A Millennial Pilgrimage
Scot Sherman
July 1, 1999
"How would you like to go to Constantinople?" Of course, my church missions committee actually asked our missions pastor and myself: "How would you like to go to Istanbul?"But I heard "Constantinople." Please understand, I have been to the Holy Land, which for a Presbyterian means not only that I have retraced the steps of our Lord in Palestine, but also have made the hajj to Geneva and Scotland, our Mecca and Medina, respectively. But Istanbul, the ancient Constantinople, and Turkey, the home of the seven churches of St. John's Revelation, this represented something else entirely: this was an opportunity to visit the sites of ecumenical councils, of ancient churches of the once undivided Church, to go and pray in places where the Church prayed in unity long before the unhappy divisions of the second millennium. My church is committed to ministry to Muslims, and it asked me to visit the Turkish Presbyterian Church in and around Istanbul. Then it dawned on me: Why visit only one of two great sees of Christendom? I arranged an extension trip to Rome as well. I figured there were only a few months left in an unhappy millennium (2001 doesn't count, I don't care what anybody says), and I now had the opportunity to go, pray, and reflect on the Church as it had once been and in God's good providence might be again. This was going to be for me a pilgrimage in every sense of the word, a millennial, ecclesial pilgrimage. We began in Rome. Any residual images of Luther crawling up the scala sancta that might have lurked in my Protestant imagination were quickly diffused by the Trevvi Fountain, the Forum, the Spanish Steps, and that certain Euro feeling one can only get while drinking wine in a piazza. Only recently removed from New ...
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