Not “A Faith of Protest and Mere Denial” - Lutheranism for the Post-Soviet World

Yesterday I had the opportunity to participate in and read a paper at a conference entitled “The Churches of the Reformation in their Moral and Political Responsibility for the One World,” held in Hermannsburg, Germany, at the University of Applied Sciences for Intercultural Theology (FIT). A number of people in attendance asked that I share the text of my presentation, and so I decided it might be interesting to put up here, too. If all goes well next year a modified / expanded / footnoted version of this paper will be published together with the contribution of the scholars from around the world who took part in this conference. In addition to the text itself, I've added a small afterward in order to eliminate one possible misinterpretation of the intent of this paper.

Not “A Faith of Protest and Mere Denial” - Lutheranism for the Post-Soviet World

The Churches of the Reformation in Their Moral and Political Responsibility for One World Conference, Hermannsburg. 25 June 2016.

Rev. Bradn Buerkle

Greetings to you on this significant day in the history of our tradition, The Day of the Presentation of the Augsburg Confession! Perhaps in 14 years time we'll come together again, to once more look backwards and forwards about the ways the Reformation has affected our world.

I see this presentation as an opportunity to reflect on my experience and to share my thoughts about the influence of the Reformation on the world's largest country. I must say at time it has been frustrating. I don't know how often I've explained that Martin Luther and Martin Luther King are two different people. I've been in the odd situation of trying to convince someone that no, Martin Luther did not hang himself, but died an ordinary death, etc. Such misunderstandings are not that surprising given that objective information on religion (and, in particular, Western Christianity) was hard to find in the not too distant past. But one would expect that practicing Lutherans would have a sense of crucial aspects of the Reformation. However, even here there are problems. For example, when speaking with one lay preacher in Siberia, I learned from him the difference between Orthodox, Baptists and Lutherans: the first drink and baptize babies, the second neither drink nor baptize babies, while “we” don't drink but do baptize babies.

In preparing for this paper, I thought about why this should this be the case. One of the goals of this conference is to speak about the responsibility of our tradition for the one world, but it seems that the Russian Protestant churches have not ever been able to look beyond the walls of their own church, even within their own country. Instead, to a large degree, believers throughout the world have been caring for (or attempting to care for) them rather than the other way around. At various times in history political and church leaders from Germany, Denmark, and the United States (to name a few) have intervened with Russian authorities on behalf of Christians in general or Protestants in particular. Because of its diaspora or quasi-diaspora status and its place as a minority in an Orthodox-dominated country, international ties have been mostly about Russia Christians receiving support from abroad, the exception being Russian-Germans who emigrated to other parts of the world and helped support the Lutheran churches in their new homeland, whether that be in the Americas or in Europe.

But to return to the central question of this paper, I ask once again – why has the influence on the Reformation in Russia been so small? Why does the author who drew me to Russia, Fyodor Dostoevsky, see Lutheranism as “a faith of protest and mere denial,” offering nothing positive to the Christian world?¹ Shouldn't it have been clear to him, as it is to me, that the churches of the Reformation and the Orthodox churches have a lot to learn from each other?

It would be one thing if Dostoevsky and other Russian thinkers only had limited experience with Lutherans during there visits to the West or through literature. Then their superficial and negative impression would be understandable. Dostoevsky, though, lived in a country where the Lutheran church was a state church, the second largest Christian confession in the empire. It's congregational buildings and members were prominent in the capital of St. Petersburg, the city Dostoevsky called home.² Certainly Dostoevsky knew of Lutherans in Omsk, where he was imprisoned; there was even a Lutheran congregation in the small city of Staraya Russa in the Novgorod region, where he wrote “The Brothers Karamazov.”

By Dostoevsky's lifetime, Russian Lutherans had made great contributions to country and society. For centuries foreigners had come to Russia to serve the country in various capacities. While some of these found it in their interests to convert to Eastern Orthodoxy³, many preserved their faith – from engineers and miners in the Altay region to farmers on the Volga and the Black Sea, from artisans and craftsman in Moscow to officers in the military serving in the Far East, from architects in the capital to governors in Siberia, the Lutheran presence in the country was significant and stretched back to the 16^th century. Names every Russian knew – the painter Karl Brullov,

 Franz Lefort - Peter the Great's ally in reforming the Russian military, 

the jeweler Karl Faberge,

Prince Michael Andreas Barclay de Tolly, whose status stands prominently on Nevsky Prospekt, the first Field Marshal and Minister of War during the war with Napoleon 

– were Protestant. If one looks carefully, it is relatively easy to see that the influence of Protestants on the country was not, in fact, small, it was significant. As citizens of the Russian empire, their positive influence was high, disproportionally high given their numbers.

