Lecture delivered at the inaugural meeting of The Ecumenical Society of St John Chrysostom, Australasian Chapter, Melbourne, 12 November 2000
by Dr Wendy Mayer, Research Fellow, Centre for Early Christian Studies, Australian Catholic University
John Chrysostom – Pastor and Preacher
At vespers this afternoon we heard that John Chrysostom was an "honest servant", "a man with no fear of any earthly authority", a man who "couldn't stay silent when he saw injustice", "a man of honour", "a man of truth", "a man who would have dared to talk, not to be silent", a man of "fiery, strong spirit", who called "people to lead a life of purity and righteousness". Above all, Fr Sharobeam expressed the wish that he were alive today. Tonight it is my hope to in some way bring him alive for you by focusing on his activity as a preacher and pastor.
This is a man so revered for his preaching that a vast number of his homilies have been carefully passed down through the centuries and preserved for our benefit. A man so charismatic that people applauded wildly during his sermons, or beat their breasts and wept. But what was it really like to be amongst his audience? How did it feel to be at the receiving end of his particular brand of pastoral care? I want you to sit back and imagine what it would be like if John were a priest and bishop in Melbourne today.
What a wonderful experience it would be to be standing in his audience, to watch his piercing eyes scanning the crowded nave of the church, to hear his carefully chosen words directed at the very heart of our souls. Or would it? After years of working on his sermons I have come to the reflection that being a member of his audience or, worse, being on the receiving end of his pastoral concern must have been a distinctly uncomfortable experience. This is a man who took his responsibilities as a priest very seriously, who held himself personally accountable before God for the salvation of his parishioners' souls. Such dedication meant that he had a tendency to seize the moment, to target his preaching in a way that was often uncomfortably direct and close to the bone.
Last Tuesday the city was gripped by the fever of the Melbourne Cup. The massive amount of money gambled away, the frivolousness of the clothing, the conspicuous consumption would almost certainly have sparked a sermon that began with the words: "Is this not outrageous? Are we going to put up with it?" and ended with a plea that the money not be gambled away but diverted towards the poor (who were most likely begging outside the doors of the church). After all, horse racing and sport were a particular affliction for John. Imagine having your church next door to Flemington, with the MCG in the opposite direction, just down the road. He knew very well that those attending church and supposedly benefiting from the moral teaching in his sermons, often went from one venue to the other. The competition between the Spring Racing Carnival and divine worship would have had him steaming from the ears. This is, after all, a man who preached ever more stern sermons against the races culminating in a threat to ban those attending them from church, if they didn't improve. One can just imagine him during the footy season on the topic of Sunday games.
We have also just celebrated Memorial Day. This is a man who approved of the solemn parades celebrating such occasions, in cities where the celebration of the festivals of saints and martyrs was a common occurrence. On Anzac Day he would have been there at dawn telling the story of how the soldiers gave their lives for their country and for God, describing in vivid detail their bloody wounds, calling upon his audience to copy their zeal … and in the middle of the sermon he would suddenly have veered off and told his audience not to hit the pubs on the way home. This was a common problem when such festivals were held in public – that the audience exhibited a regrettable tendency to resort to drinking and gambling after the solemnity of the occasion. Not, mind you, that he objected to drinking per se. It was just that he would rather his parishioners didn't do it in public, where others could criticise, and where such behaviour undermined the potential benefits of a crowd of Christians being seen to return home in a decorous fashion.
Wealth and power were another constant problem. This is a man who, if he had Kerry Packer in the audience the day after he was seen losing large sums at the Crown Casino, would have no qualms about looking him in the eye and preaching on the emptiness of wealth, and evoking the pathos of the single parent struggling on social welfare. In fact, he would have suggested that the next time Kerry felt the need to write off $11 million against his taxes, he could supply a long list of charitable agencies who would benefit from his largesse.
At the same time this isn't a man who would have been doing a Tim Costello. We wouldn't find him with the drug addicts and the prostitutes at St Kilda. Rather we would find him attending the parties in Toorak and harassing the attendees and Steve Bracks to provide funding for social welfare programmes, to build shelters and clinics and safe injecting rooms, to support those agencies doing the hands-on care. This is a man who, when a mansion was left to the church in Toorak or Vaucluse, would have immediately used it as a clinic for heroin addicts or as a halfway house for prisoners out on remand – much to the disgust of the neighbours.
On the other hand, this is not a man who would have complained about you not dressing up enough for church. In fact, he was more likely to give you a dressing down for dressing up, if you were a teenager and sporting some outrageously trendy footgear that caused all the other teenagers to crane their necks in church to see whose was the most expensive, or if you were a woman at Easter dressed in a fetching new designer hat, matching suit and pearls. He would have preferred you to come attired in modest, comfortable clothing of the sort that would not attract attention or distract other parishioners from the prayers, or reading, or his words.
Finally, when it comes to politics, this is a man who would be spending half his time in Canberra, lobbying the politicians and giving them a hard time. And when they were abruptly dismissed from office over some scandal – like a misused telephone card – he'd be the first one to draw a lesson from this event and to point out the ephemeral nature of political influence and power. This is a man who had the courage to seize even the most shocking and world-shattering event and turn it into a moral lesson for his listeners. The death of someone as notorious as Lady Di would have seen him standing over her coffin, begging a television audience of millions to reflect on how empty fame is, urging them to weep, not for her loss, but for her mistaken search for happiness in material things, and to weep equally for themselves for sharing her hollow dreams. This, after all, is the man who, the day after Geoff Kennett lost the election , would have stood in the cathedral with Geoff sitting in the front pew and preached the following words (with apologies to the sermon which he did preach when the most powerful man in the eastern Roman empire was stripped of office and cowered at the alter in his church):
It is always fitting - but at this moment, above all - to say: "Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity" (Eccl. 1:2). Where now are the splendid trappings of the premiership? Where are the TV cameras? Where are the outbursts of applause and the parades and the festivities and the public holidays? Where are the paintings and the perks? Where are the uproar of the city and the acclamations during the Grand Prix and the flattering comments of the spectators? They've all gone. A blast of wind has blown away the leaves and revealed the tree to us - naked and shaken to its very roots. For such has been the impact of the blast, that it's even threatening to pull the tree up by the roots and to shake its fibres violently.
