With the Nativity of Christ! (С Рождеством Христовым!)

The title of this post is a literal translation of how we wish someone a Merry Christmas in Russia. While the same grammatical form is used on all sorts of occasions ("With the New Year!" "With your birthday!" "With the Day of Air Force Paratroopers!"), I think that it works best on Christmas; there would be no real reason to celebrate this day were it not for faith that Christ's nativity is "with" us now, that it is present in and among us despite a separation of 2000 years and many miles. 
  
In the season when we celebrate the birth of Emmanuel, I pray that all of us might be encouraged again to be "with" this holiday; it is my convinction that we will then experience the peace and joy of knowing that we are never alone.

S Rozhestvom Khristovym!
Bradn

* * *
Not long ago I was asked to write a very short Christmas meditation for “Loza” (“The Vine”), the magazine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Urals, Siberia, and Far East. I share it with you (below) in order to give a small insight into the the life of the church where I am serving. Despite the fact that their lives differ in many ways from yours, throughout the world we are united by the common need to see the incarnate Word embracing the world.

 

 

“And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.” John 1:14a (Verse of the day. Dec. 24)
“And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.” John 1:14a (Verse of the day. Dec. 25)

 No, the repetition above is not a typo, it is an exceptional situation – as you will notice later this month when you open up your “Daily Readings,” the verse (rather, half-verse) is the same on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. The words are well-known, simple and beautiful. Is that the reason why we read them twice in a row?

 It would be easy to accept these words simply as a“theological formula,” as the way of correctly expressing the church's teaching. But it seems to me that we come back to this verse again and again not in order to memorize it, but in order to over and over again dive into its mystery and meaning for us.

In these few short words many questions about the Incarnation are raised. How could a small, helpless child be the Ever-eternal Logos? Can the Divine really become that which it earlier was not? Would the All-Holy and Perfect God really find our dirty and sinful world worthy of a visit, let alone come to “dwell” here?

Throughout the centuries many theologians and pious believers have tried to “save” God
from real contact with this world, have tried to show how “the Word became flesh” actually
has nothing to do with matter. But John 1:14 shows that God decided to truly embrace the
world precisely through contact with it. By taking on living, human flesh God found a way
to our hearts, strove to convince us that we are understood and we are accepted.

Two days in a row we think about this mystery and pray about it, with the hope that we
would feel new birth here and now. As the Russian poet Zinaida Gippius wrote during the
dark days of World War I: “Be born, Eternal Word! / Ignite the earth's silence / Embrace
our native land.” (“Our Christmas”)

Warmed by such love, don't we wish to response to it through service for the sake of our
neighbor? In such a way we can witness in our lives to the fact that the Word continues to
dwell with us today.

Merry Christmas to you, brothers and sisters in Christ!

Khakasia

As I have frequently mentioned in this blog, Lutherans in Russia are quite literally few and far between. This creates a number of challenges for those trying to offer spiritual support for believers here, and one of the ways that this is addressed in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Urals, Siberia and Far East is through the ministry of 4 area deans ("probsts"). In some situations the dean acts as the representative of the wider church, in others the most important thing is to be an organizer and fund-raiser, in still other cases the dean's job is focused on education and /or pastoral care. I was appointed "acting dean" for the Central and Eastern Siberia deanery at the synod assembly in October, and the last few weeks had me moving into this role in a new way as I once again left Novosibirsk for travels to other congregations.

My first stop was with the small group associated with our church in Barnaul. As I frequently notice when visiting our congregations, the quality of church members does much to compensate for their small quantity. The women in this congregation, despite their age and weakness, have a serious prayer life and desire to know and apply Scripture in their life. Their dedication impressed me...

