REVELATION: Waking Up in Sardis (part two)

As we continue our study of Sardis and the context that drives the letter in Revelation, if we proceed down into the city ruins, we would find the second largest gymnasium (remember to think “university”) in the Roman world of Asia and Asia Minor — second only to the gymnasium of Domitian in Ephesus. If you were to walk into the center courtyard of the gymnasium, you would be able to spin around to admire the palestra, the colonnaded courtyard whose edges would have housed the many classrooms utilized for Greco-Roman study.

Within the palestra and the gymnasium walls would actually be the largest synagogue found in the ancient world. This would strike anyone as being quite odd. Why would you put a place of Jewish worship and education so close to a place of Roman education? When you walk through the ruins of the synagogue, you are struck by many different features. First, there are no images on the floor, but you see an ornate Torah closet and Moses seat — what you would expect from a devout Jewish community. But there are other features which suggest compromise. There are lions toward the front of the synagogue, which wouldn’t be alarming in another context, but the goddess of Sardis, Cybele, was represented by lions. The Torah reading table has large eagles on its side supports, a distinctly Roman image. And then you have the synagogue’s location to consider.

Synagogue at Sardis, with the gymnasium palestra in the background

Is this ancient community committed to missional living? Or is this a community struggling with compromise? Or is it both?

It could be that this is what the letter spoke of when it told them to “wake up and strengthen their defenses” and that they had “a reputation for being alive, yet were dead.”

Of course, the archaeological team from Harvard disagrees — and I happen to agree with them.

The team at Harvard pointed out that the Christian bishop stationed in Sardis (long after Revelation was written), Bishop Mileto, was one of the most anti-Semitic bishops in Asia and Asia Minor. He mounted numerous written attacks against the Jews of Sardis, and not once did he ever accuse them of compromise. If their history was so littered with compromise, this would be a strange omission.

Harvard also points out that the mikveh fountain located outside the entrance to the synagogue was also listed as one of the eleven public fountains with free access in the city of Sardis.

It seems we have an ancient group of people trying to be a light to the Gentiles.

But for now, let’s take this conversation back toward the mountains of Sardis where the great temple to Cybele sits between the acropolis and the necropolis. Symbolizing the mythology of Sardis that surrounded life, death, and resurrection, one side of the Temple would frame the acropolis in the great doorway, while looking the other direction would frame the necropolis. The myth of Cybele is what would eventually give rise to the Greco-Roman worship of Artemis.

According to the story, Cybele had both male and female genitalia and was able to procreate on her own. Her grandson was enamored with her and longed to sleep with her, but Cybele, in need of no male companionship, continually rejected him. In a frenzied attempt to prove his undying devotion to her, the grandson castrated himself and offered his prized organs on the altar as an act of worship.

Every year in Sardis, over one million people would visit the city for a great 40-day celebration commemorating the myth. At multiple times during the festival, a large procession would leave from the city center (with everyone dressed in white robes), and they would make their way up to the temple to Cybele. The goal was to get yourself into such a drunken lather that you would be willing to make the ultimate sacrifice and recreate the myth, offering your own castration to the goddess.

As one might imagine, not everyone would engage in this most holy of acts, but the priests of Cybele had declared that if you got some of the blood of those who did on your white robe, their offering would be accepted on your behalf.

Today, as one examines the ruins of the temple to Cybele, they might notice a small building built onto the corner of the ruins. (It dates to around the third or fourth century, near the time Cybele worship and paganism is dying out, but the point still stands.) It happens to be the ruins of a church. Much too small to be a place of corporate worship, some scholars have noticed the circular shape and identified it as a medical clinic. Some have theorized that the Christians here at Sardis decided to start a mission-based medical clinic and offer care to those who engaged in pagan worship.

Small church ruins sit in the lower right; temple ruins behind

I have always loved that picture. Whether the historicity of that claim is accurate or not is highly debatable, but the picture of a community of people building their church on the corner of the Cybele temple is an incredible image to me. It reminds me of Jesus’s words at Caesarea Philippi about where he would build his church. But I find myself reading the last half of the letter to Sardis with new eyes. See for yourself:

Yet you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes. They will walk with me, dressed in white, for they are worthy. The one who is victorious will, like them, be dressed in white. I will never blot out the name of that person from the book of life, but will acknowledge that name before my Father and his angels. Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

What a wonderful picture. May we be those who are willing to walk with Him into the darkest of places, bringing light and care, love and hope into the worst chaos imaginable. May we be willing to continue to build our churches at the Cybele temples and in shopping malls and the inner cities as ways of walking with Him, dressed in white. And may we never forget the importance of not staining our robes.