Saturday, April 12, 2014

Matushka Juliana Schmemann on Mission

Fr. Alexander and his wife Matushka Juliana

A good friend shared this quote by Matushka Juliana Schmemann and it had me thinking about the paradigm of mission the church has been preaching to the people. Unfortunately mission has been based on a backlash, a misunderstanding of Christ and the Eucharist. Mission today has been reduced to a few fallacies based on the idea that we need to break away from "old archaic" ways of doing "certain actions" within the church. To give a few examples priests think that the liturgy must be done in English and the Arabic needs to be thrown out of the church (speaking about context of countries where the main language is English) and that we must incorporate worship songs into the service. Now I am not saying an all English liturgy is bad or worship songs need to be axed. On the other hand mission needs these tools in order to baptize all nations because if we are not using the language of the land as a tool for mission then all we have done is impose our own cultural heritage in country that does not share those heritages. Mission first and foremost as Matushka Juliana stresses is based on what we have to offer to people.

We must offer Christ to all. Christ is our starting point and our goal. Christ took on our humanity in order that we might share in his body. This is the paradigm the church needs to operate on. When translating this paradigm to mission it is no different. Mission begins and ends with the person of Christ. If Christ ceases to be our starting point then the church will become nothing more than mere activities done in light of social gatherings to cater to the needs of people. When theology is false Christianity is reduced to nothing more than mere activities. Mission is rooted in theology, a theology that is lived and expressed for the life of the world. Mission rooted in theology is a dynamic expression of what it means to be a Christian. Christianity being a way of life is a life lived for others. Mission is rooted in how we treat others through our offerings to them. (The first part of the liturgy is ironically known as the offertory). We offer ourselves because Christ showed us what it means to be a human through his incarnation. Our lives being rooted in the person of Christ has become a life offered to others. The first Orthodox missionaries who came through Alaska realized the importance of preaching the faith through the culture of the natives in Alaska and individuals such as St. Innocent and St. Herman understood this and were able to adapt the faith to the natives. Sadly today many Orthodox Churches have failed in this regard to missioning to all nations.

When you walk into a church today you will find the liturgy prayed in the language of the motherland (Arabic, Russian etc.) and the vernacular is not used. Worship songs are being incorporated into the service because we think this is what it means to be Christian. This however, is all rooted in the understanding that if we copy and paste protestant songs and continue using the old languages we will appease both the younger generations and the older generations. This however is not true. In fact the opposite is true in that many youths are leaving the church and the church fails in its missionary activity. The church, in order to be a place of mission must be rooted in the people who make the body of Christ. We must figure out how to talk to the people and the culture we are brought into (in my particular example-Canada). When we figure this out we must begin to incorporate this into our liturgy and language of mission. Simply coping and pasting does not solve the issue to the problem. We must be engaged in the culture in order to find beauty which is rooted in the person of Christ. Many have asked how does this look like? Are we to incorporate rap music in our hymns? Of course not (because this again is copying and pasting) however we must study carefully the culture and once we have come up with what it means "to be a Canadian" and how to express this in the liturgy it is only then that we can truly serve those around us through the context of mission. It is only then that the following words by Matushka Juliana will resonate throughout the life of the church.  
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I never stopped trying to exercise my missionary efforts while teaching or talking to or counselling my students. I wasn't bent on having them join my church, but I was trying to be contagious and to instill in them a sense of faith, of trust, of beauty, and finally of joy. 


My idea always was, and still is, to try to discover what is missing in a person's vision of life, what venue to use in order to reach people on their own ground. Whenever I feel a void, I try to fill it with hope and higher expectations from real life; not career, nor knowledge, but the poetic sacred aspect of life, so often missing from people's lives.


I insist that it is our sacred duty as those blessed with such abundant blessings from our life: our faith, our church and its services, Pascha, the beauty of nature, faithful friends, etc., to share these blessings with any and all who come into our lives, who cross our path and who dwell, if even momentarily, in our line of vision...


...Every one of us, every day has a chance to proclaim one's faith and love in deeds and works, in compassion and love, in bringing peace and being truly grateful. 


This is mission. Give unto others what we have in abundance." 

+ Matushka Julianna Schmemann, "The Joy to Serve" (Montreal: Alexander Press, 2009) 78-80. 

1 comment:

  1. Excellent post Bavly. I especially like her quote on sort of making Christ contagious in how she speaks in the classroom.

    It is strange how our current approach to mission is more of just an isolation and divorce of cultures rather than a bringing together of the many nations of the Body of Christ. The first time Bishop Kallistos Ware entered an Orthodox church it was completely prayed in Russian and he understood none of it, but he felt Christ, and that is what changed him.

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