Patmos.
The first time I heard the word, I was a child.
From the opening verses of Revelation. John, exiled to the island of Patmos for his faith. Now, we are here. Today, the island of approximately 3000 people, stretching at most 20 kilometres long, is a collection of goat farms, fishing villages, and tourism, almost all centered around ‘the mountain’, or in Greek, the Chora, with its Monastery of St. John.
The island’s geography is incredible. In the time of John, it was a place of exile, a prison, like Riker’s Island. Mostly rocky ground, none of it level, the island is virtually uninhabitable. Lush fields for farming are few and tiny. Roads and paths are twisted, steep and precarious.
From the central port town of Skala, the ocean (Agean Sea) is visible on both sides. Mountains, from neighboring islands and Patmos itself, are visible in every direction. The protected ports and bays around the island provide innumerable beaches, most of them publicly available yet private in ambience. As we toured the island on our scooter, the mountain-top, hair-pin, guardrail-less turns first had our guts wrench and then our spirits soar as the turns opened us to yet-more-incredible vistas. We walked a mountain path to a private sandy beach for a brief swim. Along the path we could look down on the ocean below or up to scampering mountain goats above. I remember speaking to the store owner in Philippi about a religious site near him and he said to me, “God is there, you can just feel it.” There is something of the same sensation here in Patmos. It is not hard to believe that John received the Revelation from God here.
The islands history is equally incredible. Shortly after John received the Revelation, early Christian communities built a basilica here, a church, at the top of the Chora. Over the 6th to 9th centuries, Muslim raids all but destroyed the Christian presence here. Then, around the turn of the millennium (1000), a Christian Turk, Eastern Orthodox, Revered Father Christodoulos (Greek for ‘Servant of Christ) received permission from the Byzantine Emporer Alexios I Komnenos to have possession of the island for the purpose of preserving the site where John received the Revelation and to house a monastery here. This monastery was built at the top of the Chora, in the same place a great Basilica once stood. Over the centuries, the island has passed between the hands of the Greek Christians and the Ottomans and in the last century has been ‘owned’ by the Italians and Germans but since the end of the Second World War has been back in the hands of the Greeks.
The history of the island is something of a backdrop for the history of the site of the Revelation. John, the writer of Revelation, is believed to have received the Revelation from God while staying in a cave about half-way up the Chora. This cave has been well-preserved and revered by the Greek Orthodox church over the years and they oversee the conduct of visitors to the cave to this day. They have also added some of their own tradition to this Unesco World Heritage site. Among the things they ‘know’ and are able to pass on are:
1. The exact location of the cave. They have gone through the trouble of building a monastery above it with a place to sell religious artifacts, so they have some investment in sticking to their story.
2. The place where John lay his head when resting, a bit of a hole in the rock, as if he had laid his head on rock to sleep. I would have thought that John, living into his nineties, would have taken better care of his body than that, but the hole in the rock, now ringed in silver, does have a religious rightness to it.
3. The hand-hold in the rock which John used when he wanted to get up from his sleep. Also ringed in silver, it becomes another occasion to locate the wonder of John’s revelatory moments.
4. A three-part crack in the rock in the ceiling of the cave. The Greek Orthodox are able to determine that this three-part crack is obviously representative of the Trinity and was therefore obviously caused when God spoke to John.
In addition, they have hung seven oil-lamps just like in John’s vision (although the day we were there they accidentally had eight hanging) as well as a icon-rich wall baracading the local monk’s working quarters from the public viewing area. I wondered why, since they had added the oil-lamps , they they hadn’t included some of the more marketable elements from John’s revelation – I would have thought that four horsemen or a dragon or a lake of fire would really bring the pilgrims in.
Ok, you’ve caught me being a little cynical. Which, when I do, causes me to be a little reflective. I wondered what would have happened if the Christian Reformed Church would have been put in charge of this important artifact. What are the ways that we would have dressed it up or embellished the story? Would we have survived the temptation to dress it up and sell a few more trinkets? Or was I reading the local Greek Orthodox folk all wrong, that all of this addition to the story was simply borne of their sincere devotion, perhaps aided by further revelation from God?
It’s hard to say, and for the purpose of me helping the people of Maranatha communicate our faith to the people of Cambridge, an irrelevant question.
Or is it?
Maybe this is my revelation on Patmos. When we add to the story, we pollute it, make it trite or unbelievable. But when we communicate the truth of Christ’s love and sacrifice without trying to dress it up, then those who hear, aided by the Spirit, will have a revelation of their own.
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