Burn the walls down.
Okay, it was more of a burn the paint off the walls, but I still had a blowtorch in a construction site and I was thriving.
After a break from everything in Malta, we were back to service and classes in Greece. While I wasn’t thrilled about reading homework, I was happy to be back to serving, especially doing the physical labor that we were doing at the chapel.
Service
In Greece, we got to work with a church renovation for an outreach program in one of the rougher parts of Athens. They had two sites that they were working on, so our team split and helped with the construction process by tearing things down.
I went to the newer location each service day where I specialized in stripping the walls of all the top layers of paint. Sometimes it chipped away easily from our ground positions, and other times we stood on scaffolding made of ladders, boards, and shutters perched precariously over the spiral staircase with a blowtorch in hand and scraped the paint that way. I had the time of my life playing with tools and even sanding stairs one of the days. (I promise we were safer than I make it sound.)
At the other location, the team literally knocked two walls down to create the open space that they needed. Their job required moving a lot of rubble so I’m a bit thankful I didn’t help with that part, but it would have been fun to knock down walls, and they did an awesome job.
We had another team who went out a few days to talk to college students and people on the street about movies. The goal of their ministry was to open conversation and invite these people to look at the church. The chapel’s plan was to host movie nights of the top movies from the survey that our team helped give, and by doing so, plant seeds of the Gospel in the community. In this way, our team was helping to metaphorically break down walls.
So the service work in this country was all about tearing down walls, whether that was physically tearing down a wall, burning it to start over, or socially and spiritually tearing down walls between people. I think that it was rather fitting in a country where a majority of our studies focused around fallen walls of buildings and cities of the past.
Ancient Greece
Fallen walls give us a lot of insight into the past. We went to so many different ancient sites and ruins, so we had lots of long fallen walls to explore. The ancient Greeks built up many cities and wonders, many of which are still standing in some way, but even more are now in ruins.
Our first location was the Acropolis where we explored theaters and saw the Parthenon. Other days included seeing the remains of the Temple of Zeus, the Temple of Hephaestus, the rebuilt Olympic stadium used in the 1896 Olympic Games, and more. Everything was within walking distance of our hostel, located in the backpackers district, although it was a lot of miles and time spent walking places.
The second week was spent outside of Athens in other parts of Greece. We went to the Biblical town of Corinth where Paul spent a couple years ministering and where he sent two of his letters. Part of the temple sign is in the museum, and we saw an engraving written by Erastus who is mentioned in Romans 16.
In the town of Epidaurus, we tested out the acoustics of a well-preserved amphitheater, and (shhh) might have climbed on some of the ruins. We also had a race and played some games on the Olympic field in the beautiful mountain town Olympia, home to the ORIGINAL games.
All of these places were amazing to see and hear about, but in the end they are only earthly buildings. Many of their walls have fallen, and we only have the remains. Something stronger endures though. We have Jesus, the same Christ who was preached in all of these places 2000 years ago by apostles like Paul.
The message of Christ was especially evident on a Sunday afternoon in Athens, when our team sat together on Mars Hill for worship. This massive rocky expanse has a view of the Acropolis, was a public meeting place for discussion in Biblical Greece, and also so happens to be the very place that Paul gave his sermon to the Areopagus (its Greek name) about the unknown god in Acts 17. Worshiping here was the first of many cool Biblical moments that we would encounter.
Jesus remains the same, even as physical walls come and go. In Christ, the walls we try to put up are torn down, and He rebuilds us. He takes our ruins and makes us new creations!
Hope to get my second post of Greece up soon and of course Reese’s passage.