Why, then, was there so little interest in the Reformation in Russia among its intellectual leaders? My proposal is that the root of the problem here lies in the kind of influence that mainline Protestants (Lutheran and Reformed) had on Russian society. More to the point – they saw they had something to contribute (and contributed very generously) as citizens of the country, but they acted as if the Reformation had no positive role to play in the spiritual / intellectual / mental and religious environment of the country.

What might explain that? There could be various reasons. One that seems obvious to us today is that Lutherans might have experienced a deep respect for the Eastern church and its traditions and did not want, as immigrants and ethnic minorities to the country, to disturb the traditional faith of the country. Unfortunately, from a historical point of view, this is unlikely to have been the case. Among some Protestants, yes, respect for Orthodoxy probably played a certain role. However, many more foreigner visitors to Russia at this time were incapable of understanding why Orthodoxy might be attractive, instead dismissing Eastern Christianity as a superstitious form of faith reflecting the relatively uneducated status of the Russian masses.

The reluctance of Protestants to spread their spirit to Russia, then, seems to lie not with the relationship of Protestants to Orthodoxy but with finding their own place as a minority in the country. Here it is important that we briefly think about the status of the Lutheran church in Russia throughout its history.

It is difficult to do this briefly, but I will make the attempt.

Lutherans came to Russia at first with embassies to the Russian tsar to see if they might find an ally in the fight against Rome; secretly, they hoped to try to convert him. That some of them had hope shows quite clearly that foreigners have a hard time understanding Russia – there was not the slightest sliver of a chance that Ivan IV (“the Terrible”) would consider changing his faith. While Ivan could treat Lutheran guests politely from time to time, at other times he would get enraged, even hitting one theologian on the head with a whip when the he spoke poorly of an Orthodox leader. Lutherans were allowed to build a church building in Moscow in 1574/5, but 3 years later the German neighborhood of the city (together with the church) was burned down upon Ivan's order.

St. Michael's Lutheran in Moscow as it looked on the eve of the Revolution

During the 16^th and throughout the 17^th centuries, the Lutheran church grew, but had to deal with a high degree of instability related to the place of foreigners in the Russian state. Many new foreigners were coming in to the country, some invited related to needs of the state, others as refugees. On the one hand, they experienced a degree of religious tolerance that was on a fairly high level compared to other places at the time; on the other hand, they could have very little confidence in their status, since everything depended on a particular tsar's particular needs.

Under Peter I and his successors in the 18^th century there was an explosion of foreign influence in the country, both in terms of numbers (thanks to territorial expansion and immigration) and in terms of prominence. Great changes in the life of the Orthodox church were undertaken by Peter, who saw that conservative forces tended to gather there to resist his reforming projects. Peter's opponents were right to see that Protestant church-state relationships served as models for these reforms, even if they were carried out by the Orthodox theologian Feofan Prokopovich.

Foreigners continued to play a over-sized role throughout the century, though this was a mixed blessing. By the reign of Catherine II (1762-96) this issue became particularly prominent. In her years the number of Lutherans grew exponentially thanks to her invitation extended to farmers from Germany to settle the Volga region. The growth of Lutherans (and a smattering of other Western Christian groups, too) was such that they (and Catherine!) had to be particularly careful not to be seen as misusing their position to the disadvantage of the Orthodox population.

The 19^th century was characterized by attempts to bring stability to the position of Protestant churches in Russia. The high point of this was the establishment of a constitution for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Russia in 1832. This, too, was a mixed blessing. On the one hand, Lutherans had less to worry about in terms of their long-term status in the country. They would be protected by the state, to a large degree, even sponsored by it. At the same time, there were very clear boundaries drawn for the church (e.g., mixed marriages only if the children were Orthodox, very difficult to convert to Lutheranism, until the late 19^th century – worship not allowed in the Russian language.) The Lutheran church was to be insulated as much as possible; this gave them stability and order from within, but completely took away from the church any opportunity for independent action apart from the state. The whole point was that the Russian state strove to submit the Lutheran church to it and eliminate its possibility for influencing Russians.

