Worship Among the Ruins
St. John’s Basilica, Ephesus 21 May 2023
Ephesus has long been a place of worship.
Legend has it that the first to worship here were Amazons, who worshiped the mother goddess, Kybele, creator of all things.
Kybele worship gave way to Artemis in the Iron Age, as the city became a Greek colony. The Temple of Artemis here would become one of the Seven Wonders of the World, a magnet for religious pilgrims from across the Mediterranean world. It drew sponsorship from great leaders like Croesus of Lydia and Alexander the Great.
We know from the writings of Paul, many of which were postmarked from Ephesus (1 & 2 Corinthians and 1 Timothy), that the Christian movement struggled to make inroads against Artemis worship in what was then the 3rd-largest city in the Roman Empire after Rome and Alexandria.
But the Christian church did grow, and it traces its origins not to Paul or his fellow missionaries, Aquila and Priscilla, but to John the Disciple, who was the first Bishop of Ephesus near the end of the 1st Century CE.
Ephesus continues to be a place of worship. The site of the Temple of Artemis is worth the short walk from Selçuk, even if there are only traces of its former grandeur. A more recent shrine, the House of the Virgin Mary, about 5 km away from the ancient city, high on a mountain, represents the mother of Jesus, who gave her into the care of his cousin, John, while he hung on the cross. (John’s mother was Salome, the sister of Mary – cf. Matthew 27:55-56 and Mark 15:40-41.)
Ephesus became a place of worship for me last weekend, at a remarkable interfaith service held in St. John’s Basilica.
One of my favorite places in Selçuk, the modern Turkish town that lies about 2 km from the ancient city, is St. John’s Basilica. It has been a place of Christian worship since the early 4th Century, when the religion was legalized throughout the Roman Empire by Constantine the Great.
Justinian, the great builder who erected the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople 200 years later, also built a huge basilica here above the grave of St. John. Exactly 130 meters long and 40 meters wide, the still-visible footprint of the basilica is vast. The 10-meter-high castle wall that surrounds the complex is equally impressive.
Since I moved to Izmir, I have worshipped St. John the Evangelist Anglican Church in the neighborhood of Alsancak. But there is a broader Christian community in Izmir, around 3,000 in a city of 4.4 million. Coming together in this special service in Selçuk would be Orthodox, Catholic and Anglican parishes from across western Türkiye.
St. John’s feast day was held on the 8th of May, and our interfaith service celebrated the feast on the Orthodox calendar (the 21st of May). His feast day was close in time to another Ephesian festival, the birthday of Artemis, which the Ephesians celebrated every year on the 6th of May with a long parade that snaked out of the temple along the 2 km “Sacred Way” to the city, through the main streets and back to the temple. The temple idols were carried in the procession along with floats and entertainments and pilgrims.
I arrived about 15 minutes early, just in time to get one of the last plastic chairs left out for us by the municipal government. Worshippers, about 500 of us by my estimate, were gathered in the nave of the old basilica. A podium was placed at the front of the nave between two columns. Just beyond the altar, I could glimpse the four pillars that mark the grave of St. John. From a half-pillar near the altar hung an icon of St. John, holding his gospel close to his heart.
Tales of St. John’s Crypt
There was some question among early Christians whether St. John was buried here or not. Constantine, who tried to corner the market on religious relics as he moved Christianity into the mainstream, reportedly returned from St. John’s gravesite empty-handed. (He did nab the remains of St. Timothy from a grave closer to Ephesus Proper and took them to his Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople.) Constantine’s failure to find John’s bones fueled the legend that John had ascended into heaven in the same way that his aunt and cousin had gone.
Another tradition held that St. John was merely sleeping, waiting for his master, Jesus, to return to earth. In the Middle Ages, one monk at the site claimed to hear snoring late at night. Who could have made this sound other than a living, sleeping saint down in the crypt below the altar?
