The golden-mouthed preacher
John Chrysostom in Antioch
His name means golden-mouthed — Chrysostomos — and it was given to him after his death, by the people who had read his sermons for a generation and could think of no better description.
John grows up in Antioch, the son of a Roman military commander who dies when John is an infant. His mother Anthusa, widowed at twenty, refuses a second marriage and devotes herself to his education. He studies rhetoric under Libanius, the greatest pagan teacher of the age. Libanius reportedly says, when asked who should succeed him: It would have been John — if the Christians had not stolen him.
John spends years as an ascetic in the mountains outside Antioch, living in a cave, memorizing scripture, nearly destroying his health with fasting. His constitution is permanently damaged. He is brought back to the city, ordained, and given a pulpit.
And then he opens his mouth.
His sermons run for hours and the crowds do not leave. He preaches through entire books of the Bible, verse by verse — a practice he learned from the tradition of Antiochene interpretation that emphasized the literal, historical meaning of the text rather than allegory. He preaches on the obligation of the rich to the poor with the same directness as Basil, from the same gospel, with equal fury.
He preaches in the same city where the disciples were first called Christians, from the same tradition Ignatius once led, from the same streets where Paul made tents.
For eleven years Antioch hears him. Then Constantinople calls.
“Not to share our own wealth with the poor is theft from the poor and deprivation of their means of life; we do not possess our own wealth but theirs.”
— John Chrysostom, Homily on Lazarus, c. 390 AD
“Now there was a certain rich man, and he was clothed in purple and fine linen, living in luxury every day. A certain beggar, named Lazarus, was laid at his gate, full of sores, and desiring to be fed with the crumbs that fell from the rich man's table. Yes, even the dogs came and licked his sores.”
Chrysostom did not comfort the comfortable. He preached to wealthy congregations in one of the richest cities in the empire and told them that what they were hoarding was not theirs.
He was not a Marxist. He was not a revolutionary. He was reading Luke and Matthew and saying: this is what it says. This is what you own. This is whose it is.
The most dangerous preachers in the history of the church have not been the ones with exotic theology. They have been the ones who read the plain text plainly and refused to soften it for the people in the expensive seats.
What would it mean to hear the Sermon on the Mount as if for the first time — as if none of the comfort of familiarity had arrived yet?