The Lutheran church, then, even after obtaining state status, remained completely foreign. By the early 20^th century, a leading actor on the Russian religious scene, the Ober-procuror Constantine Pobedonostsev, could say: “In the Protestant faith there is something cold and inhospitable to the Russian person. More than that – if a Russian believer were to say of a Protestant church building that it was 'mine,' it would be the same for him as dying.”

To summarize the position of Protestants in pre-Revolutionary times, we can say that the church was “trained” to see that it is to its advantage to remain firmly within the walls of ministry among “traditionally Protestant” groups. As long as the church acted as a spiritual home for Germans, Finns, Latvians, Estonians, Swedes and other foreigner immigrants, it would be tolerated. But if it were to reach out to other peoples, let alone to Russians, or if it were to try to make a stand as a church in regards to some social or political issue, it would be punished.

It is no surprise, then, that the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Russia was shocked by the October Revolution and, as an organization, could provide no resistance to Soviet repressions. Thanks to heroic efforts of individual believers and church leaders, Lutherans were able to contribute to efforts to eliminate the effects of famine in 1922-3, but other than that simply tried to re-negotiate the church's relationship to the state in a way that it had done in the preceding centuries, i.e., in a way that it would allow the church to survive as an isolated group within Russian society.

The rest of the 20^th century was full of dramatic and tragic history for all Christians in Russia, including for those from the Reformation tradition. After the elimination of Lutheran church structures in the Soviet Union by the end of the 1930s and their humble re-emergence in the second half of the century, after the hope-filled growth of the church in the late 80s and early 90s and the disappointment related to the emigration of many of Lutheran heritage in the decades since, where does that leave us? What is the heritage of the churches of the Reformation in Russia today, and what might be its contribution toward others in Post-Soviet societies?

Today we are obviously dealing with a different problem than before – in pre-Revolutionary Russia the issue was a church that was walled in. Now – we are dealing with a church that is very, very small. Is it really possible for such a minuscule church to occupy an important place in building society? Only time will tell. But in the meantime, the church is seeking to answer the question in the affirmative, to show with its efforts to contribute to the country's intellectual and spiritual life here and now that it believes that the Reformation tradition has something important to say for 21^st century Russian society.

How is it doing so? One important factor is the church's attempt, especially under its young Archbishop Dietrich Brauer, is the use of the church's position as a “historical” church to get its voice heard. Archbishop Brauer and other leaders from Moscow have gained a place at the table in the government's dealing with religion in recent years. The Archbishop addressed a Duma committee earlier this year, for example, and representatives of the Moscow office of the church frequently take part in government-led round table discussions and conferences dealing with various societal issues. By frequently using the opportunity to send women (lay or ordained) to these meetings the church is already witnessing something about our Reformation heritage.

But the efforts of the church today are not primary about looking back at a “glorious” history as Russia's second Christian confession. The current leadership of the church is trying to help its members forge, for the first time, an identity that is both Russian and Lutheran. In that regard there are many attempts to utilize the "heritage of the Reformation" and to contextualize it for post-Soviet society. This is visible in the church's main publication - “Der Bote.”

There we can see how the church is trying to develop its own thought by learning more both about Lutheranism (thanks to sermons and theological articles in every issue) and, lately, also more about Orthodoxy. Last year, for example, I wrote an article about the theology of icons, while a member of the publication staff wrote a piece about the place of the “holy fool” in the Orthodox tradition.

While these efforts are important for a general audience, for those interested in deeper theological thinking, there is the possibility of participating in seminars run through the “Equipping for Service” program in which I am in charge. More interesting still, perhaps, are the works by Seminary President Dr. Anton Tikhomirov, whose two small books “Dogmatics Without Dogmatism” and “The Truth of Protest” are unparalleled in terms of expressing the values of the Reformation with an authentic Russian voice. The latter's subtitle is “The Spirit of Evangelical Lutheran Theology,” and it is this way of thinking theologically, probably more than concrete theological positions, that is so new and fresh here. Together with Archbishop Dietrich Brauer, Tikhomirov wrote “And You Will Be Free Indeed!”, summing up the Lutheran understanding of freedom and responsibility in a way that has obvious implications for the context.

