43. Iconium and the Priestless Church – Dr. Jeffrey & Angie Goh

Reflections on a Pilgrimage to Turkey [10]

“Now at Iconium they entered together into the Jewish synagogue, and so spoke that a great company believed, both of Jews and of Greeks.” [Acts 14:1]

[1] St Paul icon. [2] St Thecla, the First Female Evangelist, a contemporary of St Paul, and the First Virgin Martyr. [3] Grotto of St Paul with the wall paintings of Paul and Thecla, 6th century.

Our visit to Iconium was interesting but sad.

Iconium [Konya in Turkish] is a city in the Central Anatolia Region of Turkey. With a population of just over a million people within its metropolitan area, Konya is the seventh most populous city in Turkey. And yet, it is a city without a Christian community.

Christian History

It was sad, considering the original missionary effort of Paul and Barnabas who preached in Iconium during the First Missionary Journey in about 47-48 AD (see Acts 14:1-5 and Acts 14:21). Paul and Silas probably visited it again during the Second Missionary Journey in about 50 AD (see Acts 16:2). In Christian legend, it was also the birthplace of Saint Thecla, a very interesting figure to study in conjunction with women’s ministry during the time of St Paul. During the Byzantine Empire, Arab invaders had repeatedly destroyed the town between the 7th and 9th centuries.

Saint Thecla of Iconium

Thecla was a saint of the early Christian Church, and a follower of Saint Paul. She is not mentioned in the New Testament, but the earliest record of her comes from the apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla, a document of the 2nd century.

Out of the living tradition of the early church to the present, the following records have captured our interest:

Thecla, raised in a wealthy pagan family in Iconium, was very well-educated in the pagan philosophy and poetry, and promised to Thamyris, a pagan prince, for marriage at the age of 18. She converted to Christianity through Paul’s preaching, renounced marriage and devoted her life as a virgin for Christ.
By two miracles, she was saved from certain death. First, Paul was ordered to be scourged and banished from the city of Iconium for his teaching, and Thecla was ordered burned to death. But a storm providentially extinguished the flames, and she escaped with Paul and went with him to Antioch in Pisidia. Second, in Pisidia she was thrown to the wild beasts and was again saved from death by a miracle. After this she went to Myra where the Apostle was, and finally to Seleucia where she lived and died a hermitess.
She was the first woman evangelist and labored in the work of Christian mission, having been encouraged by St. Paul to proclaim the Gospel.
On the walls of the Grotto of St Paul in Ephesus, there are paintings of Paul and Thecla portrayed side by side. These images have generated a great deal of interest. In his book In Search of Paul, John Dominic Crossan reports that both images are of the same height, meaning that they were of equal importance. Both have their right hands raised in the teaching gesture, meaning that both were of equal authority. But, the image of Paul is untouched, while Thecla’s image has been disfigured. The eyes are scratched out and the upraised right hand has been erased. To the original creators, Thecla and Paul were equally authoritative. To those who later vandalized the images, we easily see the narrow-minded spirit of intolerance in which only the male could be apostolic and authoritative. Consequently, the female image has been blinded and silenced. Reflections on the New Testament, too, often bring up stories of Jesus empowering and upholding the apostolate of women in the midst of male discontent. Christians who have mothers and sisters, wives and daughters need to seriously face a question of fundamental human dignity and justice: How do they really treat women in their lives, at home, in church, in society? Are women less clean, less worthy, less equal than men?
In the Eastern Church the wide circulation of the Acts of Paul and Thecla led to a great veneration of Thecla. She was called “Apostle and protomartyr among women“. Not only was the veneration of her especially great in a number of Oriental cities, but her popularity appeared very early also in Western Europe. Parishes are named after her in the West.
The Greek Church celebrates her feast on 24 September and gives her the title of “Protomartyr among women and equal to the Apostles”. In the Western Church, her feast day is 23 September – the First Virgin Martyr.

Our Quiet Mass

We celebrated Mass at a small Catholic Church in Iconium, run by two religious sisters from Italy. The church is not serving a living Christian community, for no such community exists. It does not have a resident priest, but the church is useful for pilgrims who are warmly welcomed to use it for Christian services.

The altarpiece in the Catholic Church, Iconium. Photo © Teresa Sim.

We had some conversation with the two Religious Sisters. Of particular interest was the altarpiece in the church which shows a few features in the Last Supper quite unfamiliar to what we have been accustomed to seeing in the Western Church.

