You Will Not Survive Athens

"Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked. But others said, We will hear you again about this." (Acts 17:32)

Paul's sermon at the Areopagus is one of the greatest ever preached, and it mostly failed. Say that out loud, because we do not, and because it matters. He read their poets. He quoted their philosophers. He met them exactly where they were and built an argument of astonishing beauty and led it straight to the resurrection. And when he mentioned the resurrection, some laughed. Others said they would hear him again another time, which is what a polite person says when they mean no. And a few believed. Luke names two, which is his way of telling us it was not many.

That is the outcome. That is the whole harvest of one of the finest sermons in history. And Paul does not seem to have counted it a failure, because he got up the next day, went on to Corinth, and did it again.

If your faithfulness depends on your results, you will not survive Athens. You will preach the best you have, exactly as you ought, and some will mock, and some will stall politely, and a few will believe, and if the mocking is allowed to determine whether you go on, you will quit before the harvest that was never yours to measure. Some will laugh. Go anyway. Faithfulness is doing the thing well and leaving the yield to God, and the ones who last are the ones who stopped grading themselves by the size of the response.