In other ways the Lutheran church strives to be a small, quite voice of reason – this alone is enough to carve out a special place in the Russian religious environment. This was particularly visible in the past two years, when the relationship between Russia and the West has deteriorated. The pressure on Russian religious groups to support the policies of the Kremlin is high. In church declarations and publications the ELC shows a commitment to refuse to “toe the line” in terms of official positions. The church is too small to show outright opposition, but by declining to repeat the “right words,” the words expected of them by the Kremlin, and by asking questions and shifting attention to other issues, the Lutheran church in Russia is staking out unique ground. History has shown that even remaining silent during controversial questions is punishable.⁴ Yet, in “Der Bote” articles in the past two years on peacemaking and on refugees, a voice was given to believers in Ukraine and Georgia; again, this approach makes the Lutheran witness unusual.

In summary I'd like to say that the Reformation heritage in Russia was never one of “protest and mere denial,” but its isolation from Russian society in the Imperial period means thats its influence on society was severely limited. Today, despite limitations, there is a new chance for the Lutheran church to be authentically Russian voice expressing the core values of the Reformation in a way that has the potential to have positive impacts on the religious and social environment of the country.

Afterward

In this paper it may seem that I have taken it upon myself to judge the way the Lutherans in Russia lived out their faith in the first nearly 350 years that they resided in the country. Accusation, however, was in no way my intention. At nearly every step along the way it seems clear that making a move towards “localizing” the faith would have had significant consequences, many of which might have turned out to have negatively affected the witness of the church in the country. At the same time, the relatively obvious fact that Lutheranism remained a foreign element on Russian soil demands some explanation. It won't do, either, to condemn the religion policies of the tsarist governments. politics of the tsarist government instead. It would be anachronistic, after all, to fault the tsars for a lack of religious tolerance. After all, where else in 18^th century Europe would there be such a wide variety of religious attitudes tolerated in one country? In what other capital city could Lutheran, Catholic, Armenian and Orthodox churches be seen, nearly side by side, on the main street of the capital? While one might wish that the situation had been different and that the country wouldn't have been caught up, from time to time, in a degree of xenophobia, what country's history is free of such moments?

Through analyzing the history of the Lutheran church in Russia, I hope to emphasize just how special this moment is, and, for all those who pray and work for the church, to thank God for the opportunity that has arisen to be a new kind of witness in this country.

1F.M. Dostoevsky. “A Writer's Diary,” January 1877.

2 As much as 10% of St. Petersburg was Lutheran at the time.

3In particular the tsars of German heritage, including Paul III and Catherine II. The latter, it is said, was a true Christian who struggled with her decision to become Orthodox or not. In the end she decided to become Orthodox because she sees “no real difference between the Greek and Lutheran faith.” If this quite is fairly attributed to her, it shows that she remained Lutheran in spirit!

4 E.g., Pastor Ganzen, the only pastor to refuse to sign the letter of greeting to the Bolshevik government at the church synod in 1924, was later sent to the GULAG, and his refusal to sign the letter was named as one of the reasons.

“Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you.”

“Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

These words have been in my head quite a bit in the past 6 months. It was in early fall that I began the dreaded process of renewing my Russian residency permit, and at the beginning it did not look like things would go well. Immigration officials in different offices told me different information about the process; it seemed like I was getting funny looks as they noted my country of citizenship. I heard various stories – of the Polish journalist who was deported, of the American pastor whose family was allowed to cross the border...while he was stuck in Finland.

Not that I have anything against Finland, mind you, but I was already imaging the various ways the application process could end badly – I could be denied on some technicality; I could be denied without even a technicality. I would have to live in Estonia and get three-month visas. We would need to move with the family to America...

The expiration date of my residency permit grew closer and closer. “My” immigration official in Rostov had been moved to another department. I no longer knew anyone. Days passed. “Wait,” I heard. And “wait” again. There must be something wrong. They must be finding a way to make a good show of exiling an American. “Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you.” 

And then, as the working day was ending on the very day when my permit was to expire, I still didn't have my document. I was waiting outside of the office. I was told that I would get the stamp I need. But I didn't have it. It was 5.15 pm on a Friday. It seemed that my paranoia was going to live on through at least another weekend. Unless I was made to leave the country sooner. Or worse...

