A Discovery in Corinth

Five of us from our parish spent two weeks in Greece and Turkey on a study tour led by two professors from the seminary which I attended.  We followed in the footsteps of St. Paul, We spent some wonderful time in places familiar to all of us from Scripture, such places as Phillipi, Thessalonica, Berea, Athens, Corinth and Ephesus
 
In addition to seeing and enjoying these great biblical sites, our goal was to understand the world of Paul and explore why he was so successful in sharing the Gospel in a culture so antithetical to his own Judeo-Christian worldview.
 
When talking about Paul’s success, one first needs to affirm that it is God’s Holy Spirit working the hearts of the men that opens them to a new life in Christ.  We also need to acknowledge something that is obvious from St. Paul’s own letters and from St. Luke’s recounting of Paul’s ministry in Acts, that Paul was a very gifted communicator.  A third observation to acknowledge about Paul’s success is that Paul had another remarkable spiritual gift, the gift of perseverance.  Paul had spent years and sacrificed much establishing and maturing the churches in these places we visited. 
 
But there is one additional facet to Paul’s evangelical success that was brought into sharp focus through my visiting and studying the places Paul visited.  The gentile world of Paul was ready to hear Paul’s message.  It was the right time, what Paul calls in Galatians 4:4 the “fullness of time.”  The Greco-Roman world was a society desperately needing God to speak hope and purpose into their lives.  It was the right time for God to move decisively in human history and in the human heart. 
 
To better understand this, one can look at the daily lives of the people populating the great urban centers in which Paul preached.  The people of Paul’s time had very little upon which to pin meaning, purpose and hope. The pantheon of gods as the Greeks perceived them were capricious, and the pagan religions and philosophies of the time could not provide answers to life.  The chasm between heaven and earth, divine and human, was seemingly un-bridgeable.  This reality was manifested in the fact that, in the Greco-Roman world, morality was largely disconnected from religion.  God’s precious gift of sexuality was unbounded and extraordinarily abused.  People were filled with a sense of being on their own in an unpredictable world, with no hope of escape. Happiness and fulfillment were however one could obtain it. 
 
Along comes Paul.  The Good News he bears is that God is knowable, but more than that, God can be known intimately and personally.  Although Paul in 1 Cor. 13:12 says that for now we can only see his face as in a “glass dimly,” God has unambiguously revealed Himself to us and spoken purpose, direction and meaning into our lives.  This “God-Speak” is the sacred and inspired Word of Hebrew Scripture, the Hebrews being the people chosen by God to be the bearers of this self-revelation of God.  More than that, Paul tells them that  God so loved the world that He stepped into creation and lived among us. It is this steadfast, unchanging, sacrificial love that is the true character of God. 
 

Unlike the gods of the Pantheon, we now can know what to expect of God and what God expects of us.   Paul’s Judeo-Christian message re-connects morality and faith.  Forgiveness, redemption and hope are accessible.  The chasm between God and man is bridged, not by what we have done, but by what God has done.   And finally, we have the blessed assurance of all these things because God now dwells in us, the blessed Holy Spirit.
 
Now, to my personal discovery in Corinth… As I stood among the archeological ruins of this once great city  where Paul lived, worked and preached, and with this picture of Paul’s world and his message flooding my mind, it came to me with great clarity that our post-Christian culture of today is not very different from Paul’s world.  The void culture leaves in the human heart is the same.  The church’s message and calling is the same.  Be assured that the Holy Spirit is out in front of us preparing the human heart as surely He was doing so in Paul’s day. 
 

Paul’s mission field therefore sounds much like our mission field.  We can thus learn at least three ways Paul’s ministry can be a model for ours:

 

1.      First, we need Paul’s perseverance.  In places like Ephesus and Corinth, Paul lived and worked for years among the people, serving them, representing Christ to them, and presenting a different way to live according the rule of God.  We as Christians in the long line of Christians since Paul’s time are called to persevere in being Christ’s ambassadors to this broken and hurting world.

2.      Secondly, we need Paul’s steadfast love and compassion for those who have not yet heard the Good News of what God has done for us through Christ. Paul exhibited a sacrificial and self-giving love that can only be acquired by being “in Christ,” as Paul was fond of saying..  Paul was often beaten, driven out of town, or worse; yet, he would dust himself off and forge ahead for the Kingdom of God, motivated by God’s kind of love for a people he didn’t even know.

3.      Finally, like the communities that grew up in the wake of the Apostle Paul, Holy Trinity needs to be a port in the storm, a hospital for sinners and a haven for those who are beat up and trodden down by this world.  Paul established house churches in places like Corinth, Ephesus and Thessalonica.  These places were ruled by “principalities and powers” of this world, as Paul phrased it.  Paul, however, offered a new way of living and a safe place from the material and spiritual ravages of their world.  We too are to be a beacon in the darkness. We too are to be an outpost of the Kingdom of God offering a new life based on a new relationship to be found in the person and work of Christ.

Following in the footsteps of Paul for these two weeks in Greece and Turkey have deeply enriched my faith and ministry, but in an even more significant way, we are all called to follow in the footsteps of Paul.