholeness.

Our Obsession with Brokenness
The opposite of wholeness is brokenness. And we see such brokenness all around us. We find broken relationships, we find wounded consciences, we see people struggling with sins and addictions and bad patterns and bad choices. I think the story of a recent bestseller is a perfect symptom of what is going on in our needy world of brokenness.

In 2003 a young man named James Frey wrote a book about his life — an alleged “memoir” of his descent into crime and drunkenness and drug abuse and destroyed relationships — that he titled A Million Little Pieces. The book met rave reviews, including an endorsement by Oprah Winfrey herself. Frey became a celebrity, and the book a smash hit. Most reviewers credited its success to its ability to provide “catharsis.” As the author described his own flaws and mistakes, people with their own problems could relate: “Hey, this guy is even more messed up than I am!” What a fitting symbol of our broken lives and confused times, that the details of human sin and misery can be so popular. Then, of course, a couple diligent bloggers did a bit of research and uncovered and published the facts. It turns out that Frey’s biography was more fiction than truth — with wild embellishments. The lies were exposed, Oprah denounced him, and his publisher forced him to write an apology that is now printed in the front of the book, admitting his errors.

My friends, let me make it clear that if you will put down this trashy book of Mr. Frey’s, a litany of sensational brokenness and lies, and pick up this book— the Bible, the all-time bestseller — you will find the path away from brokenness and towards wholeness. That’s what the Gospel of Jesus Christ offers us. It is the world’s most powerful and helpful guide to becoming the complete and healthy men and women our Creator wants us to be. The Lord desires to help us grow from being “a million little pieces” to one big piece, made whole in Christ.

The Way to Wholeness
The first step in the path to wholeness is to turn from lies and embrace the truth. That’s what Paul is doing in Athens in chapter 17: presenting the truth. Those smart and fit and beautiful Greeks will wallow in the spiritual brokenness and never fulfill their inner hunger until they give up the ridiculous lies and myths about all their phony gods and accept the one true God. Turning from the lie and embracing the truth: that’s not only a biblical principle; it has also become the cornerstone of the self-help and counseling and recovery movements of our times. The famous “12 Steps” begin by requiring adherents to quit the lies and delusions and denials and face the truth. That is what’s so ironic about James Frey’s book: he pretends to be telling the story of how he finally dealt successfully with his addictions and sins and demons, and yet his “confessional” is itself a lie! But the Spirit of God, speaking through scripture and through our conscience, always nudges us to face the truth, about ourselves and about God. That’s the only way forward, the first step on the path to Wholeness.

Let me close by zooming ahead to the end of the process. When we allow the Lord to have His way in our lives, and move more and more towards wholeness, what will it ultimately look like? Brokenness and incompleteness is our natural state apart from the Lord. We are all sinful and imperfect. We are like a puzzle with lots of pieces missing, and the overall picture is impossible to make out.

Then, by God’s grace, as we begin to put the pieces together, the picture starts to appear. More and more individual sections come into place. At last we can see the image clearly. And what does a complete Christian man or woman look like?

Our Creator desires that we enjoy the life He has entrusted to us to the maximum. All dimensions and parts of life matter to God. Our bodies are important to Him, because He designed them and gave them to us. Therefore a part of Christian wholeness is to care for these gifts. It’s right to give attention to health and fitness, to attractiveness in appearance and dress, to proper nutrition and medical attention. But our bodies must never be ends in themselves or objects of our worship or devotion. Our minds are also important to God, and He wants us to use them well, to keep stretching and expanding them, to discover and learn all we can. Our personal relationships are important to the Lord — our family lives and our friendships. Our money and the use of our resources are important to the Lord, as are our career and work lives. Our politics and civic life are also important to the Lord. And our emotions and thoughts are important to Him. Every piece of the puzzle needs to be put in its proper place.

But here’s the key to assembling this puzzle of a human life. A relationship with God is central. Having Christ in your heart is not just an additional piece. It’s the cornerstone of the building, it’s the hub of the wheel. Everything is dependent on it. You can have lots of other pieces, but if you don’t have the Lord at the core of your life, nothing else will fit together properly. When Jesus is your Lord, you can work to make the most of every other part of life and it all works correctly. When you ignore Him or push Him out to the fringe, putting your body or your job or your hobbies or your education or any other dimension of life on the altar for worship, you have erected an idol. You are making the same blunder as the people of Athens.

God’s Word appeals to all of us today: know the truth, and allow God to be your God. Honor Him, make Him your highest devotion. As Jesus said: “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and everything else will be given to you” (Matthew 6:33).