“Why are you doing this?” is the question that Barnabas and Paul shouted as they rushed out into the crowd.  “Why are we doing this?’ or to personalize it, “Why am I doing this?” is the question that I want us to consider today.  Specifically, when it comes to worship.  Everyone worships something or someone.  “You gotta serve somebody” is how Bob Dylan put it during his gospel music era.  It may be the devil or the Lord, but you gotta serve somebody.  Whether we consider the question or not, we are going to be living out the answer.  What or who is the thing that we value above all else.  What or who is the thing that is worthy of our service/love/devotion?

“Whose power is at work in the world?” is another way to put it.  Money?  Aggression?  Acquisition?  Fame?  The crowd in Lystra was getting it wrong.  We who follow Christ can get it wrong, too, in terms of our devotion to Christ.  We talked about single-hearted devotion last week.  We talked about the prayer “Give me eyes to see as you see, Lord.”  In Psalm 86:11, we have this wonderful prayer: “Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth; give me an undivided heart to revere your name.”  That’s a good thing to pray for ourselves.  Let’s come before God in prayer as we look at the story of Paul and Barnabas in Lystra.

Paul and Barnabas are on the first missionary journey recorded in the books of Acts.  Last time we encountered them, they were in Cyprus.  They’ve sailed back to the mainland and spent time in Antioch and Iconium.  They’ve preached at synagogues in both cities.  The word of the Lord (as Luke calls the good news of Jesus) is spreading.  At the same time, trouble arises.  Persecution, mistreatment, attempts on their lives.  In the verse that precedes our text this mornin,g we read, “the apostles learned of it and fled to Lystra and Derbe, cities of Lycaonia, and to the surrounding country; and there they continued proclaiming the good news.” (14:6-7)    

One thing we don’t hear about in Lystra is Paul and Barnabas going to the synagogue.  It’s because there is no synagogue in Lystra.  The good news is being proclaimed here in a place which is largely unfamiliar with God’s story.

What is not unfamiliar is how God’s story is unfolding.  To follow Jesus is to be given a new way to see – a new view of the world.  To follow Jesus is to be given a whole new way of being – a new way of walking.  In Lystra, there was a man sitting who could not use his feet and had never walked, for he had been crippled at birth.  We hear this, and we hear the echoes of Peter and John at the Beautiful Gate.  We hear echoes of Jesus telling a man who is paralyzed, “I say to you, stand up and take up your bed and go to your home.”  The man is listening to Paul.  We have Paul looking intently at him, and again, we have this intent and attentive look that we hear throughout Luke and throughout Acts.  Paul sees that the man has faith to be healed and says in a loud voice, “Stand upright on your feet.”  The man sprang up and began to walk.

And it is so far so good.  Paul’s first public miracle!

The crowd gets excited.  They’re shouting in the Lycaonian language.  Paul and Barnabas have no idea what they’re saying.  They’re seeing this positive reaction and are possibly looking at one another, going, “This spreading the good news thing is going great!  Look at this response to this miracle of God!” 

What Barnabas and Paul don’t know (as they don’t speak Lyconian) is that the crowd is calling Barnabas, Zeus and Paul, Hermes (the messenger god, maybe as Paul was doing most of the talking).  The gods have come down to us in human form!  They had heard about this kind of thing in Lycaonia.  There’s a story written by Ovid about the same area in which two Zeus and Hermes come to earth in human form and look for hospitality in the area.  They’re rebuffed everywhere until they come to the home of an elderly couple.  The couple takes them in and offers them a welcome.  In the ensuing destruction of the area, the couple and their home are spared.  Perhaps the Lycaonians don’t want to make the same mistake.

There’s a temple of Zeus just outside of town.  The priest of Zeus brings oxen and garlands to the gates in order to offer a sacrifice to the two men.  At which point Paul and Barnabas realize what’s going on.  The people of Lystra have mistaken Paul and Barnabas for gods.

Everything had been going along great.  Now we’re at the problem point.  It’s not just a problem for the ancient Lycaonians either.  That question that we asked at the start of all this is still operative.  Who are what are we going to serve?   Who or what are we going to worship?

Every single person is going to worship.  The problem point arises when worship is misdirected.  Misdirected worship is a matter to grieve.  This is what the tearing of clothes meant in the culture of Paul of Barnabas.  They came from a long line of people who tore their clothes to signify grief.  Misdirected worship is a matter to grieve.  Misdirected worship is a matter to be aware of and beware of.  At the same time, we remember God’s grace and mercy, and the power of the Holy Spirit to transform. This story is not just to cause us to shake our heads at the people of Lystra and say, “Oxen and garland!  Can you imagine?”

