Prayer at the Areopagus

Even early risers consider me an early riser. This morning, however, was different. There was no laptop, no dog giving me the evil eye, and sadly no coffee beyond the instant variety. My wife and I were staying in an Airbnb just off the Apostolou Pavlou in Athens, enjoying our first holiday together in Greece. It was a late 5:30 a.m. by the time I crept quietly out of our air-conditioned bedroom into the oppressive morning heat of the kitchenette.

Our holiday flat lay a few hundred yards from the ancient Greek agora and a few hundred more from the Parthenon. Both are further by foot but are still an easy walk even when you feel you’re breathing more water vapor than air. Just beyond our apartment, the western slope of the Acropolis rose sharply back up to the Pnyx, where in ancient times the demes of Athens gathered to debate public policy — hence, our word democracy. But that wasn’t my intended destination. Instead, I would follow a wide cobblestone road up the gully of the two hills toward a different place. If I timed it right, I would say my morning prayers with Athens spread out below me as the sun rose beyond Lycabettus Hill. But that wasn’t why I was going there. I wanted to say my prayers on the Areopagus where St. Paul once preached to the Athenians.

We had visited the hill in the late afternoon on the previous day as we reconnoitred the ancient sites before finding dinner. Ever since we’d planned our trip to Athens—piggybacked on the work of my wife, Sarah, as an external examiner at a local university — a visit to the Areopagus was high on my list of places to see. Up to that point, I had never stood anywhere that someone from the Bible had stood (assuming, of course, that the legends about Joseph of Arimathea visiting Glastonbury are fabrications). So, I approached the craggy hill with the excitement of a much-admired celebrity’s fan. I tried hard to feel something about the place.

The views from the top of the Areopagus are certainly stunning: one can see the ruins of the ancient Athens below, marked by a reconstructed stoa to the east and the Temple of Heracles poking out among the stone pines on the west. Modern Athens, a chaotic jumble of white flat-roofed buildings, fanned out in every direction. Behind us to the right loomed the Acropolis, swarming with crowds of visitors. I could enjoy the Areopagus as a vista, but the combination of chattering tourists, vendors selling bottles of water, and a rocky surface rubbed treacherously smooth by centuries of footfall made it impossible for me to do more. Still, I learned something from that initial visit: I’ve always pictured Paul’s sermon completely wrong.

An image search for Areopagus and will undoubtedly produce some old paintings of Paul addressing a crowd of men in a Greco-Roman forum against a backdrop of Greek columns and classical statues. In these depictions, he’s like a modern-day street preacher on High Street. That’s how I had always imagined him when reading Acts 17:16-34. But the Areopagus is nothing like that. Paul delivered his only recorded sermon to Gentiles on a rocky hill that stands high above the city. One should imagine him with the Acropolis above him to the east, the Pnyx with its outdoor assembly area to the south, Athens below, and a vista of worked fields beyond to the north. It was a dramatic setting for a sermon, much closer in parallel to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount than any street preacher in an urban setting. It must have been a daunting pulpit for the Apostle. From his vantage, he would have been able to see the synagogue, just below the Temple of Heracles, where he had first spoken about the unknown God. I wonder if Paul stopped to consider that he was introducing his audience to the King of Peace upon a hill dedicated to Ares, the god of war, surrounded by symbols of religious, political, and commercial power.

I loved my visit but felt quietly deflated. I knew then that I needed to return the next morning. And so it was with some eagerness that I set out in the pre-dawn darkness. As I walked up the avenue, I was surrounded by the loud chorus of cicadas accompanied by feral cats prowling along the edges of the road. I passed only joggers and a few elderly men enjoying their first cigarettes of the day as I luxuriated in the scenery. Now, the feeling I’d desired finally came over me. With the Acropolis glowing bronze amid floodlights, I could not but have felt the deep history around me. I wondered if the cicadas had sung to Paul like they were now singing to me.

The boy in me swept aside the middle-aged man. Here, the Athenians had cheered at the news of the impossible victory at Marathon. Here, they had despaired at reports of Xerxes and his mighty army crossing the Bosphorous, but also later rejoiced to learn of the steadfast defence of the Spartans at Thermopylae and the victory of their navy at Salamis. Here too had the Persian armies marched to destroy the abandoned Acropolis. The history was too much for me. So, instead of going straight to the Areopagus, I detoured up the Pnyx to wander in the distilling gloom alongside the ghosts of Solon, Pericles, Socrates, and the other great men of Athens. I had the enshrouding woods almost to myself. The scent of pine was heavy in the air.

I didn’t tarry long.  Quickly returning to the avenue, I managed to reach the Areopagus as the sun was cresting Hymettos, the distant mountain range to the east of Athens. Although there were a few people there, they were spread apart, each quietly admiring the rising sun. I found a smooth outcrop of rock where I could sit and happily contemplate the scenery as the brightening sunrays gradually revealed the buildings sheltering beneath the shadows of the trees. A gentle peace settled over me and I began to pray.

I made sure not to rush. Trying to keep both God and my surroundings uppermost in my thoughts, I prayed my way through the canticles and psalms and took my time in reading the lessons. It felt only right to add Acts 17:16-34 after the Benedictus. I gave myself time to sit with the text, imagining Paul standing nearby as he addressed the skeptical Greeks. My reverie yielded naturally to prayers for friends and family, my congregation and colleagues, and of gratitude for the many blessings of this life.

“In him we live and move and have our being,” Paul preached from the Areopagus almost 2,000 years earlier. Held by God in prayer in the exquisite delight of my experience, I could not even begin to doubt his words. In that space and within a brief span of time, his words were as real and solid as the rock on which I sat or the heat of the sun that was now basking me with its rays. The God in heaven to whom I addressed my prayers was also in the elderly smoking men, the joggers, the cats and the cicada, the heat of the sun, the beauty of the landscape, and even the eagerness that had drawn me to the hilltop. I knew he would be in my memory too. Is it any wonder that Athens produces mystics?

Only a deep quiet of the mind can follow moments like this. I stood up, stretched my lower back, and ambled down past an old monastery, the remains of the Roman forum, and into the old city. I hardly noticed the shopkeepers setting out their wares and sweeping the pavement or the other early risers emerging from cafés with their coffee and pastries. I had the rest of the day to be a tourist. For now, I would remain in the presence of the unknown God who once again had made himself known to me.

Of course, he does so every day. But most days I hardly notice. Thankfully for one as blind as I, he occasionally grants me an Areopagus where I can just about see him face to face. It’s at such moments that I realize that God is not unknown like an undiscovered territory or a terrible secret. He’s unknown like something so familiar we never stop to notice it. “So obvious, it was staring me in the face,” we say when the scales fall from our eyes.

On that morning, God stared me in the face. And I had almost mistaken him for the heat of the sun or the beauty of the landscape. Until I had said my prayers.