Incarnation; God among us

A week later we sit again across each other with our cappuccinos and a platter of cookies on the round glass dinner table, both enjoying and valuing these conversations. This time the subject is mission. After living many years in the city of Rotterdam, I’ve come to see the limits and even downsides of ‘evangelism’ in the meaning of what some would call an ‘air bombing’: planning a big mission event, or coming in with a group of people with tracks to ‘save some’. Instead I have come to see the value of Christians moving to the city with a missional intention: to be present, to befriend and to share their lives in a much more natural way with their neighbors.

All over Eastern Europe small Orthodox churches can be found, in some regions on almost every corner of a block of houses or in the backyard of a farm. When I question Father Stephan how he sees mission, he starts with telling the story of Father Jean Baptiste Vianney: “This priest lived in a small French village during the industrial revolution around the 18th and 19th century. There was much depression and alcohol abuse, but every day the priest would ring the church bells. People laughed at first. But Jean Batiste stayed, he was there and lived among them. Several decades later the whole village had returned to Christianity. In the West it is often believed ‘the bigger, the better’. People marvel at large and well organized gatherings, but I wonder in what extend souls come indeed closer to God.” Father Stephan instead values small-scale gatherings: “It’s about intimacy. Generally speaking it is so that how bigger the party gets, the smaller the feast!”

“Besides that, growth is a slow process. The better the quality, the slower growth. My grandfather was a baker. During special occasions he would make bread for the family. With his big, large hands he would work the dough on a thick wooden worktable. He would throw the dough and beat it, after which he would leave the dough resting. That bread would stay fresh for a long time. That’s how God works with us, and when we change, others will notice it. Growth can’t be contained, but growth is not about the number of people attending a church or about self-made saints. The church has already enough of the latter.”

In Father Stephan’s opinion mission and Christianity is not about big events, or even about good morals, but about small acts. “Our Christian president Balkenende promotes ‘respect’ and ‘good citizenship’, but that’s not what Christianity is about. It’s about sacrificial love. How can mission be successful without denying ourselves and without sacrificial love? In that regard we as men can learn from women. The essence of God is mirrored in a good marriage where the partners say to each other: ‘No, please, you…’ or: ‘I will do that for you.’ Those small sentences seem nothing, but yet are everything.”

Father Stephan continues about the Trinity: God, Son and Spirit being equal, without hierarchy while enjoying communion with one another, which is a valued concept within Orthodoxy: “It’s the secret of God, like a cloud of persons who are around each other and involved in one another. Love, so true and intense, that the Lovers cannot be discerned, They are One. God, Jesus, the Spirit who point to one another. Like Jesus said: ‘Not me, but my father…’
Missions is not an export or import article, you can’t implant it. You can’t get it out of a book, or out of an article. It’s through influencing, it’s about being there and just doing it.”

The view that mankind and culture is not totally sinful and lost, but should be brought back – through Jesus - to how mankind was original intended, results also in another mission approach. The Orthodox’ tend to raise the question: ‘Where and how is the Spirit already at work in this place and within this culture?’

Father Stephan: “Carefully look and listen what already exists. There is already dough, and the Spirit already is at work and working the dough. You can for example rebuke the Native Indian: ‘You call Manitou the Great Spirit, but that’s not God’. You can also work with his knowledge and understanding of the existence of One God, which the Holy Spirit already has given him. Give attention to what is happening around you; when you don’t know what is going on, you don’t know what to do. Don’t make your own plans with the other and don’t force your own ideas upon the other. God’s plans are different and you can’t control the Holy Spirit.”

Father Stephan surprises me again with one of his analogies, this time regarding being in the world and participating in the Eucharist, the Orthodox church service: “I see myself as a volunteer of an organization that manages a playground. The goal is to let all the kids play. The playground is the world, the clubhouse on it is the church. I want people to leave this playground all sweaty and with red cheeks, while exclaiming: ‘Wow, that was great! Let’s go inside and thank Them (the Trinity) for the wonderful time we had.’