When in Greece

When in Greece, do as Paul. Our trip to Greece was an amazing adventure that enabled me to see the region Paul traveled. It was educational to be sure, but it was inspirational even more so. I left Greece, and in the intervening weeks, I have had the opportunity to reflect on my experience in conversations with others and in preparation for this paper. The effects of this journey stretch nearly as vastly as the travels of Paul, from personal moments of spirituality to opportunities of ministry in service of a local congregation.

I’ve never been to Israel or Greece or Turkey, so understanding the world of the Bible has always been purely theoretical—book knowledge. Perhaps the biggest impression with which I left Greece was finally gaining a tangible sense of a piece of the biblical world. No longer will I conjure up textbook pictures of Greece when I imagine Paul journeying from Thessalonica to Beroea; now I will remember the topography, the trees and grasses and snow that we witnessed on our modernized reenactment.

I also find the maps of ancient Greece, the ones of the so-called “missionary journeys” of Paul, to be much more intelligible after my own geographical experience. Reading through Acts, I find a wonderful narrative, but the cities, tedious upon reading, jump out to me now. I don’t find the cities to be tongue-twisters preventing me from sailing through the text that much more quickly; now, the city names assault me with memories of ruins and roads and mountains and twists and turns that deepen my engagement in the narrative. When I read about the Civil War, about the battles, the story is gripping on its own—the details of what happened, the stakes of the war. But because I know many of the cities and several of the battle sites, I’m able to conceive the story that much more clearly. I’ve been to Vicksburg, MS. I’ve seen the fortress there. I’ve been through Savannah, GA and seen what that city looks like. I know how far it is from the home of Jefferson Davis in Biloxi, MS to Richmond, VA. I know how long it takes to go by car or plane, so I can envision how devastatingly exhausting it would be to march on foot, in uniform, with weapons, the long and treacherous journey to battle in Virginia. Likewise, the journeys of Paul as recorded in Acts, at least in the middle chapters, are that much more alive to me after my trip to Greece. I know how far it is to go from the region of Beroea to Athens. I know that doing so in a bus with 44 others is probably more fun than walking the Via Ignatia next to my donkey for a couple of weeks. I know that while I was concentrating on motion sickness, only two rows from Dramamine, Paul and any of his companions would be two days from any help if they had gotten sick.

And they did all of this traveling without GPS or tour guides. Tychicus and Timothy and Luke and Barnabas and Silas would all know their way around the region. Maybe they would ask for directions or have locals take them or have the equivalent of maps in their day, but either way, they had to get to these places. I take that for granted! I assume it was simply one town over to get from Philippi to Athens or Corinth or whatever order they are listed in according to Luke in Acts. I have a hard time remembering which highways to take to get to my own mother’s house in Mississippi from Waco. Paul traversed the whole of Greece and Asia Minor as if it were nothing! And his letter-carriers too! Paul writes a letter to the Philippians, and someone has to get it to Philippi. My modern mind is blown away by ancient means of travel. They walked, they didn’t have maps, and they didn’t have rest stops or Starbucks or McDonald’s.

On top of the nearly unfathomable reality of their means of travel, I realized on our trip that weather was every bit as much a factor as anything else for them. It was chilly and rainy our first few days in Turkey and Greece. Many of us grumbled, but Dr. Still reminded us that our mode of transport was entirely dissimilar to that of Paul in his day. If it was cold and rainy—something I never considered a possibility (as if rain hadn’t been invented yet)—Paul would have to trudge through it. Tychicus would have to traverse mountains to reach destinations, plod through snow and ice and start fires to keep himself warm as he slept exposed in the night. All for the sake of the gospel. I want to preach the gospel when it’s convenient. When it’s easy. When it makes sense. Paul, though I knew this anecdotally from the Scriptures, did whatever it took, wherever it was necessary, whenever he was called, to share the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I knew he’d been stoned and shipwrecked and mocked and heckled and abused. I knew he was executed. But those are all grand examples of a Christian life well lived. In our modern Christianity, those are the glorified consequences of preaching the gospel. To me, those have always been taken for granted, nearly like Jesus on the cross becomes a numbed story, sapped of its power because of its habitual retellings. But something about the weather really tuned me in to Paul’s commitment. Again, maybe it was because I was doggedly determined to avoid getting carsick in the rain, circling mountains, on a bus full of people that I realized the commitment I had to this trip. I didn’t care to get sick, but if I did, I was bound and determined not to let it ruin my experience. And then the snow and the rain and the cold all conspired with Vertigo, a plot to bring me to the point of indifference. And it dawned on me: Paul might not have experienced motion sickness as he’d be walking this journey, but he sure would experience exhaustion and dehydration and blisters and cramps and wild animals and hunger and cliffs of mountains and thieves and doubts and disappointment and fear. I realized that just as I had hours to myself to think on the bus, or to sleep, Paul would have days and weeks to himself, to think and maybe not to sleep much.

In America I don’t deal in persecution and suffering much. My currency is convenience. Suffering seems noble and worth experiencing on behalf of the gospel because I see heroism in movies all day long without ever being confronted by it in reality. Give me something inconvenient though, and I fold like the dinner tables I hate putting away every month for my church’s love feast. The inconvenience of Paul’s journeying, the weather, the elements, the miserable conditions of hot or cold, speak more loudly to me in some ways, than Paul’s suffering and persecution. And it’s something I never would have realized had it not been for my own personal trek to Greece. Paul was decidedly pro-gospel, no matter what the cost to himself. I don’t even like going to church if I’m tired, Paul traveled the mountains of Greece while he was tired, just to retell the same numbed story I’ve heard and retold time and again.

