What is Your Giraffe?

This is the sermon i delivered to the church i am serving currently. To give you some context, it is a 90-member small, old, rural United Methodist Church. It's north of Richmond in Studley (Mechanicsville suburb).

What is Your Giraffe?

Acts 17:22-31 (NRSV)

²²Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. ²³For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’

What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. ²⁴The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, ²⁵nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.

²⁶From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, ²⁷so that they would search for God and perhaps reach for him and find him— though indeed he is not far from each one of us.

²⁸For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we too are his offspring.’ ²⁹Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. ³⁰While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, ³¹because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”

What is your Giraffe?

I spent my first summer of college working as a counselor at a small Christian camp in the mountains of North Carolina. It was an overnight camp for kids ages six to sixteen. Each group of kids was assigned one male counselor and one female. We had the kids from Sunday till Friday afternoon, so for 24 hours a day, those six days, especially to the little ones, we were mommy and daddy. We loved those little kids… most of them. And they loved us… most of the time.

We swam, we hiked, we ate hot dogs over campfires. We sang and danced and played games all day long. We had a Bible study each day and time for arts and craft. One week, I had a little girl in my seven year old crew. She was a little home sick and clingy and spent the week not more than five feet from me, rarely letting me out of eyesight. She picked out a wooden kitchen spoon at craft time the first day and spent the week painting it. After a few days, she’d finished painting the big spoon entirely in bright… simple… plain yellow, several coats thick. She came over and presented it to me. “It’s a giraffe,” she said beaming. I thanked her and put it in my backpack. It’s still there. Five years later, and I still get people in my classes who ask me “What is that?” “A giraffe.”

How do you show someone you love them? What is your giraffe? When you’re seven years old, maybe you give your camp counselor a bright yellow spoon. When you’re eleven, maybe you clean your room before mom even asks. When you’re sixteen, maybe you ask that special one to prom. When you’re twenty-one, maybe you stay up all night with the friend who can’t believe she’s been dumped or the one who can’t believe he didn’t get that job he was sure he was going to get. When you’re thirty, maybe you make dinner for your friend who has been going through physical therapy after the accident. When you’re forty, maybe you get off work to go see your own seven year old perform in the school play. We’ve all done these things. What is your giraffe?

What if it’s someone you barely like? What if it’s someone you barely know?

“You can’t reach someone, you don’t love.” My mother told me this when I was very young and repeated it many times. She is a life-long grade school teacher. She, too, likes giraffes. I know she believed that, and I know she lives it. I also know she prays for those kids she teaches and loves them very much. She wouldn’t be the teacher she is, if she didn’t.

“You can’t reach someone, you don’t love.” To understand Paul here in the Areopagus, you have to understand Paul’s ministry. Paul uses the word “love” one hundred twenty times and “brother” one hundred and twenty-nine in his letters to the people of the early Church. He loves these people. Paul has his very harsh moments, but he always speaks in love.

When I was in college, there was a gathering place in front of the student union. It was where the center of campus life was, our Areopagus. Frequently, usually in warmer sunny weather, a man named Gary Birdsong, or the Pit Preacher, made appearances. His favorite topics were the various reasons that we as college students were headed for a fiery eternity. He loved to preach from Paul and explain to us in loud rants why all the girls shouldn’t be wearing pants or talking in public, why all of the Jews and Muslims had no hope, and why those of us boys with long hair were confusing the natural order. Apparently Jesus, Paul, and all those apostles had crew cuts (my minister and I both have them) to avoid being mistaken for women. I was always sorry for Gary. He has no giraffe.

Paul does not storm in and say, “Oh, Athenians, you fools and heathens, it’s straight to the lake of fire for you!”

“Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way.” For Paul, a Jew, and for these people, this is a high compliment. Paul doesn’t think he’s better than these Athenians.

“From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth.” Paul says to these people he barely knows, “you are my brothers and my sisters. I will speak to you as if you are my own blood. I will treat you as I would have you treat me. For if I speak to you out of love, my words may reach you.” Paul wants to reach these people where they are. This is Paul’s giraffe.

“Love is patient, love is kind.” Does this sound familiar? This is Paul. Paul speaks patiently in kindness to those gathered here in the Aeropagus. How do we speak to our brothers and sisters in the places we trod?

“He allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live.” Why? “So that they would search for God and perhaps reach for him and find him.”

God has placed each of us where we are, in our families, in our lives, in our jobs, in our schools, in our churches, in this very country. Why? So that we can help each other find God. Can you reach the people in your life that God has surrounded you with? You can’t reach someone you don’t love.

What will it take? I’m fairly sure that a bright yellow spoon is not the best way to show your coworker or your bank teller that you love them. Maybe it is, I of course don’t know the people in your life. But do you?

If you do, you already know how to show them you love them. You have a giraffe for those people, those places. You can’t share your faith, you can’t share your story with someone who doesn’t believe that you sincerely love and care about them. You wouldn’t hang up on someone calling to offer you a job or telling you that you won the lottery. You would probably hang up on a telemarketer. It’s much easier to ignore someone who has his own interests at heart than someone who has your interests at heart.

How then can we be like Paul? How can we reach our neighbors, how can we reach for God and find him with our brothers and sisters? If we reach people by loving them, then reaching people is impossible until we show people we love them.

Paul speaks to the Athenians just like an Athenian. He uses their language, he uses their lingo, and he uses his understanding of their culture. He even quotes their own poets. The familiar, this is Paul’s giraffe for the Athenians. Paul could not have reached them if he had spoken over their heads or used the familiar Jewish terms. He could not have reached them any other way. He used the familiar. He cared enough about them to meet them where they were.

Today, Psalm 66 was read in the King James Version some of you may have heard growing up, familiar. You heard John 14 in the newer Message version. This language may sound more like what you use to talk to your friends and family in everyday life. The Message version was written by Eugene Peterson. He is the friend and colleague of my Greek professor and one of the leading pastors in new church plants in the United States. Like Martin Luther, he believes that the best way to reach someone is to care about their needs, and one of those needs is being able to understand God’s word. You may not consider yourself a Biblical expert, but you come and hear the word read and preached on each week and many of you attend Sunday school classes. You know enough to explain many things to your children, your parents, your co-workers and fellow students.

Every relationship you have with someone is an opportunity for Christ to be there. Always ask yourself, “Do I love this person? Do they know it?” You can’t reach them, if either answer is “No.” People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. You have to find a way to show people. If you spend enough time listening to the needs of everyone God has put in your life, you’ll be able to show each of them that you love them.

If that doesn’t work, you can always try… a giraffe.