When you speak with your cat, that's not paranoia.
Paranoia is when you're afraid to say too much
while your cat is around.

And then, the “higher-up” who signs such documents came out of a meeting and, instead of heading home (as he could have done when the working day is officially over), he took the time to grab my folder, look it over, and sign my Vid na zhitelstvo. The process was over; I could legally remain in the country for another five years.

I can't explain why there were so many delays. But I can say that this country is changing. In years past, you wouldn't expect a bureaucrat to steal even a minute of his weekend for you. Not unless he was getting rewarded.

In my experience, this is not the case anymore. There is a chance, even a relatively good chance, that you might be treated as a human being by the bureaucratic machine. I wouldn't go so far as to say that the pressure of the “system,” is decreasing (that would not be the case), but on the other hand more and more frequently, when I push paranoia aside, I see that my interactions with government officials has taken a better turn.

Take the case of my meeting with a traffic police officer just a few days ago. He stopped me as I drove home from Matvey's skating practice; they were stopping everyone driving without their headlights on to warn them that there is a new rule about having your dims on even in the daytime. Besides my headlights being turned off, though, I had a more significant infraction - it turned out that I had left my documents (licenses, insurance and registration!) at home. Now home was just a few minutes away, but it was situations like these just a few years ago, where you felt fully vulnerable to the whim of the police. I was in the wrong, so, was the policeman going to ask for a bribe? Was he going to expect that I offer one? Was he going to tow the car to a safe place (at significant cost of time and money) while I go fetch the documents? I allowed myself only to hope that he might allow me to leave the car with him as I took the bus home to get the documents. But what did this policeman do instead? He allowed me to drive home in the car and return to him to show him the documents! Instead of letting distrust rule the day, he treated me as a human. And I was so thankful I almost wanted to bribe him (almost).

Like many of society's changes here in the past 15 years, this was actually a bit stunning. But it is also reflective of larger changes.

And it makes me wonder – maybe all of us are used to being a bit too paranoid. Whatever concerns the West has with this country (and I understand that there are significant and legitimate concerns) and whatever concerns Russia has with the West (and here, too, I can sometimes see the point) it would be helpful for everyone if we stopped treating each other as though the other is out to get us. Such thinking boxes us in to situations of either us or them, of over-emphasizing one side's being in the right while doing the same for describing the way the other side is in the wrong.

The government here, the one I was paranoid about a few months ago, has given me the right to remain here for 5 more years. I hope that in that time we can all move away from the Cold War environment that created “Catch-22” in the first place...and I hope that I have the wisdom to make my own, small contribution to that change, leading to a greater peace.  

Paranoia - sometimes we overdo it.

Exploring Eschatology

The more challenging the times, it seems, the more apocalyptic themes come to the forefront of our thoughts. Given Russia's current economic difficulties and problems on the international scene, it was no coincidence,then, that eschatology was the topic of our latest seminar for distance and extension students in Novosaratovka. And even if the timing of the seminar meant that we had somewhat few participants that we would have liked (it was hard for many to get off of work in late January when the New Year's / Christmas holidays ended on the 11th), the ground we covered will serve them (and our church) well, in times of high tension and in times of peace.

It was with this in mind that I approached the two topics I led during this seminar - "Theology of Hope" and "Pastoral Care of the Dying and Grieving." The latter set of lectures was a very basic introduction that probably only raised the curtain a bit on questions of our own mortality; these issues, of course, affect our ability to give pastoral care in end-of-life situations. A number of students expressed that even this short introduction was enough to give them a new approach based upon God's love shown to the suffering through listening, presence and empathy, instead of always trying to provide "answers."
As a part of this class we read from Lev Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilyich." It has been quite some time since I've used my own preferred method for thinking about theology - through great literature - in the classroom setting. But in my lessons of "theology of hope," too, literature was very useful. When explaining the context of the birth of Jurgen Moltmann's theology, we spoke about the difficulty of doing theology "after Auschwitz," and read from Elie Wiesel "Night." But to emphasize that the problem of enormous suffering that we humans cause one another is not specific to Germany, we also read from 2015 Nobel Literature Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich's "Second Hand Time," which tells many sad, sad stories from the point of view of ordinary people in Soviet (and post-Soviet) Russia.

