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Missing Steps in the Middle East
15th June, 2009 - Posted by Archbishop Mark -
I did a radio interview this morning about the Pilgrimage with Genevieve Jacobs of ABC Canberra. She asked at one point whether we were going to Damascus, and that made me think of other missing steps in our Pilgrimage in SOME of the Footsteps of St Paul - missing steps in the Middle East. Damascus is one of the obvious ones, but again it’s a long way from Greece, Turkey and Italy. Paul might have had the time, energy and money to sweep the Mediterranean and the Middle East, but unfortunately we don’t.
Talking of money: the Pauline mission was a large and costly enterprise, so I sometimes wonder who bankrolled it. Paul might have been tent-maker, but that wouldn’t have gone close to financing the whole mission. He must have depended upon the generosity of his communities, especially perhaps some of the wealthier members of whom there were not a few. People think sometimes that the early communities were composed solely of the poor, but that wasn’t the case. There were many well-to-do people in them, and the peculiarity of the early communities was the way they cut through all the social strata in a rigidly stratified society.
Damascus was obviously a key step in Paul’s own journey. It was on the way there that he was knocked down by the Risen Christ and called to undertake the mission that would consume the rest of his life; it was in Damascus that the former persecutor began to flex his muscles as a Christian evangelist; it was there for the first time that the mission nearly cost him his life. So there would have been good reason to put the Syrian capital on the Pilgrimage. But that may have to await the next Pilgrimage when we put together an itinerary of all the places we missed this time around.
Another very obvious absentee from the Pilgrimage is Jerusalem. It’s hard to include Jerusalem as a quick stop on an already crowded itinerary. It really requires a Pilgrimage of its own. But the Holy City was nothing if not decisive in the story of the Apostle. It was probably there that he undertook his early Pharisaic studies; it would have been there that he first encountered Christianity; it was there that he watched the execution of Stephen, the first Christian martyr; it was to Jerusalem that Barnabas led him after the Damascus Road encounter to meet with Peter; it was to the Holy City that he went with Barnabas to the so-called Council of Jerusalem after the first Christian mission outside Palestine; once he began his own mission, he returned from time to time to Jerusalem, even if he insisted that he never depended upon Jerusalem for his commission; it was there that he was arrested before being eventually sent to Rome for trial. So you can see why Jerusalem is a very big gap in our itinerary. But, as I say, it would be a Pilgrimage unto itself.
Another missing step in the Middle East is Antioch which is in modern-day Lebanon. There isn’t a lot there these days, but in Paul’s time Antioch (one of about fifteen cities bearing that name) was the third city of the Roman Empire after Rome itself and Alexandria. It was crucial in the story of early Christianity because it was here that the Good News was first preached to non-Jews; it was to Antioch that Barnabas brought Paul (who had retired from Jerusalem to Tarsus) to be part of the leadership team; it was here that the disciples were first called Christians; it was from here that the first ever Christian mission team (Barnabas, Paul and John Mark) set forth into the Mediterranean world; and it was here that Paul had his big dispute with James, Peter and Barnabas that led to the birth of the independent Pauline mission, after which Paul never again returned to Antioch. So again it would have been good to pop into Antioch.
Mind you, when I think of the complexities and hazards of “popping into” Israel, Syria and Lebanon, I’m left thinking we might have made the right call. The region is a seething cauldron of violence, as we all know. But it wasn’t much different back in Paul’s day. It was a dangerous world in which the Gospel of peace must have seemed as much a mirage or fantasy as it does to many today. But the Gospel was power back then - power to do what seemed impossible. And it’s no different today.
Tags: antioch, Archbishop Mark Coleridge, Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn, damascus, footsteps of saint paul, jerusalem, pilgrimage, st paul
Posted on: June 15, 2009
Filed under: Archbishop Mark's teachings
1 Comment
Catherine Smibert
June 16th, 2009 at 2:35 am
Archbishop Mark - this material is more precious than GOLD!
It just takes me, the reader, right to where you are in such a digestable way!
Thank you so much for your time in applying yourself to this blogging excercise … be assured that it is truly extending the reach of your ministry to those of us who don’t have the chance to be around you all the time directly.
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