What does Paul have that I don’t? Why does he have a motivation to retell a story that grows redundant to me so quickly and often? How do I keep the tragic, mysterious, wonderful scandal of the cross fresh in my own life, so that it won’t hinder me from sharing it with everyone else?

Other than Meteora in its breathtaking inspiration, Delphi was the most contemplative stop on our trip for me. The mountains were majestic, and yet the mountain immediately behind the city, made me think how easy it would be to find Apollo a temptation to believe in. The temple stood right in front of this mountain, and it was all so immense. How reverential and sacred it must have been to have that mountain towering above the temple of your god. How easy then, would it have been, to believe the pythia and Oracle. How much sense must it have made to believe that this was indeed how religion was supposed to look; the scene was just so incredible. The reputation of the Oracle in the minds of the people makes sense to me. And it also makes sense why speaking in tongues or prophecy would be highly esteemed spiritual gifts to the Christians of Corinth. Well of course they would want to speak in tongues, that’s what was popular and well respected! Perhaps it’s not that dissimilar to a church wanting to grow in stature in the community by being more “hip” or “cooler” or appealing more to the desires of the secular and less out of a response to the sacred.

I looked out over the valley, a canyon that grew hazy with the distance. I wondered how many houses littered that region in Delphi’s prime. I wondered what it would be like to wake up with a view of the temple under that imposing mountain, knowing that was where you worshipped your god. I wondered what it would be like to be the last family to leave Delphi after the city’s life came to an end, to look back on memories of a city that bustled with energy and then fizzled, and what that meant for that last family’s spiritual journey. Did they lose faith? Did they shift faiths? Would the faith of Paul be a temptation for them as their faith may have been for me had I lived in their period, in their city? And what is it about nature, about a mountain and a valley and a temple smack dab in the middle of it all that brings me to a point of reverence so contrary to what I experience every Sunday at my own temple? Why can a location bring out of me what I should hold in my heart? What is it about my faith, or American/Western faith, that has me less reverent and more indulgent, focused less on the sacred and more and more on the secular?

History always sucks me in. For over a week I was re-living, re-treading old Grecian sites. Monuments reduced to rubble and memories now paved under roads of asphalt and streetlights. 2,000 year-old conversations still hung in the wind around places I walked, their owners once dancing the streets that are now ancient history. Rocks that were just rocks before Christ, are monuments to Time and History and Mystery now. A ruined city. A buried treasure.

I imagined those who first excavated sites like Philippi. Being the first, I’d feel the city rumbling to life. The newest hints of light, the newest glimmer of hope. Like the Colosseum, neglected for centuries until it was rediscovered in the middle ages, what else is still hidden in the depths of Time? The amphitheater at Philippi was my favorite. I wanted to stay all day. I hoped that if I sat long enough, concentrated hard enough, listened closely enough, maybe I could still hear the faint bustling of the anxious crowd on its way to their seats. The distant clanging of actors reenacting fight scenes. The thunderous cheers for their favorites. I found myself lost in entertainment, one last hoorah for the ancient arena. I spoke at a level a little above an inside voice, right from the center of the “stage” in the amphitheater. The acoustics were stunning; my voice reverberated around the stage area as my classmates moved on to the next ruin.

I wondered what else laid beneath the hills of Philippi, what else laid in wait, praying to be found. I wanted to wander the ruins, the hillside, hoping to embrace the exhilaration of ending its loneliness. I never strayed too far from the tour-guide, but I never doubted I could handle the city’s enticing echoes to go play, to explore, to find adventure.

In Philippi, in Corinth, in Athens, I could hear the ancient cities breathing back to life. The commotion of the marketplaces, the cries from the prison, the cheers from the amphitheater. And in some faint corner of the agora, I almost caught the sense that Paul’s transformational words were still dancing in the wind. Indeed, what a worshipful moment it was when Dr. Still read for us Paul’s speech on Mars Hill while we were gathered on Mars Hill. Paul, Timothy, any number of historic figures tread the rocks on which we stood, and here I was, a part of that history. My faith is a descendant of moments like Paul experienced and we reenacted on that mound. Paul’s faith was real and inspirational and authentic. Is mine? Is my faith such that people will hear the truth of my news, the joy and hope of the gospel? Will my dedication to the cause, in spite of persecution or suffering or inconvenience, be such that lives are changed? Could I live such a life of devotion and humility that my words, that my journey, that my very steps would be retraced in an effort to connect with the divine? The history always sucks me in. I so quickly find myself deep in the recesses of History's mind, indulging mysteries and memories so easily forgotten. Can I make my faith the same? Can I indulge the mystery and memory of my Savior that I so easily forget? Can I make that known to my friends and family and congregation? Can I make it practical for the church body in which I serve? Can I live a Pauline faith of devotion and inconvenience transformation? I still have a lot to reflect upon. As my journey to Greece ends, my reflection begins, and so too the application to ministry and spiritual nourishment.