The Jerusalem Experiment

Ephesus: Angels Ascending in the Middle of Nowhere

After returning from Ephesus, I stilled my stirring soul beside the roar of the Aegean, and began to reflect on the four hours we spent there. I realized that what gripped me most was the fact that such a holy place lies in the midst of a nation comprised mostly of devout Muslims and listless skeptics, beside harbors teeming with wealthy tourists single-minded in their desire to spend their summers drinking and dancing into the early morning hours. The two British women staying next door to us in our hotel (15 miles from Ephesus) informed us that they hadn’t given any though to visiting Ephesus. Instead, they had spent the previous two weeks at nightclubs, having amassed about 20 hours of sleep over the course of their time beside the Aegean coast.

I was looking for a bit different experience. So, I went to Ephesus.

As you approach Ephesus (we chose to walk the half mile to the entrance, rather than taking a taxi from the main road—which would have cost us upward of twenty Lira), everything looks desolate and empty: golden grass contrasted by dark green cypress trees, all held in an embrace by towering hills of dust.  I found it impossible to refrain from touching the ground and pondering whether these were the sorts of paths Paul plotted between towns like Ephesus and Miletus, Lystra and Cappadocia. Eventually my friend and I turned a corner and our eyes were struck by a hoard of merchants and venders aching to sell trinkets hardly worth a handful of the dust we walked over to get to them.

We had to push our way past their golden-tongued sales pitches before we were able to purchase our ticket and more or less collapse through the turnstile into the heart of Ephesus.

Free from the repetitive din of salesmen, my companion and I rubbed our eyes, took a deep breath, and attempted to adjust our senses to what lay before us. Having soaked myself in such a 21^st century, quasi-European, consumer-driven context for the first week of my time in Turkey, it wasn’t as surprise that it took a full half hour before I was able to plunge my heart into the soul Ephesus. Initially, the marble streets felt cold under my feet, the Corinthian columns dusty and lifeless. But as the sun traced its path across the sky and late morning turned into early afternoon, the marble seemed to trap the heat under our feet, and before long began to inject it slowly through our feet, up our legs, causing our hearts to beat faster and sweat to pour down our foreheads. We were inevitably laid hold of by the nearness we felt to context of the Scriptures we had both spent the better-part of ten years pouring over.

Each of us have been told from the infancy of our faith to trust that the Scriptures still speak, despite the fact that our dusty Bibles testify to a world 2,000 years removed from our own.  Faith needs contextualization to blossom. Without it, we are left to assume that Paul’s writings were to people who lived in some sort of deep-space vacuum.

When I was a kid my parents loved taking me on afternoon drives through their own childhood neighborhoods. We would round the corner of some obscure South Minneapolis side street and my Mom would get that glazed over look in her eyes, at which point I knew that she was simultaneously living in 1968 and 1990. “That’s the house where my brothers (she had 9) lit a bunch of mattresses on fire on the top floor. You should have seen how angry your grandpa was!” she would blurt out, almost losing control of the car. Of course, I’d heard the mattress-on-fire story a million times before, but seeing the house and allowing our visit to the actual neighborhood where the famous mattress debacle actually took place rendered and painted with new colors the story that I’d attempts to reconstruct in my mind so many times.

Ephesus possessed a potency that lifted me out of Western Turkey and put me back in my mom’s car—only now I was driving, talking to myself as I stepped into The Great Theater, “This is where Paul preached, where Timothy preached, where Apollos preached!” and “This is where Paul got off the boat and wandered into the great city for the first time!”

My excitement seemed utterly justifiable, but as I looked around at the hoard of other travelers who had come from the far corners of the earth to see (a least for a few hours) this ancient marvel, I was shocked that none seemed the least bit captivated by what lay all around them. I stilled my own roaring heart enough to listen to the clamor of tourists all around me, and it was as if a collective and monotone, “Huh. That looks really old,” rose to meet the dusty hilltops around us. And I thought, “What!? That’s it?” I wanted to kneel and pray, I longed to see an old man’s tears and knees simultaneously meet the marble, or a young child’s tug at his daddy’s pant leg and ask, “Did Saint Paul really live here?” But I didn’t. All I saw was disinterested spectators race by on the wings of their overpaid tour guides without the slightest hint of intrigue.

Thankfully my pride was met with a reminder: I do this all the time.

Ephesus is a place: a mostly forgotten city of stone and dust, hidden from the watching world by the massive hills and the roaring sea that surround it. An hour South of Izmir and nine hours South of Istanbul, Ephesus does not occupy any sort of political, cultural or militaristic point of interest. Dust, rock and sun cut through by a seemingly random assortment of green shrubbery, pear trees and cornstalks. In truth all Ephesus is is dust, sun and stone. It’s what God did through brokenhearted believers within the confines of Ephesus that truly matters.

Halfway between Beersheba and Haran, in a middle of nowhere stop-off fitting called, “a certain place” Jacob grabbed a rock to lay his head upon, let his tired body sprawl atop the dirt, and dreamed of angels ascending and descending atop golden stairs between earth and heaven. Jacob quickly rose amid the early morning light and proclaimed, “Surely, the LORD is in the place and I did not know it…How awesome is this place! This place is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” (Gen 28:16-17).

In one evening, this “certain place” went from an insignificant stop along the route of an ominously long journey to Bethel (the House of God). Why? Because God had chosen to dwell there.

How many Bethel’s are in our midst?

In many ways, I consider it a shame that Ephesus was able to evoke so much emotion in me. It’s rather sad that it took a 5,500 mile journey for my eyes to be opened in a new way to the reality that the words of Scripture didn’t merely happen, but they continue to happen as we allow the sword of the Holy Spirit to pierce our cold hearts, wound our consciences in order that God might heal us with the balm of Isaiah’s ancient profession, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the LORD of armies of heaven, the whole earth is full of His glory.” (Isaiah 6:3).

Discussion Questions

1. Spend some time talking/writing about a “Bethel” moment in your life. Why do you think God revealed His presence at the moment? How did the experience change your understanding of God?
2. What’s one way you can make space in your life to, perhaps encounter more “Bethel” moments?
3. How do you think our focus on God showing up in a church building keep Christians and non-Christians from experiencing God in other contexts?
4. Read Genesis 28:10-21 and Acts 9:1-9. Keeping in mind that Jacob had just finished stealing his brother’s birthright from their father, Isaac, and Saul was on his way kill Christians, what similarities do you see between Paul’s (Saul) on-the-way experience and Jacob’s?
5. What do you suppose Paul was thinking when he wrote to Timothy (the leader of the inaugural church in Ephesus), “This saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost…” (1 Tim. 1:15) Can you identify with Paul’s proclamation? In what way has God met you and gripped your soul in an unlikely place?

Ephesus Photo Gallery