Better on the margins

The final day. It seems so strange to be at the end of the trip. Less than 2 weeks ago everything was so fresh and new. It simultaneously feels like we have been here for a very long time and that we just got here. While the weather hasn’t worked in our favor most of the trip, today, God blessed us with beautiful blue skies.

We started off our journey today with a bus ride south of Athens to the ancient city of Corinth. Before going to Corinth, you need to cross the Isthmus of Corinth. If you know the geography of Greece, the Greek Peninsula comes to point with the Gulf of Corinth and the Aegean Sea begin only about 4 miles apart. We stopped there to see a canal built in the late 19th century to get ships around Greece faster. Even though this canal is only a little over 100 years old, even the ancient Romans wanted to build something to get boats around faster. First they built a road in order to carry ships over land, and Nero eventually tried to build a canal to no avail.

What is almost as striking as seeing the two seas so close is seeing the AcroCorinth, or the Corinthian Acropolis. We had to hike up a mountain to get to the ancient sites where the view was breathtaking. Seeing the seas in the distance was incredible. After descending the AcroCorinth and admiring the trek up the mountain ancient corinthians would take to the temple of Aphrodite, we made our way to the center of the city. We walked the streets Paul had walked, and even seen the place where Paul was brought to the city official, Gallio.

This is important to know because of how important this geographical information is to the Ancient city of Corinth. Corinth being a sea port was able to have plenty of wealth in the ancient times. And this is how Paul would have encountered the city. A port city that was very cosmopolitan. This city would have experienced many different cultures and religions. They were a sports crazy city that hosted games called the Isthmian Games every 2 years.

But Paul had a successful ministry in Corinth because the new christians were not persecuted at first by the Romans. Gallio hears the complaint the Jewish people of Corinth bring to him but he dismisses it as a Jewish problem. So the Corinthian church has a bit more of a privileged status than other churches and has many wealthy converts. This doesn’t lead to the healthiest church. The Corinthian Letters show that there were many problems in the church. It makes me think about our privileged position as an American church. In places where the church is marginalized, it grows, but in places where the church is privileged, the church sees problems. Sometimes God’s church works better on the margins.

-Chadd