Where now are those who posed as friends? Where are the drinking parties and the public dinners? Where's the swarm of hangers-on, and the champagne that filled glasses all day long, and the varied arts of the chefs, and the cultivators of power who would do and say anything to please him? They were all night and a dream and, when day came, they vanished. They were all spring flowers and, when spring passed, they all withered. They were a shadow and melted away. They were smoke and dispersed. They were bubbles and burst. They were a spider's web and have been torn to shreds. That's why we're chanting this spiritual maxim, saying over and over: "Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity". For this maxim should be inscribed permanently on walls and on clothing and in the mall and in the home and in streets and on doors and in foyers and, above all, in each person's conscience; and it should be studied constantly. Since fraudulent matters and masks and acting are thought to be true by the majority, each of you should address this to your neighbour and in turn hear it from your neighbour at dinner, at lunch and in the office every day: "Vanity of vanities; all is vanity".
Haven't I said to you constantly that power is a runaway child? But you wouldn't put up with us. Didn't I say that it's an ungrateful employee? But you didn't want to be convinced. Look! When you objected every time that I spoke the truth, didn't I say to you: "I love you more than those who flatter you. When I criticise, I care more for you than those who aim to please."? Didn't I say in addition to these words that "wounds inflicted by friends are more trustworthy than the willing kisses of enemies" (Prov. 27:6)? If you had put up with my wounds, their kisses wouldn't have spawned for you this death; for my wounds result in good health. Their kisses, on the other hand, laid the foundation for an incurable disease.
I'm saying these things at this point, not in order to trample upon someone who's lying down, but out of a desire to make safer those who are standing; not in order to rip open again the sores of the wounded, but with the intention of preserving in secure health those who haven't yet been wounded; not in order to drown someone who is being tossed about by the waves, but to teach those sailing with a fair wind how not to end up at the bottom of the deep. I'm saying these things, not in order to reproach him nor trample upon his disaster, but out of a desire to soften your minds and induce them to pity and persuade them that what has happened is sufficient punishment. For there are many among us who are so inhuman that they have criticised us too because we have welcomed him here in church. I parade forth this man's suffering from a desire to soften their lack of compassion with my comments.
Tell me, my beloved! Why are you annoyed? "Because", you say, "the man who fled to the church is a person who constantly warred against it." So, then, we should glorify God on that account most of all - that God let him fall into such depths of necessity that he's come to know both the power and the generosity of the church. (He's learnt) its power from the enormous change in circumstance that he's undergone from his battles against it. (He's come to know) its generosity from the fact that the church he warred against is now putting forth its shield, and has taken him under its wings, and has set him in complete security. Nor has it borne any grudge for past injuries, but has opened its arms to him with much compassion.
Don't you bear a grudge, then. We're servants of him who was crucified and who says: "Forgive them, for they don't know what they're doing" (Luke 23:34). "But", someone says, "he blocked the work of the church through documents and various laws." But look, through experience he's learnt what he did and, through what he's done, is the very first to admit the wrong of it. He has become a spectacle for the state and, though silent, from this experience utters words of advice to all: "Don't do this kind of thing, in case you experience the same fate!"
I say this because such is the strength of this misfortune: it has made him who was elevated and feted above all appear rather paltry now. Were a rich and powerful person to enter, they would derive considerable benefit. For, when they saw the man who used to shake the entire state brought down from such a height and in straitened circumstances, and become more timid than a hare or a frog, and nailed to this pew without bonds, and squeezed tight by shock instead of a chain, and filled with despair and trembling, they would check their arrogance, expunge their conceit, and depart, after reflecting upon human affairs in the philosophical way that they should. The scriptures express these thoughts through sayings and teach through experience that: All flesh is grass, and all human glory is like a grass-flower. The grass withers and the flower falls off (Isa. 40: 6,7). For example: They will quickly wither away like grass and will swiftly fall away like green herbs (Ps. 37:2); or His days are like smoke (Ps. 102:3); and similar sayings. In turn, were a powerless person to enter and look at this vision, they wouldn't utterly despise themselves nor feel distress at their beggarly state. Instead, they would feel grateful that their poverty, their lack of power affords them a protected place, a wave-free harbour, a secure wall; and, on viewing these things, would choose over and over to remain where they are, rather than to have everything for a brief period and later be at risk of widespread public humiliation.
Do you see how this man's presence here affords no small benefit for both rich and poor, both lowly and lofty, both his fellow cabinet ministers and the person on the street? Do you see how each person receives medicine and departs from here after being treated by this sight alone? Have I softened your passion and cast out your anger? Have I quenched your inhumanity? Have I drawn you into sympathy? I very much think so - the faces indicate it and the fountains of tears.
A compelling preacher? A caring pastor? Most certainly. A comfortable one? Definitely not!
Author's note: The full sermon (On Eutropius), from which the above has been extracted (with alteration) can be found, along with translations of other characteristic sermons and letters, in the following. Wendy Mayer and Pauline Allen, John Chrysostom (The Early Church Fathers series), Routledge, London 2000.