Occasionally dust would rise from the cracks around the tomb. (The ground is known to shake here in western Türkiye.) This dust, connected to the saint through the tales of snoring, was collected and sold as a relic, a medieval treatment for many ailments. It even had a name: “Manna.”
Before I sat down, I noticed friends from my church – and the Anglican church in Didyma – all around me. I am really grateful for the Christian community that I have found in Izmir, the group of expatriates, travelers, and young Turkish Christians who celebrate the Eucharist together every Sunday. It is a foundation of my life here. I seldom miss a service.
As the service started, I began to understand just how broad and diverse the Christian community is in western Türkiye. The priests entered, each dressed in distinct garb. The orthodox priests and attendants wore black robes and black, peaked caps. The Orthodox metropolitan of Izmir, Bartholemew Samaras, also wore a red stole which was held by a black-clad attendant. The Catholic and Anglican clergy wore white robes.
The service began with a song – a song I knew, the Doxology that opens so many Christian services. I sang,
“Praise God from whom all blessings flow,
Praise HIm all creatures here below…”
As I sang, I was surrounded by many voices. Everyone knew the song. But the languages were diverse. English, Greek, Turkish, Italian, Polish. People were singing the same song I was singing.
Yet it was different.
It was awesome.
It was what an interfaith service in western Türkiye should have sounded like.
Vespers Song
The Orthodox clergy went first and led out in a vespers. Their service was sung. An older priest, robed in black, led the readings. A woman sang the responses in a beautiful, wavering alto voice – she was the only woman on the platform that evening.
The vespers service was all in Greek, a language I know very little of, sadly. I recognized the Lord’s Prayer by the cadences of those reciting it. I recognized the gospel reading by the beautifully bound gospel the priest read from. The blessing of the service came with incense, shaken on the priests and the congregation by two orthodox priests, one Greek and the other clearly Turkish.
From Basilica to Ruin, 1304-1402
Justinian’s basilica to St. John stood for 700 years. It was sacked by invading Turks in 1304, by which time Ephesus’s harbor had silted up and the city had fallen into decline. The Turks turned the basilica into a mosque.
The Turks ransomed three priceless artifacts, however: a piece of the True Cross that John himself had removed, a golden chain the apostle had worn around his neck, and a shirt that his aunt Mary had woven for him. Christian pilgrims continued to be welcomed to the basilica, paying a small fee to worship and reflect at the grave of Christ’s apostle.
The Eucharist Service
When the vespers ended, the priests at the front reset and the white-robed, western priests took over the service. There were three Bible readings: the Old Testament in English, the New Testament in Italian, and the Gospel in Turkish. Catholic Archbishop Martin Kmetec from Izmir led out, wearing his scarlet cap.
My Anglican chaplain, James Buxton, gave a short sermon. He reminded us of the Easter story – of which St. John, the first to enter the empty tomb of Jesus, had played a key role. He also pointed out the ruins amidst which we worshipped, which had themselves experienced a kind of resurrection by archaeologists over the past 140 years.
St. John’s Basilica was completely destroyed by the Mongols of Tamerlane in 1402. By that time, Ephesus was no more, and the village of Selçuk had grown up around the base of Ayasuluk Hill, on which the basilica had stood. It disappeared under layers of soil for almost 500 years until archeological studies began in earnest in 1922 and continue to this very day. A Byzantine monastery west of the basilica is the latest discovery.
Reconstruction has revealed two distinct styles: the flat, red bricks used by the Roman Empire and thick cut blocks of marble from an even earlier age.
I recognized the cadences of the Nicene Creed, led by the archbishop and repeated the parts I could remember (we regularly spoke the Apostles’ Creed at my former church, which I know by heart).
Another hymn began to play. I recognized the tune immediately, but it took a moment longer to figure out the name of the hymn. Perhaps it was the many voices; perhaps the many languages that stunned me. Finally I sang:
Though like the wanderer, the sun gone down,
darkness be over me, my rest a stone;
yet in my dreams I'd be
nearer, my God, to thee;
nearer, my God, to thee, nearer to thee!
