Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Here is another great museum in Istanbul -- the Hagia Sophia, formerly a Church, then a Mosque,
and today a Museum. A museum from which we can learn an interesting lesson from history
that gives us a view of Christianity that stretches from the Roman world to the world
in which we live today... As we enter the Hagia Sophia, these doors,
like many of the other artifacts here, are rich in ancient history. But the thing I find
interesting is that, immediately, you are welcomed with the sign of the cross and the
name of Jesus Christ. Now, that takes on particular meaning when you remember that these doors
are from two centuries before the birth of Christ from the town where the apostle Paul,
the writer of many of the letters of the New Testament, where he was born; the town Tarshish.
These doors were originally on the temple to Apollos, the pagan god who represented
the power of the Roman Empire. Then they were taken down and brought here and put as the
entry doors, and interestingly enough, ascribed with the cross and the person of Jesus Christ
to mark this as a cathedral or a temple to the living, resurrected Son of God.
This beautiful array of lighting reminds me of the bold claim that Jesus Christ made when
He came into a very dark world. He said, "I am the light of the world." And He spoke that
into a world in the dark grip of gods and goddesses and massive temples, images of wood
and stone that could not help, could not hear, could not heal, could not see. But more than
that, this massive cathedral stands today as a monument to the rise and the fall of
Christianity here in Asia Minor in the nation that we now know as Turkey.
On this very site, soon after Constantine, the emperor of the Roman Empire, declared
Christianity legal...then it's a few years after that, in 360 A.D., they built a Christian
church here to the Logos, to Jesus Christ. Rioters burned it and looted it, but you couldn't
hold these Christians back. They built another one, and that one was burned and looted by
rioters as well. Then, in 532, plans were made to build this massive statement to Christianity,
and this Hagia Sophia...Jesus Christ, the Holy Wisdom of God Cathedral...stood here
as the center of Christian influence throughout all of the East, all of the Byzantine Empire,
until 1453. Then all things changed. By the year 1453 A.D., all of Asia Minor...all
of Turkey had been conquered by the Ottoman Turks, and Islam had become the religion of
the region. But Constantinople, what we now call Istanbul, was the only holdout. In 1453,
Mehemet II, the sultan...victorious sultan, marched into Constantinople and took it captive
and changed this monument to Jesus Christ, the Holy Wisdom of God, into a mosque to celebrate
the religion of Islam. As you can see behind me, the calligraphy signatures that date way
back to the 15th century were placed throughout the building. And in a sense, then, this represents,
as well, the fall of Christianity in Asia Minor. Although, for political advantage,
since the Pope was trying to take over the Eastern church, Mehemet II decided to protect
the patriarch and to protect Eastern Orthodoxy, and so he built a small church for him on
the Bosphorous, and even today, there remains the presence of the Eastern Orthodox church
and the headquarters of the patriarch here in Istanbul. But that was the change that
turned the tide...that basically took the influence of Christianity out of Asia Minor.
This ancient pulpit that, interestingly enough, decorates the patio of a coffee shop just
outside the Hagia Sophia, is probably from the second church that was built on this site
in about 390 A.D. But it's a reminder to me, as a follower of Jesus Christ, that the thing
that has been central to believers throughout all of the centuries has been the proclamation
of the Word of God; that the healing, transforming power of God speaking to us through His Word
is what we hold on to and cling to. Now, I'm sure that many who don't follow Jesus Christ
wonder why it is that we're so steady and so determined. Well, it's because God's truth
has gotten a grip on our hearts. Quite frankly, it's encouraging for me to know that I don't
just float through my generation alone, that I have deep roots in the history of the church
represented by the proclamation of the Word of God from a pulpit just like this so long
ago.