Faced with headlines predicting total economic collapse and/or World War III, I find it particularly important to hold fast to a vision of God's coming reign and to use that vision to inform our daily lives. I hope that I was able to pass on this aspect of Moltmann's theology in my lessons. From the response of the students and the eagerness to which they responded to the news that (finally!) one of Moltmann's major works will be translated into Russia - our own Anton Tikhomirov is working on "The Coming of God" - I believe that I was successful. 

Students were also inspired in another way by studying eschatology - they saw the degree to which doing theology is a creative process. As one student told me, during this course she saw that theology is not simply about finding new ways to defend old dogmas, but that it rises out of our own experience interacting with Scripture and with the experiences of others. I am encouraged when I see people in this still emerging church ask new questions and welcome one another on the road of exploration. 

Boom Crash Hiss Drip

  "Boom." "Crash," "Hiss." "Drip." "Boom." "Boom."

  All day yesterday I kept looking out the window or looking at the clock. Was it noon? Was I hearing the daily 12 o'clock cannon shot from Peter and Paul fortress? No. It was earlier. Or later. But throughout the day I couldn't help but to look up when the snow slid off our metal roof with a hiss and a swoosh; after the roof cleaners hit the roofs with their shovels, the crash of the snow falling down always seemed too loud; I was worried for their safety. When I looked down I was happy to see that the worst that happened was cars covered in snow; as the weather turned warmer, the dripping we heard on the landing outside of our door slowly came to a stop, while the dripping from the melting icicles only increased.

  Then as I was returning home with Martin in the evening, it sounded like hundreds of roofs were being cleaned at once. It might seem like a strange time of the year for fireworks, but January 27 is a special day in St. Petersburg - "The Day of the Final Lifting of the Blockade."

  Like a number of holidays here, January 27 is related to the events of World War II. If you are familiar with the history of that time (and I personally wasn't until I began to study Russian history), you know that in 1941-1944 Leningrad lived through one of the worst sieges in the entire history of warfare. Hitler intended to raze the city, and thought that the best way to do that was to first starve its inhabitants to death.

  Even more than 70 years later, signs of the time of blockade are an important part of the life of the city, from the memorial site with mass graves of victims (above) to the notice still maintained on the city's main street, Nevsky Prospekt, that "in case of aerial bombing this side of the street is more dangerous." The horrors of this time are almost indescribable. You don't know where to begin and where to end - with the bread rations that were made with sawdust? With record cold the city encountered that first winter, when there were as many as 100,000 victims a month? Suffice it to say that 8 year-old Martin was crying after school when remembering the documentary film they watched in class. 

From material used in school at the blockade. The caption says:  "By looking at this photography, you'll understand how Leningraders lived  during the first winter of the blockade. 125 grams of bread for an entire day.

Much related to remembering the history of "the Great Fatherland War" here seems to me to be unhelpful - not only because it associates greatness with military might but also because the memory of the war is used either to support a rather superficial patriotism based on past achievements or disassociates the country's current citizens with the heroic efforts of the past. Remembering the Blockage of Leningrad, though, is different. I think it is helpful for all of us to think about it. It puts us face to face with the horrors of war. It emphasizes the incredible sacrifice and suffering that humans can endure and from which they can emerge. It helps us to value what we have (to this day it is considered quite immoral to throw away bread in St. Petersburg) and helps us all to keep perspective.

  I didn't see the fireworks yesterday. It was my impression that they really weren't meant to be seen, they were meant to be heard. Loud, unusual noises that are a little scary at first - a boom and a crash and a hiss to make us think, to make us remember, both the suffering we cause (there were many Lutherans, after all, who participated in the blockade - from the Finnish army in the north to the Germans in the south) and that there is a time when acute suffering comes to an end. For Christians in Petersburg, thinking about what happened in the very streets that surround us help us to seek ways to grow in empathy, to look out for one another, and to have hope that one day there will neither be the suffering that is a boom and a crash nor a constant dripping, but that instead the siege of sin will come to an end, and that we have the privilege and responsibility to live in that hope today.  

Last night's historic reconstruction of the celebrations of 1944

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 2^nd 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 3^rd 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! 

Searching for Words

It seems that my native language is failing me. I've been in Russia a long time, after all, and despite my accent and the grammar mistakes that I continue to make, Russian is the language that I think in most of the time. Writing this blog, therefore, is rather challenging, especially considering that I'd like to write well.  When major events occur, then, I spend time first trying to interpret the incident, and then I try to find words to express what I see, hear, think, feel.

