Day 03 - Pergamum

We began our third day in Türkiye in the Sanctuary of Asklepois in Pergamum.

Marty, playing the role of an Asklepoian tour guide, led our group around and introduced us to the system and environment in which someone in the Greco-Roman era would be received when they were seeking healing.

This trip we have been repeating the phrase, the medium is the message, and the message in this place was that healing comes from making an offering to Asklepios and he will determine whether or not to heal you from your ailment. Everything worked together to create the environment. Even the building was constructed with pipes and water systems to create an auditory experience and they said that “the sound of Asklepeios is the sound of rushing water welling up to eternal life”. Marty also shared the myth that Asklepion was a son of Zeus that the gods killed but Zeus brought him back to life and he was known as “the resurrection and the light”. The parallel stories and names between the familiar ones we hear in the Bible and the Greek myths further cemented the idea that our biblical authors were brilliant in the use of using their current cultural context to speak the gospel in a language the people around them could understand and wrestle with and provide a counter narrative to the empirical nature of the current times.

We moved on from the Asklepion, up a cable car ride to the Acropolis of Pergamum, where we visited a temple to Zeus. 40 ft tall and 110 ft long, built in a horseshoe shape, the building resembled the shape of a throne. Higher up we encountered another temple, dedicated to the Emperor Trajan. More impressive, more grandiose, the engineers had to build supporting archways into the mountain to support the terrace level of the temple.

We stopped briefly by the statue of a Roman solider to talk about the Armor of God. As a member of the group read the passage in Ephesians, Marty pointed out the breastplate, the belt, the feet, and finally talked about the sword. The double edged sword of the Romans that is a symbol of power and strength. But, in our text, it is the “sword of the spirit, which is the word of God”. We need to be people of the Text so that we can be equipped with the sword of the spirit.

Half an hour later, sitting in the the theater overlooking the stunning landscape of the surrounding area, Marty read the letter to the church of Pergamum in Revelation (Revelation 2:12-17). New pieces started to illuminate for me. “The words of him who has the sharp two-edged sword” - reference to the symbol of the power of Rome. “I know where you dwell, where Satan’s throne is” - the shape of these temples came to my mind’s eye. We talked about how Pergamum was the location of so many significant temples to the gods and emperors. We learned about the Dionysus festivals and all the raw meat consumption and sexual immorality that occurred. So how do you live in Pergamum as a follower of Christ? What happens when the festivals might be fun and your neighbors might give you a hard time for not participating? How do you live in a place drenched in the pursuit of pleasure and yet put the gospel on display? It’s easy to point fingers and assume how you might behave if it were you but what if this was your reality, because in a sense, we still live in an environment like this.

Personally, I have a feeling this will be the hardest letter for me to wrestle with. Being an annoyingly worldly and logical person, figuring out where to draw the line between what is okay as a God fearer and what is not isn’t something I’m particularly good at. But I hope to be able to wrestle with this more in the days to come.