Old World, Old Word, New Day

Last week I talked about the "small world" in which we live and the need for "large hearts".  This week, Judy and I are experiencing it.  We wake up in the little country of Estonia while folks back home are still sound asleep--7 hours time difference--yet the new technology keeps us connected as if we were right at home.  We've already heard rave reviews about Monica's sermon, Casey's anthem with Chris Vaught's solo and Kelly Gorman's rendition of "Amazing Grace". Even on the 7 hour bus ride from St. Petersburg to Tallinn, I could get free wi-fi!  It really is a small world calling for large hearts--"opens minds, open hearts, open doors".

And I am also struck by the juxtaposition of the old world and the new day.  My first trip to Estonia was in 1994, in the early years after the break-up of the Soviet Union.  The changes in the intervening years has been incredible, but it is also accompanied by age-old prejudices.  The painful history of the Soviet years has left its mark in the animosity between these now separate and very different countries and unfortunately, some of those old feelings will be carried into the new world.

We happened into the Kazan Cathedral yesterday while an Orthodox liturgy was in progress.  What a multi-sensory experience!  Chanting priests around the high altar, echoed by the choir in the back balcony, the priest walking around the cathedral with incense burning, the grandeur of the iconoclast and the "doors of heaven" opening to reveal the sacred symbols.  It was a wonderful experience of the oldest liturgy of the church, a symbol of the enduring faith which has withstood the brutality of the communist years, a faith kept primarily by the "babushkas", the old women during the dark times. Old faith, old truth, old world. Yet outside in the new world, the throngs of young people who have absolutely no connection to the faith were passing by.  During the Soviet years, the church suffered from outright persecution. Today it is simply irrelevant, ignored, unimportant.  In this new day, will anyone be able to reach this new generation with the age-old faith?  How will the church communicate to this new world?  That's what the work of this seminary is all about--to try to find a way to share the old story in new ways to reach this completely secularized and unchurched generation. I'll be preaching for graduation later today. Please pray for these graduates and for their desire to share the old faith in a new day.

The Soviet times only lasted 50 years, but in that short amount of time a whole generation was lost.  It reminds me how important it is to make sure the faith gets passed from generation to generation.  It only takes one generation for the old faith to be lost for a new day.