First Sunday

Today marks the first of three Sundays that we are spending in Athens. The timing is perfect. We welcomed the students on Friday evening, and yesterday put them (and us) through a bit of a wringer. An orientation meeting in the morning was followed by a hike up the highest hill in Athens; yesterday late afternoon we climbed onto a coach bus and headed to the ancient theater of Epidaurus.

The trip deserves a post of its own: we drove along the winding Greek coastline for the first time since

Road to Epidaurus

arriving, and I got a sense for how things could have worked for defensible city-states in ancient times:  the inland terrain was unsympathetically harsh and would leave regions separated from one another and almost inaccessible: but for the sea. We drove on modern roads built through tunnels and through deep cuts into rock and the earth. Not that those sorts of roads would have been beyond the ancient Greeks to build-- had they wanted to be accessible, I am convinced there would have been a flat, smooth highway running all 'round.

Because we were able to see some of their architectural prowess at the theater in Epidaurus--built out of massive stones in the 3-4th centuries BC, the outdoor amphitheater has nearly perfect acoustics. The limestone seats amplify high-frequency sounds--such as the actor's voices and the musical instruments--while muffling the low-frequency sounds (such as the like crowd noises).  Were you sitting at any spot in the theater, you could hear (unamplified) a match struck onstage. I had been very much looking forward to seeing Euripides' The Trojan Women performed in this theater.

As the play began, though, it was clear that it was going to be a slog. The actors sang, spoke and shouted--and we could hear every syllable, every trill of a flute. But they didn't move around much. There was no real "action" to follow. This heavy reliance on the spoken word coupled with our collective ignorance of Greek meant that the story was even more inaccessible to us than the Greek villages were to one another by land. When the collective sighs or laughter of the audience followed the story, we were shut outside.

The Romans added the second level of seats

This morning came early (we got back from the play past 2am; the children stayed behind with Maddie-the-hero). Part of my course asks students
to find a local congregation to worship with while in each city. We found ours a few minutes' walk from our apartment: First Evangelical Greek Church ("services simultaneously broadcast in English"). Minutes went by and we had our transmitter headphones on but no translation; I tried to follow what was going on even as I dreaded keeping the kids still and quiet when they could not follow the service at all. I despaired of a worship service that was a repeat of the play the night before.

However, even though we couldn't understand the words of the call to worship, invocation, prayers and scripture reading, the music and the very pattern of worship were making the Lord's service accessible to us in ways that had been prevented the night before by the missing action of the play. There were two sets of hymnals; one each in Greek and English. So I stumbled through the timing of singing words to familiar tunes alongside other people singing them in a Greek. When the sermon began, Behold! there was a visiting pastor preaching in English with a live translator into Greek. After the sermon, I switched to stumbling through the Greek words as we sang, feeling ever more united to the fellow Christ-followers in the room. And as we sang the very last hymn, Margaret started dancing--unprompted--just as she does during the closing song of the service at home. She also found the service accessible.

Carmen, Charlie and William chatted after the service with a girl Carmen's age who moved here from the States a year ago Thursday.

We were able to worship across language and distance, and found the Holy Spirit and Christ's church accessible, after all. And I was reminded of this from Ephesians 2:17-22:

"And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit."

And so, it was amazing to hear the Greek play in the theater at Epidaurus under the ancient stars just down the road from Ancient Corinth: but I am sensible of how much more astounding it is that we could share in worship and be welcomed and at home as aliens. As we sang this morning, "Αλληλούια!" (Alleluia!)

Arrival in Athens

After nearly 13 months of planning and preparation, we have arrived in Greece to begin our semester abroad. It is hard to believe that we are here; yet I have been poring over photos, itineraries, maps and plans for so long that it also seems almost normal.

When we first begin talking about the possibility of leading Europe Semester 2013, we were strongly attracted to the theme of pilgrimage and exploring what it means to be resident aliens. Now I am getting ready to teach my course on Christian Pilgrimage; and featured prominently on my syllabus is the quote from Martin Luther (on the upper right of the blog). So it's probably no surprise that as I thought about blogging the experience, I conceived of the experience as a developing story, a movement toward something--Someone.

And so, for the portion of our greater story that is bound within fall semester 2013, we have now been to the bookstore and bought the book (or, perhaps more modernly, the shippers of Amazon.com have delivered it) and it's all ready to read. We don't yet know what we will find within its pages, but trust that the One who wrote every one of our days in a book before we came to be will work out good things in the story and works he has created for us to walk in.

In spite of ourselves (and unlooked-for complications), we arrived safely and on-time in Athens on Tuesday morning (local time). It was perhaps for the best that our Monday was only 14 hours long. Navigating the train system from the airport to our apartment at the foot of the Acropolis (!) was an exercise in humility and an early window into the graciousness of strangers that has continued to be extended to us. Various people helped get suitcases off the Metro through the throng in the 20 seconds we had; woke Carmen up so that she wouldn't miss the stop; helped me strap Margaret on my back in a crowded train; and hefted our suitcases on the stairs.

When we emerged from the last Metro station, blinking in the sun and wondering which way to turn, it was only moments before I heard someone calling my name. I could not see her but I knew it was our host calling from the balcony of our apartment. As I looked for her from terrace to terrace, I was struck by how marvelous and comforting it felt to be in a foreign city, another world, and to be recognized and called by name. Called by name. And I gave thanks--ευχαριστώ--for a place to call home while on the road.