Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord and
Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen
Sometimes, when
we think we have so much to teach others, we end up being surprised with how
much we have to learn, instead.
This was my experience
going to Russia back in 2002, and then with my wife, a couple of years later.
There was a
parishioner, Bradn Buerkle, from my former congregation in Plevna, MT, who was
studying to become a pastor. As part of
his training to become a pastor, Bradn, who got his undergraduate degree in
Russian studies, was able to be assigned to a foreign internship.
His assignment
was to go to Novgorod, Russia and serve as the pastor of a small congregation,
mostly ethnic Germans, which had been reestablished following the reforms and
new freedoms that Russians were experiencing under Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s program
of “perestroika” (“restructuring”) and “glasnost” (“openness”), and then
following the collapse of the Soviet Union, in the reforming Russian state.
A little
background.
Russian had long
been home to many people of German descent, dating back many hundreds of
years. A particularly large block of
immigration from Germany to Russia occurred during the reign of Catherine the Great,
in the 1800s. These “Volga Deutch” had
been recruited to help develop Russian agriculture, and were allowed to maintain
their German culture, language, traditions, and churches.
Of course, many
of those German churches would be Lutheran.
Prior to the Bolshevik
revolution in 1918, the Cathedral of St. Peter and Paul in Moscow had over
15,000 members, its sanctuary seated about 3,000, and it boasted of having the largest
school in all of Russia. In St.
Petersburg, similarly large and prosperous Churches were also thriving. There is one block or so there that had three
large churches, a German Church, a Swedish Church, and a Finnish Church, if I
recall correctly.
Then with the
Revolution, everything changed.
As you know, the
Soviets adopted an official policy of atheism, and set about largely banning
congregations. A major persecution of
the churches followed during which almost all of the clergy of every
denomination were killed, including the Russian Orthodox.
This persecution
became especially intense for the ethnic Germans following the Great Patriotic
War, what we know as World War II.
The ethnic
Germans in Russia had suffered during the German invasion as all Russians had,
but then following the war, because they were German, those who survived were
persecuted further, facing mandatory relocation to Siberia, or worse, being
sentenced to the Gulags, basically concentration camps where they were starved
to death.
Churches, such as
the Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul in Leningrad, or the old St. Petersburg,
were seized by the government, and converted to other uses ranging from
warehouses, or in the case of the cathedral in St. Petersburg, a swimming pool.
But then, due to
the restructuring and reforms during the last days of the Soviet Union, and the
early years of the new Russian Federation, everything changed once again.
Now, the Russian
government took the opposite roll and became very proactive in supporting the
reestablishment of the Christian church throughout Russia and the former Soviet
States.
Where possible,
the old Churches were returned to the congregations that had begun to gather
again, and in some cases, the Russian government itself paid for the
restoration of those buildings.
In Novgorod,
Russia, which is located between St. Petersburg and Moscow, and which prides
itself on being the original capital of the Russian State, over a 1,000 years
ago, there had been numerous Lutheran churches.
One of those churches, St. Nikolai Lutheran Church, was reopened, and a
small band of ethnic Germans began worshipping again.
It was this
congregation that Bradn was sent to serve during his internship.
Because of my
relationship with Bradn and his family, my congregation in Sandpoint decided to
become a sister congregation to St. Nikolai’s.
The first thing
we did as part of this relationship was to send a delegation of four of us to
visit them.
Our guide,
throughout much of our visit, was a man who had helped reestablish St. Nikolai’s,
Alexander Fleischman.
Herr Fleischman
was a survivor of the Gulags. He had
been spared starvation because he had found favor in the eyes of some of the
officials and been given double rations.
The stories he
told of that time were horrific. He
told, for example, of waking in the morning, and knowing who had died during
the night, because the rats would immediately eat the ears and nose off of the
corpses.
He told of us his
deep guilt and remorse, because as a young man he had been forced to be part of
the crews that went into the former churches and whitewashed them, covering up
all of the priceless art work that decorated the sanctuaries.