But I couldn't stay there long; I needed to be many kilometers east in Khakasia in 2 days time, but simply could not find a direct route there. When I saw, before I left Novosibirsk, that the best option was to take the train and spend a whole day waiting for a transfer in Novokuznetsk, I decided that it was time to think creatively - perhaps I do something useful with those 16 hours? I remembered, then, that there is an independent Lutheran congregation in the city of Prokopevsk, about 30 miles away. I made contact with one of their leaders, and we arranged that I would come to Friday evening prayer service. "A Friday evening prayer service?" you may be asking. Yes. This congregation, with strong piestist roots, has been able to preserve some of the central practices of that tradition, despite the changing times. Perhaps most importantly, they made a decision early (that is, in the 1990s) to start having worship in Russian. This meant that they were able to pass their faith on to the next generation and attract new people as well. I spent quite a bit of time that day with two of the congregation's leaders, Brother Peter and Brother Viktor. They took me around, engaged me in their worship service, and showed great hospitality. I hope that our contacts with that congregation can continue, especially insofar as I find them to be a very good example of how central aspects of older ways of doing things can be maintained and modified in order that the Gospel reach people today.


By the next morning I had arrived in Abakan, where I was able to start the main portion of the trip - more than a week getting to know the numerous congregations scattered through the state of Khakasia and the southern portion of the Krasnoyarsk krai.

The red dots on this map mark the congregations that we
visited in the region. 

Until May of this year the region was served by Pastor Stephan Waganer, who worked for the Evangelical Lutheran Mission of Lower Saxony, as I do. In the meantime, the congregations have had to rely on their own resources. Zoya Gentse, recently blessed as the lay coordinator of the region, has helped them in their journey. I arrived there a few days after the arrival of Pastor Dimitri Schweitz, currently serving in Omsk; he had already visited the two "city" congregations (in the capital of Khakasia, Abakan, and its large suburb, Chernogorsk); ahead lay many kilometers of travel through the steppe of south central Siberia.

The landscape there, especially in the region we visited on the first day, in western Khakasia, reminded me very much of my home in southeastern Montana - rolling hills, wide open spaces, more livestock than people, snow blowing across the road and into the ditch... I immediately felt at home. I also immediately felt that I was visiting a region that is even more seriously affected by poverty than other rural areas I've visited here. One of the two congregations we visited that day (Borets) was very much 

like Barnaul - faithful elderly women who met weekly on their own, even if they hadn't seen a pastor for the better part of a year. In the much larger village of Shira, the congregation was facing quite different challenges; despite having more people engaged in congregational life, they were having a hard time meeting without the presence of a pastor. Part of the problem was practical it is hard to gather everyone together since they live far apart and there is no serious public transportation), while another part of the problem was both practical and spiritual - they do not really feel confident enough to lead worship themselves. Pastor Schweitz, who was born in the USSR (Uzbekistan) and whose family moved to Germany when he was a young man, connected immediately with the people in the congregations - I was happy to have him lead worship, while I considered my main job to be observation and acting as sign of the larger church's care and concern.

In Shira and Borets we saw (without knowing it) examples of the two of the three main types of congregations in the region - one elderly, German-based, and capable of meeting in homes weekly for worship, and the second younger, not necessarily German, and less capable of maintaining congregational life on their own (though with significant potential for growth in this area). It was already clear that one of the areas of ministry for the next pastor in the region would be to work intensely with lay leaders in this second group to help them reach a level where they could meet weekly even without a pastor.

The third group is those 3 congregations in the region that are organized and strong enough to be officially registered. Overall we held Holy Communion services in 8 different congregations (and would have had one more joint worship service for two other congregations were it not for mis-communication regarding time), and were present at a meeting of the "parish council," responsible for joint ministries of the congregations. It is clear that there are a lot of different needs (from a Communion set in Chernogorsk to a new roof for the prayer house in Bograd, from worship leadership training to Bible study), but more than that, what stuck out for me was the gifts that the Spirit had already given to these small communities, and dreams for how ministries in the region might develop further. 

After worship in Bograd, where we blessed their prayer house
after the completion of renovations to the interior.

As we made our way from one congregation to another, the 10^th anniversary of my ordination slipped by unnoticed. I thought about it only after my return, when I considered the ways in which God has blessed me in this decade as a minister of Word and Sacrament. It was appropriate that I was "on the move" at this moment; my days as a pastor have not been filled with stability, but have constantly kept me on my toes as I look for what the Spirit might be preparing to do next in my life and in the life of those with whom I serve.

Below: a few more pictures from our journey. 

(All photos provided by Pastor Dimitri - a big "spasibo" to him!)