We don’t need to imagine because it’s all around us.  This is the issue in our story right now.  Worship of the creator is being confused with worship of what the creator has made.  Paul and Barnabas rush into the crowd shouting, and now everyone is shouting, and they need to strain to make their voices heard, and their message is “Friends, why are you doing this?  We are mortals just like you…”

We’ve talked about points of contact before in this series.  Points of contact we have with the wider culture in which we live.  Points of agreement that are common to the human condition in many ways.  We’ve talked about the idea that we have been created to be a part of something larger than ourselves.  The idea that something has gone wrong; that humanity needs help.  The idea that we have been created to worship something.  The message of Paul here is that this worship has been misdirected.  Worship is directed to what has been created rather than the Creator.  It is God our creator, to whom worship, and allegiance, and devotion is proper and fitting.

There are obvious ways in which we get this wrong.  We get religious about professional sports and treasure relics - sticks and jerseys and trophies – and keep them in hushed rooms in venerated halls of fame.  We’re familiar with the celebrity cult.  Screen idols to whom we look for entertainment, distraction, or influence.   I have to say, the more I’m coming to view things through a Kingdom lens, the more bizarre the celebrity-industrial complex or the sports-industrial complex looks.  This is what God is doing in my heart; it’s not me.  I like sports after all.  The point is that question “Why are we doing this?”

We do well to be aware of what would misdirect our worship.  Preparing for today, I read a story of a North American woman working in Nepal.  Travelling along a highway that ran alongside the foot of a mountain.  At one point, the road made a detour, a loop away from the mountain and back.  She was told that at some point in the past, a rock had slid down and come to rest at the foot of the mountain.  The rock was thought to be sacred, and so the road was built around it.  This had become such a fact of life and how life was constructed that it wasn’t even noticed anymore.  The question for us is what are our stones?  The things that we consider sacred to the point where we adjust our lives to accommodate them.  Ourselves?  The acquisition of money?  Family? Education?  Not every idol is in and of itself a bad thing after all.  Patriotism?  Body image?  Perfection?  Beauty?  Reason?  We could go on and on.

Into the midst of this, the voice of Paul rings down through the centuries.   “We bring you good news, that you should turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them.”  Paul turns to what’s called Natural Theology.  There is a witness to God in creation itself.  The people of Lystra didn’t have the witness of the story of God as it was recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures, remember.  This is where Paul starts, because it’s important for us to know the people with whom we’re talking.  He appeals to their experience – which is really the experience of everyone, no matter what we know or believe about God – “the living God who made the heaven and the earth and all that is in them, giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons (God sustaining and providing) and filling you with food and your hearts with joy.”  All these things are from God.  Paul never has the chance in this scene, but if he had, he might have gone on to say how in Christ this same God was reconciling the world to himself.    The good news.  This is the one who is worthy of all our adoration, all our praise, all our love.

Let not our love be misplaced.  A misunderstanding occurs here, which Paul and Barnabas take care to correct.  The crowd wants to worship Paul and Barnabas.  “We are mortals just like you,” Paul tells them.  It’s not about us.  It’s certainly not about me.  Don’t let us distort the good news of Jesus for others by thinking that our righteousness is about ourselves.  For how many has the path to Jesus been made crooked because of the self-righteousness of his followers?  Do not let Christian leaders think that it is primarily about them and the adulation and praise that can go along with being a Christian leader.  It’s not primarily about a human leader.  May every member of every faith community remember that it is not all about us and our personal wants or desires or takes on things or need to be in charge or need to control or however we want to make it all about me and distort the message.  The creep of self-idolatry can even come into our worship together.  When we are sent from worship together, our primary question about our worship should be, “Was this pleasing to God?”  Not primarily “What did I get out of this worship?” or “How did this worship together make me feel?”  Not that we don’t want to be built up together in our worship or do things as well as we can do them.  We make sure our instruments are tuned every Sunday.  More foundationally important are hearts in worship that are in tune with God’s heart.  

Things will go well for us then, yes?  Not necessarily.  We see opposition to the good news throughout Acts.  Opposition coming from within and without.  Here it is from without.  Paul ends up being stoned and dragged out of the city, left for dead.  But when the disciples surround him, he gets up and goes back into the city, from where he’ll leave with Barnabas to Derbe.  As someone has said, “The journey of the Gospel from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth is unstoppable but uncomfortable.”  Amen to that.  It goes on, though, and continues to spread.  May God give us the desire to continue in the rhythms of life which keep us holding fast to him, which keep our worship from getting misdirected.  Rhythms of worship together, gathering around the Lord’s table together, learning together, personal prayer, personally getting into God’s word (and we have the chance this Lenten season with a daily reading if we’re not already doing that).  May God enable us to ever more deeply understand what it means to turn from these worthless things to the living God, and by our words and our deeds to extend that invitation to others.  May these things be true for us all.

Amen