25 December 2015

Christmas Reflections for the Church in Russia, 2015.

  From time to time the church here asks me to write for their magazine - “Der Bote.” This year I was given the task of writing a sermon for their Christmas issue. My space was very limited, so I can't help but feel that the text is underdeveloped. That said, I thought that by sharing an English translation of the text with you, you might gain a bit of insight into my view of the life and piety of the Russian Lutheran church. This is not the sermon I would have given in the U.S., but I hope that it succeeds both in meeting the people “where they are” and at the same time calling them ahead to where they might, with the Spirit's guidance, go. Below, then, is the sermon I wrote for them with only some slight expansion of the first paragraph in order to help you understand the context. The sermon is titled “The Day After the Holiday.”
  The winter holidays in Russia are long and full of repeated celebrations – because the Eastern Orthodox Church maintains the Julian calendar, they celebrate Christmas when our Gregorian calendar tells us that it is January 7. The bigger celebration here, New Year's Eve, is also celebrated twice (the second time with a degree of self-depreciating humor), on December 31/January 1 and “Old New Year” 13 days later. All the while the country begins to go into full holiday mode in the last days of December and falls more or less into a stupor until the middle of January... Doesn't it seem to you that people tend to find that it is hard to “wake up” after that? It is, after all, easy to get used to doing nothing.
  Unfortunately this is the case not only during the winter holidays. All year round we tend to do just enough to get by. We go with the flow; we think and act according to old habits. This helps us feel comfortable; being tethered to what is familiar protects us from unpleasant surprises. On the other hand, though, we stop waiting for pleasant surprises, too... Maybe that's because we know, in the end, that we really don't deserve them.
  Despite this quality of us humans, God continues to surprise us. This is what we celebrate today – that God decided to intervene in our situation to save us from ourselves and from separation from Him. It is this separation that is reflected in our laziness, our fears and other vice. From our end we've done nothing to suggest to God that we deserve to be saved; He acts entirely out of His mercy. That is why it is written “grace appeared.” This phrase appears in our readings both for Christmas Eve (Tit. 2-11-14) and for Christmas day (Tit 3.4-7). Grace appearing is not the logical result of our actions. It has nothing to do with human standards of justice. The author of this text pays little attention to explaining why grace appears, though the answer to this question underlies everything in the text. In the 2nd chapter we are dealing with one very long sentence that, if you cut out the dependent phrases reads: “grace appeared so that we would live, awaiting...” In a similar way in the 3rd chapter we read: “when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy..., so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” (.4-.5a,.7)
  In these dense phrases we see that Titus was written not only for the holiday, a joyful day of praise, but also for the next day, when life returns to its usual patterns. This letter was written, it seems, not for the first two weeks of January, but for the 350 days that follow. After all our Christian life is not only about what God has already done, but also about God's continuing work in the world and in us. Grace was revealed, yes, that's true, but that was not God's final goal. “Grace appeared so that...
   God's grace, which we celebrate in a special way today, defines our present and our future. Nothing else can transform our world so powerfully. It is grace which frees us from our laziness, our inertness and our fear of the unknown. It is grace, Luther says in one of his sermons on this text, that makes us a “channel through which flows a constant stream of God's blessings to other people.” That is another reason for our great joy today! Just like Titus, we live in the day after the holiday. Praise God that there is the Christmas news which shakes us up, enlivens us, inspires us and directs us to concrete actions for the sake of those in need. And who are they? Aren't they the refugees in your town from eastern Ukraine or Syria? Aren't they those who do not yet know about God's love and need you to witness to them about it? Aren't they those who during these holidays are alone or in poor health? You know better than I do who these people are. And you know why you want to help them – because grace has been revealed. Alleluia! 




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