The Stones Could Cry Out
I looked up at the stone pillar that towered to my right. It had once supported two of the six domes that covered the nave in which I worshipped.
It was ancient stone. Stone is indestructible – I imagined onrushing Tamerlane and the many earthquakes this region had experienced. Still these blocks stood, part of something bigger, part of a sacred place.
My mind was drawn to another sacred place at the base of Ayasuluk Hill, just a 10-minute walk away: the Temple of Artemis, for centuries a place of pilgrimage in Ephesus and one of the Seven Wonders of the World in its day. Today that ancient temple is a ruin: one standing pillar and a landscape of rubble. But it lives on in St. John’s Basilica and in the Isa Bey Mosque that lies between the temple and the basilica.
No doubt, these stones beside me had come from the Temple of Artemis. I wondered at the hymns to that goddess that must have echoed from them – and the ancient languages they witnessed. I tried to do a little math. St. John’s had been a church of one kind or another for about 1000 years, from the first standing wooden church, through the grand basilica, and on to the arrival of the triumphant Turks and, later, rampaging Mongols.
How long might these blocks have heard hymns in the Temple of Artemis? Well, it had been rebuilt during the time of Alexander (330s BCE), and it had endured to the reign of Constantine (330s CE) or about 700 years. The Christians were in the lead! And, I hoped, we would sing here again someday soon.
The service closed with the Eucharist. The orthodox and catholic archbishops came together to bless the bread and share a sip of wine. Then the priests fanned out throughout the nave and distributed communion wafers to the worshippers.
Few of us wanted to leave. Groups clung together in the nave of the old basilica, taking photos, enjoying the sunset. Fellowship knit us together. This was a worship service I would not soon forget.
This was the first interfaith service in Ephesus. It was an idea that would have happened earlier had it not been for the Covid-19 Pandemic. There is a long history of fellowship between the churches. Metropolitan Bartholemew reminded Father James that Orthodox believers had worshipped in Anglican churches in the years after the Great Fire destroyed the Greek Quarter of Izmir at the end of the Greco-Turkish War in 1922.
St. John’s Sunday next year would be the second such service. Let’s hope it’s a yearly occurence thereafter.
Many of the researched facts in this story I got from Izabela Miszcack’s The Secrets of Ephesus, ASLAN Publishing, 2020. It’s a great resource to read both before and after a visit to Ephesus.
A few more notes.
The school year is counting down, with just three more weeks to go.
This weekend I will finish the Efes-Mimas Trail. I began it in Ephesus last September, and I expect to reach the shores of Izmir Bay near the ancient town of Mimas (today Eski Mordoğan) sometime this weekend if the weather holds up. I will have several newsletters about hiking later in the summer.
I’m looking forward to late June, when my father will visit me. We will visit the Seven Churches of Revelation while he is here.
I’m circling back to revisit my favorite places. Remember Teos? I just learned about an old pirate hide-out near there, and I want to check it out!
The second round of the Turkish presidential election will be on Sunday. I will try to post a little more this weekend about expatriate Turks. In an election with margins this close, they show overwhelming support for the incumbent and may decide the election in his favor. It would seem crazy that he would lose the vote here in Turkey yet still be comfortably re-elected, but that’s what just might happen.
Izmir is so cool. One of my American friends when we lived in Kayseri joked that Izmir experienced the Enlightenment, whereas certain other parts of Turkey did not. Of course the same is true of America, lol.
This was a great read. I am always struck by the historical insight into the interwoven economic, social, and religious concerns of the Artemis-worshipping Ephesians provided in Acts 19. The complex set of values held by BCE Ephesians makes for a fascinating study on how the citizenry rebuilt its core identity around a new set of beliefs and customs in following centuries. Thank you for highlighting their ongoing practice of building new traditions and strengthening the bonds between everyone in the community.