Paul is invited to speak to the Areopagus in Athens

Today we hear how Paul adapts his mission of preaching the good news of Jesus to a very different audience. He has arrived in Athens and attracts the interest of the philosophers there who invite him to speak to them in their meeting place, the Areopagus. (Acts 17: 22-18:1). Paul prepares by walking around the city and finds many religious monuments. He also discovers an altar to ''An Unknown God'' and he begins by saying that this is the God that he has come to talk to them about. The true God is not an image made by human hands nor is he confined to a temple they have made. He is the living God who has made the world and everything in it. ''He is not far from any of us for in him we live and move and have our being.'' He then quotes one of their own Greek writers who said, ''We are all his children.'' He then goes on to tell about Jesus and how God witnessed to him by raising him from from the dead. Here he meets opposition from those philosophers who cannot accept the idea of resurrection from the dead. But there are some who accept Paul's teaching and so a group of believers is formed. We too recognize that our living God is everywhere as we pray part of an Aotearoa Blessing, ''O give thanks to our God who is good. Sunrise and sunset, all mountains and valleys, grassland and glacier, mist and snow, Maori and Pakeha, saints and martyrs of the South Pacific, give to our God your thanks and praise.''