The sermon I will never preach - Part 3

[anglomedved]

 

This is the sermon I would like to preach at St Nicholas. But since preaching is strictly limited to the priests (in Russian), I put it on the net.

 

‘Brothers and sisters, a fundamental rule of the Christian faith, clear in the Gospels, Epistles and the Fathers of the Church, is the importance of having some sort of evangelistic outreach – put better, to be a parish that is willing and able to bring newcomers into a relationship with Christ in His Church. A parish that fails to do so is missing an important part of its raison d’être, and will sooner or later turn in on itself and die. If you will permit the comparison, a parish being open to newcomers is a bit like a married couple being open to having children: if you close off this possibility because children (like catechumens) are time-consuming and troublesome; something is going to be lacking, will crab your style and prevent you arriving at full humanity. And yes, very simply, you will die out.

This need to be open to the outside world includes us and our parish. It requires us at St. Nicholas to take a long, hard look both at who we are and the world around us. We are in the overwhelming majority not Russian (including the Ukraine and Belarus), either by origin (I guesstimate our parish to be about 40% Russian origin), nor more, importantly, in the sense of being part of the Russian cultural world (witness the difficulty of finding someone who can write the minutes of the parish meeting in decent Russian). Importantly, for most of us, Belgium is ‘home’. Most of us are pretty much permanent residents, probably 70% of us will be here in ten years’ time, probably half of us will die and be buried in this country. And yes, let’s be honest, nearly all of us, including the most ‘Russian’, have Belgian or other EU passports.

What we are is a pretty mixed bag, of people who have come (or whose parents or grandparents) came for very varied reasons, most of them including, if we will admit it, the fact that we prefer life in Belgium to that of our country or origin, whether Belarus, Russia, Moldavia, Kazakhstan, England or wherever. Our reference points are a curious mixture of Belgian and country of origin.

As such we find ourselves in a country and a city, which is increasingly a mixed bag. Of Brussels’ 1.25 million inhabitants, 25% are non-Belgian, over 30% of births are Muslim. Of the ‘white’ Belgians under 30 whom I know, nearly half either have a non-Belgian parent or a non-Belgian partner. If you like, we are mongrels among mongrels. And it is in this mongrel world that we have to be and preach Christ.

The first sign of this is obviously language. I am sorry, but there is no way round that fact that we have to go bilingual. In a sense we already are: every Sunday upstairs after the liturgy I speak at least three languages (Russian, French, English), sometimes five. No, I am not in favour of multilingual services, but we need to mix Russian with one other language, either French, or English, (a language understood by every educated Belgian under age 40 and by many more Russians than is French). To do this needs a bit of patience and give and take, but it can work: the Russian Orthodox Cathedral in London is a shining example of this.

This will not be popular with Moscow, either the Church authorities, or the political authorities, who tend to see our church as part of a Russian cultural mission. Tough. Our role is to be Christians in Belgium, not standard-bearers for Russian politicians.

But language in fact, is not what it is really all about. It is about attitude. It is about the way we as Christians believe that society should work, both our own inner society within the Church, and, so far as we are able to have a say in fashioning it, in the wider society of which we are part, which as I have said above, whether we like it or not, is that of Belgium and the European Union. Simply, the Russian model, as we see and understand it both in the Russian Church and in the Russian political structure, is uninviting in Europe – in the Church through autocracy, in the State through kleptocracy and corruption. This is not to say that the European model is spotless – it has many weaknesses, but my contention is that it is more honest – and Christian - to work in it and to hopefully help improve it, than to sit outside and throw stones at it.

 

It is also about being Christian when one has mixed cultural roots. In an Orthodoxy which has tended, like Lutheranism, to define itself along national cultural lines, a cultural mongrel will inevitably be something of a misfit. As an Englishman in a Russian Church, with a strong European background, I can no longer fit into a simple ‘Russian only’ (or indeed ‘English only’) context. Ditto the Polish cleaning ladies who make up 30% of our parish. Ditto all the partners of mixed marriages. Ditto a large portion of the people whom we are supposed to witness to (in my carpentry class: Lorentino, half Belgian, half Italian, Joseph, Belgian with an Irish wife, etc. etc.).  Slowly I find myself sliding towards a ‘Mount Athos’ solution, of a Christian culture that goes beyond nationality (one token of which might be precisely to operate in English, which is rapidly becoming the ‘super-national language’ of Europe). This seems to me to align better with the Christian calling to be ‘gathered from among the nations’ (Psalm 105,49, Psalm 106,2, 1 Peter 2.9) than any ‘national’ Christian culture, whether Orthodox or Lutheran.

All this begs I know, the question: why be Orthodox at all? And it is a very valid question for any serious Orthodox Christian outside the traditional Orthodox territories, especially as it is possible, in my opinion, to live an essentially Orthodox spirituality as a communicant member of the Roman Catholic Church (of the Anglican and Lutheran churches I am less sure). I do not believe being Orthodox makes you automatically a superior Christian to members of other churches. Yes, Orthodoxy has a rich spiritual tradition, which, when lived properly – by the spirit and not by the letter – can be very good and is a valuable contribution to the wider Christian world. But like everything good, it has its downside. And in this I include the way diaspora Orthodox communities quickly becoming in-grown, with fighting for ecclesiastical status (starting with the right to belong to the altar party and swan around in black cassock) taking precedence over a concern for holiness.

"Swanning around in black cassocks"
A not quite Orthodox illustration, yes I know.
 

Certainly, our witness to Christ in Belgium requires us to work with the other Christian churches. And yes, there will be inevitable questions of legitimate and illegitimate crossing of boundaries. Let us not be frightened by this. Let us have the honesty to say publicly that an Orthodox Christian is not damned by taking Roman Catholic communion (for example at a Scout camp), nor should an Orthodox priest be squeamish at occasionally and discreetly giving communion to believing non-Orthodox (like the many husbands of Russian wives).

This is our role: to be relevant Christians in Belgium. Not to wander aimlessly in a non-man’s land, using language and cultural difference as an excuse for inactivity. Do this and we are, in the Gospel words, “salt that has lost its savour, and is good for nothing than to be thrown under foot.” I hope we at St Nicholas do not become this.