Following his
release from the Gulag, he was interned in a specific geographical area up
north and prevented from leaving.
Imagine an Indian reservation, only with borders that could not be
crossed.
Finally, he was
able to return home to Novgorod.
When the
opportunity came to reopen their church, the ethnic Germans did so both for
religious reasons, but also to reclaim their German heritage.
One of the major
challenges during those early years of St. Nikolai’s new life was that as they
were gathering together and forming a congregation, many of the Germans that
had become part of the congregation were leaving, having been given the
opportunity to immigrate back to Germany.
One of the
challenges Bradn faced during his time there was that he had studied Russian,
but not German.
A question that
the Lutheran Church has had to wrestle with was whether they would be just a
church for ethnic Germans, or whether they would become a Russian church for
all.
Bradn became a
professor at the seminary in St. Petersburg, and a new pastor came to serve St.
Nikolai’s, one of their own members, Igor.
One of the
questions we asked of our new friends in Novgorod, was how they survived during
those 70 years of Soviet oppression. Did
they gather in homes to worship? And
what about baptisms? We had heard here
in this country that once it was possible, many Russians flocked back to the
churches to be baptized.
Their response
surprised us. No, they didn’t gather in
homes, because any gatherings such as that were suspect, and if they had done
so, their neighbors likely would have reported them to the authorities.
But even more
surprising was that they shared that no, there was no rush back to the churches
to be baptized. Most of them related
that they had been baptized as infants, privately, in their own homes, perhaps
by their babushka, or grandmother.
70 years. And their faith endured from generation to
generation.
And out of the
ashes the Church was reborn.
“Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the
kingdom of God without being born from above. Or “born again.” As some
translations put it.
Probably, when
you have heard this verse, or that most familiar verse: “For
God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes
in him may not perish but may have eternal life” you probably thought of it
individually.
Many people speak
about their “born again” experience, a coming to faith through repentance and renewal
of the Spirit.
We think about
this being born again as a very deeply personal matter.
But this is an
American bias, and our radical individualism is showing.
I’ve come to
appreciate more and more throughout the years that much of what the Bible says,
it says to us collectively, as a group, as the Body of Christ.
St. Nikolai’s
Lutheran Church truly knows what it is to be “born again”. For seventy years they were suffering and
dying, and then, the Spirit moved through the land, and they were indeed “born
again.” New life dawned among them.
And where once
churches were converted to warehouses, they bought a warehouse and converted it
to a Church.
In America, we
enjoy a right to ‘freedom of religion’, and can worship where and as we please.
But increasingly
across our country our ‘freedom of religion’ is becoming a freedom from
religion.
We are becoming a
secular state, not because of a government policy of official atheism, but
because of a public attitude of simple apathy.
That’s one of the
reasons we are struggling with declining membership here at Peace. The Pacific Northwest is one of the most
unchurched areas of our country, and it is so primarily because people simply
don’t care or want to bother being part of a church.
If I could do
anything for you, to give you hope in the face of all the challenges we face
here, I would love to take you to Novgorod.
What better
example is there that though people may give up on God, God will never give up
on them.
In Matthew 16,
following Peter’s confession that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of the Living
God, Jesus says: “And I tell you, you
are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will
not prevail against it.”
Not the Gates of
Hell.
Nor the Gates of
a Soviet Gulag.
Nor the
indifference of the American people.
Though the Church
may die a thousand deaths, it will be born again and again, as the Spirit moves
where it wills.
This is true,
because ““God so loved the world that he
gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may
have eternal life.”
When Jesus says “everyone
who believes in him” he is referring not just to individuals, but to this body
of believers that is the Church.
He is referring to
St. Nikolai’s.
He is referring to
Peace Lutheran.
And he is promising
that die though we may, we will not perish, but rather we will be born again,
and we will see the Kingdom of God. Amen
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