Perfect Acoustics (Acts 19:23-40)

I step out onto the stage in front of a small crowd of tourists. I give a short impromptu speech about Greco-Roman architecture and stage a brief stage combat demonstration with a friend of mine. The crowd applauds. To make my voice hit the back wall of the outdoor amphitheater takes no more effort than preaching in my normal, indoor chapel. What makes this remarkable is that the amphitheater in question is more than 2,000 years old and seats 25,000 people.

The Theatre of Ephesus stands as a remarkable testament to ancient engineering. The Romans, in particularly, prided themselves on their organization. Each city needed to an amphitheater. The Greeks loved them, so they could perform plays – not as entertainment – but to feed the soul. The Romans, perhaps, needed less soul feeding. The liked plays just fine, but they also needed a place for gladiators to slaughter animals, fight each other, and massacre Christians. Per the Roman organization system, a Roman amphitheater needed to hold about ten percent of the city’s population, so, in a major metropolis like Ephesus, capitol the province of Asia, with a population of 250,000, they needed a 25,000 seater amphitheater. Started by the Greeks and brought to its present scale by the Romans, it demonstrates how well Greco-Roman culture understood acoustics. In a world without microphones, one person could address thousands with very little effort or training. In my travels over the past couple of weeks, I’ve stood on half a dozen Greco-Roman stages, and each had this astounding quality – crystal clear amplification of the human voice produce solely through architecture.

This specific theatre in Ephesus plays a leading role in this scene in Acts 19 of Paul versus the Silversmiths. It’s where they assemble, dragging along some of Paul’s companions, to continue their shouting of, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians,” for two whole hours. It’s what allows one city official, an unnamed city clerk, to quiet down a crowd of thousands. He could use the acoustics to be heard over the din. Without it, that part of the story makes no sense. How did one single person, without a bullhorn, microphone, etc., overcome a chanting crowd?

The ancient technology of the theatre made it physically possible, but the local official had to stand alone in the face of that changing crowd. No amount of technology makes that easy. They didn’t even let Paul in there because the situation blew up into such a volatile wave of anger and confusion. The last guy that stood up, Alexander, got utterly dismissed – setting off the two hours of chanting. Here stood this city clerk taking an unpopular stance with the people who paid his bills and who could trample him to death without a second thought.

Over the past 11 days, I travelled 15,000 miles, getting on 7 different flights, staying in 6 different hotels, and crossing between 2 countries (and technically two continents). Theoretically, we chased the footsteps of Paul, if somewhat in reverse – Corinth to Athens to Thessalonica to Philippi to Iconium to Laodicea to Colossae to Hierapolis to Ephesus. What I kept coming back to at each site that we visited is that Paul’s ministry was defined not by a lonely sojourn but by relationships. We know some of their names, Barnabus (who came with him), Silas, Timothy, Luke, Titus, Lydia (the dye merchant from Philippi), Phoebe (who delivered the Letter to the Romans), Philemon (the rich man in Colossae), Gaius and Aristarchus (who got dragged into the theatre). Many hundreds more get mentioned only by title, city clerk, church leader, elder, jailer, and so many more don’t get mentioned at all. We say that Paul built churches, but he erected no structures. In that world, having a prominent physical location would have just opened them up for easier attack. Instead, Paul built relationships – including some brave and unlikely allies.

Paul’s generation of the early church couldn’t rely on their own tools, existing relationships, and a legacy. None of those existed yet. They had to go out into their city and their world, use the tools like the Theatre of Ephesus and their hard won allies to build a movement. Yes, the city clerk shows tremendous bravery, but that’s not the only thing that should feel convicting. My journey with Paul reminded me how much they did with so little. Paul would arrive with just his tent making tools and the clothes on his back, walking from place to place, and out of it would come a church community. I wonder what he would think of the modern church with our vast resources, existing congregations, and huge legacies. How would he evaluate what we accomplish with so much versus what he and the early Christians did with so little? In our relative comfort, have we gotten complacent? Have we fallen into the trap of achieving very little while have so much? Our world contains plenty of people, places, and churches with Paul’s level of zeal, scraping together whatever they can to make ministry happen. In examining ourselves, can we say the same?