If one of the interesting things people do when they look at an artistic representation of the Last Supper is to identify Christ, Peter, John and Judas, that task is not at all difficult here. Jesus is at the head of the table on the left, while Peter is seated directly opposite him. John is the young man immediately next to Christ. Judas is the one stretching out his hand and dipping into the dish.
Everyone has a halo, Judas included. That is a surprise. In all the Last Supper paintings we have seen so far, Judas is denied the halo when others are drawn with one.
Peter is seated directly opposite Jesus. That’s another surprise. According to one of the Sisters, this artistic arrangement is very common in their part of the world. But three points captivated our attention and deserve special mention. First, all the disciples are shown with a slight size-reduction, out of respect for Christ. Second, Peter, though seated at the direct opposite end of the table to Christ, is placed lower, again out of respect for Christ. And third, Peter is placed in that position by Christ, to lead the rest, to be at the head of the table after Christ has ascended to heaven but not in Christ’s chair and always of a lower stature.
In place of bread and wine, the symbol of fish is used, its head pointing to Christ. What does the fish symbolise? The Greek word for fish is made up of five Greek letters “I – x – th – u – s” which is an acronym for Jesus-Christ-God-Son-Saviour. “Ixthus” the fish has from the ancient time been a Christian symbol that points to Jesus Christ Son of God the Saviour.

Meditating on the altarpiece, what captured our imagination was the display of the fish instead of the bread and wine. While the familiar bread- and-wine more readily prompts us to think of the Real Presence of Christ, the fish does not. But, in pointing to Jesus, physically here in the painting and acrostically in the word-play, the fish alerts us once again to something deeper. It challenges us to move beyond unthinking and over-zealous claims of Real Presence, to the remembrance of what Christ has done for us on Calvary, and of what it seriously means to be Christians and a believing community. In memory of Him who died, so that a community of disciples would be gathered in His name, this altarpiece reminds us of three things we should never do:

First, never to be forgetful of Christ’s headship, but remember not to usurp His role. The Risen Christ did not tell Peter to feed and care for Peter’s sheep and lambs. Three times Jesus Christ the Good Shepherd told Peter to “feed my lambs, tend my sheep, feed my sheep” [John 21:15-17]. Conscientious ministers of whatever titles and descriptions find it right here the challenge to meditate on the difference between ownership and accountability.
Second, never in Christian living and ministry plot, connive and manoeuvre for personal profit like Judas, but remember not to sell Christ short.
Third, never to elevate one’s position and status above others in the faith community, but be ever mindful that ministry is service and not domination. “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you” [Matthew 20:25-26]. Believers of the Eucharistic Lord gather as a community of love, not as a society of rich and poor, or governors and governed, or a hierarchy of dignitaries and insignificant members, or a few with power are to decide while the rest without power are merely to listen. A community of love must be truly characterised by mutual respect and co-responsibility. At their best, these characters do not remain at the level of mere slogans or form parts of a beautiful text that sounds nice for a brief season and then filed away and forgotten, serving only the archival purposes of a convenient record for misleading academic researches.

Finally, meditating on this altarpiece reminds us of practical questions Catholics often ask concerning the Eucharist.

People ask: Must we receive communion on the tongue? Is it true that it is irreverent to receive communion by hand? Well, nowhere in Scripture does it say that Jesus who ate the Last Supper with his disciples insisted that they should receive the bread on their tongues! He took the bread, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to his disciples, in the same way as he did at the wilderness when he fed the five thousand. He broke the bread and passed it round for distribution. That was that. Besides, ask those old English ladies who wrote to the editor of The Catholic Herald, and you will discover that, at least to them, it is extremely rude to stick out your tongue when the minister says, “The Body of Christ”!
Those who have heard or read about a movement that calls for a return of the old [Tridentine] way of celebrating Mass, where the priest turned his back to the people, have asked what we thought of it. Again, our answer is usually simple and straight forward: read any of the Gospel accounts of the Last Supper, or look at any artistic representation of it, and see if you find Jesus, who instituted the Eucharist at the Last Supper, spending the time with his back turned against his followers before turning around and insisting upon them to kneel at the communion rail with their mouths wide open and their tongues stuck out to receive bread-broken-to-be-shared. If the Master didn’t do it, why are we insisting otherwise?

You are most welcome to respond to this post. Email your comments to us at jeffangiegoh@gmail.com. You can also be dialogue partners in this Ephphatha Coffee-Corner Ministry by sending us questions for discussion.

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