Christos, the friendly manager of the Aristoteles Hotel, greeted Carol and me the other morning. With a bright smile on his plump face, he announced that he had spoken to Appollo, in Ancient Greek thought the god of the Sun, and made arrangements for us to have a wonderful day. Christos smiled. I was pretty sure he was kidding. Certainly this man who shared the same name as Jesus knew better than to put his trust in the likes of Zeus and Poseidon and Apollo. Surely he whose hotel, the Aristoteles was near the corner of Socrates and Constantine, knew that belief in the gods of Myth was a dead-end.
He tipped his hat, saying he had Apollo’s cell-phone number (ok, he was kidding all along). In his humour, he hearkened back to a better day when the gods actually were in charge and things were glorious, but ‘now that the politicians are in charge, things are falling apart.’ Those who know me, and the Gospel, know I could write a month of sermons out of that little conversation. But I bit my tongue. Well, not literally, but I didn’t speak.
Things were falling apart. As we walked Vathis Square, Omonia Square, and down to the Plaka, it was apparent that things were less than their Creational best, when God walked with people in the cool of the day. The Wailin Jennys have a song, “Waiting for a Saviour”, a cry against the pain-makers and heart-breakers, which includes the line: “To the one’s you’ve left behind, were they not worth your time?” Sometimes we refer to the times of Paul in Athens as “Bible times” and I make the mental mistake of filing it as the time that God was present, close to the time when the Greater Christos walked the soil. But that creates a disconnect, as if just because things aren’t at their Eden-optimum that God is on vacation, like He’s left behind the Vathians, Omonians, and lower ‘c’ Christoses of this world.
And then, spark-like, He shows up in the unlikeliest of places.
No surprise, really. After crawling into a manger, then up on a cross, then into a tomb, and finally to the light of Eternal Day, it was no big deal for him to drive a cab from the armpit of Athens to her port, Pireaus. I never did get our cabbie’s name, so for fun, let’s call him Alexander, he was great.
Carol and I asked the cabbie why we had seen the police so infrequently and when we did, only in large groups. Alexander’s response, “It is safer for them.” This comment began a 20-minute conversation (with the meter running, Alexander was no dummy) about life in Greece, particularly Athens, with the debt crisis, the overwhelming influx of illegal immigrants, the soaring inflation AND tax rates, and the recent murder of an ethnic Greek by a Pakistani immigrant and how things were getting bad, so bad that the police themselves would travel in packs just to ensure their own safety (I’m glad my mom is reading this AFTER we have left Athens). Alex (we were getting familiar now) said he had lived in Athens all his life, this was his home. And then, as hopeless as Athens socio-economic-spiritual crisis appeared, Alex expressed hope, however sheepishly: “Maybe, if the government insists on justice and does something, things can get better.”
Whenever we express hope against unreasonable odds, we are leaning forward in faith. The Wailin’ Jennys have another song, “Heaven When We’re Home” where the lyrics are hymnically crooned, “there must be something better than this…still living one day at a time and doing the best I can….and when we find what we’re looking for, we’ll drop these bags and search no more, ‘cause it’s gonna feel like heaven when we’re home.”
I think Alex, if he were a singer, might sing along.
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