Lately these major events have been coming faster than I can process them. After an airplane full of tourists (most from St. Petersburg) was downed over Egypt on October 31st, I did not feel ready to write about the sadness and the anxiety that surrounded me, about how Natasha and I remembered our honeymoon there and realized just how many young couples were on that plane. Many with children. And none of them likely to have anything to do with the reasons behind the bomb that was laid in the plane. It was clear - it could have been any of us.

When the controversial French satirical periodical Charlie Hebdo published caricatures of the crash that offended many Russians, I thought of issues of sensitivity, empathy and healing and what a missionary might have to say about all of that. But I wasn't ready to write; I was still processing.

And then there was Paris. And Beirut. And Bamako. Even if they are all far away, we remembered again what could happen to any of us. We hear terrorism as often as here as Americans hear “Trump.” As you might imagine, we started using the subway less; I decided to wait for a while before taking the boys to the nearby stadium to watch our excellent local soccer team; we tried to get used to seeing riot police patrols. We heard how President Putin and President Hollande spoke about a "Grand coalition" of overwhelming military force to fight terrorism. I saw all this, and I thought about how Christians in this country and around the world might respond. About how it appears that a distinctly Christian approach has yet to emerge. But I couldn't find the words.

I'm not ready to write today, either. I'd like more time to see how things develop further, to analyze what might help readers understand Russia and what we as people of faith might do to care for our neighbors in these circumstances. Time would help.

And maybe it will still. But that shouldn't stop me from sharing with you what Russia feels like today. I'm not sure how to do that; maybe an example would help. Let's imagine that U.S. bombers are engaged in missions near some point of conflict. Let's pretend it's Afghanistan. And then let's imagine for a minute that a "frenemy" state bordering the conflict and in some way or another involved (that would be Pakistan, I'd imagine) shoots down our plane. The pilots eject, but one of them is shot dead in the air by locals; all this is captured on film for the whole world to see. And then in this imagined situation Pakistan says that it's America's fault. That they warned us.... OK, perhaps this isn't the best example. Let's try, instead, to replace Pakistan with Israel. Does that make you feel uncomfortable / anxious / tense / irritated? Well, while the example with Israel is even less likely and even less accurate in terms of the political situation, it does do something to help one see the emotions involved.

“Fever pitch” and “boiling point” and words that describe the seemingly countless hours dedicated by news programs and talk shows to this incident. And while one frequently gets the impression that the TV is an instrument for forming and controlling public opinion here, in this particular case the TV seems to be speaking for the “common man.” 

 Everyone is thinking about terrorists and Turkey and how Russia is always getting a raw deal. But they don't talk about it. People continue to go about their business. In our family Matvey needs to build a model of cell for school on Friday; Martin is relieved to have his first skating competition of the year behind him; Lukas is busy opening cupboards, playing whatever musical instruments and toys he can get his hands on and repeating the words that are actively becoming a part of his vocabulary. Streets are being swept and potatoes are being purchased and people are getting married.

But there is a general sense of...a sense of... and here I realize that the English words don't do justice to what people feel – treVO-ga, na-pryazh-EN-iye, raz-drazh-EN-iye (anxiety, tension, irritation). There is a general sense of the need to otomSTIT (get revenge). Then there are the words that Russian has in common with English. Words that themselves carry u-GRO-za (a threat) - li-kwi-DA-tsi-ya (liquidation), es-ka-LA-tsi-ya (escalation)....

Words are failing me. They seem to be failing all of us. And so we turn to actions, actions that tend to be neither in our own long-term interests nor the interests of our neighbors. The problem, of course, is not with our fluency. Or with English or Russian itself. The problem is with our minds, our hearts, our imaginations. These failures are worldwide and, today, these failures are manifest in the way Russians are feeling. It is a sad situation. And, to be honest, is is situation the has the potential to become even more dangerous.

What can we do? We can do what religious leaders around the world are calling for – remain calm. Think. Listen. Pray. More than that, though, I think that we can remain present with one another. I think that we can try to grow in empathy, that we can encourage our leaders to reject threats and violence with the understanding that these ultimately do little to provide the abundant living that God wants for all of us. We can try to embody peace, becoming agents of peace in our own communities. With words. Or without.