Rogation Sunday – morning
Sunday 26th May 2019
Easter 6 – Rogation Sunday – morning
Acts16.9-15
John 14. 23-29
Revd Preb Maureen Hobbs
Pilgrimage. What is the difference between a holiday and a pilgrimage?
Both involve a change of place and of pace. Both – one hopes- will be refreshing – although perhaps in rather different ways. I think that after a pilgrimage, we are not only refreshed, but changed in some way….
As most of you know, I have just returned from a trip to Moscow that was fully intended to be both holiday and pilgrimage and I am pleased to report that I think it fulfilled both sets of expectations.
We were a fairly diverse group who journeyed together. Few knew each other well before we started. There were both clergy and lay people – and even a bishop for the first five days! And we all had different expectations and apprehensions about the experience as we embarked one early Friday morning at Heathrow.
The first barrier being the security checks of course; very necessary, but everyone is a little nervous until you clear them. Those of us with artificial joints (and I wasn’t the only one!) know that we will ‘set off’ the scanning devices – which necessitates explanation and assurances… but we were soon through those and off on the adventure.
In the ten days that followed I was able to meet and speak with Russians and other nationalities and to see the huge changes that have occurred in Russia in the 44 years since I last visited. Of course there were changes – just think about how our lives have changed in the last 40 or 50 years! It is no different for them.
But the most outstanding thing was to encounter active worshipping Christians, openly displaying signs of their faith and not being afraid to enter the many, many churches and Cathedrals – many of which have been renovated (and in some cases completely rebuilt).
Now, we visited the Lutheran Cathedral in Moscow and the Anglican Chaplaincy there, but of course most Christians in Russia are Orthodox. And orthodox churches and services are different in appearance to our own, although a Communion Service has all the same elements that we would be familiar with – Sermon, Creed, Intercessions, Lord’s Prayer, and of course the Sacrament. It is distributed in a slightly different manner to our own, but it is still identifiable as bread and wine shared among the faithful.
And to hear the Bells – lots of them. Rung out over the noise of the Moscow traffic (which is horrendous now!)
There is without question a new life and a new vibrancy and enthusiasm among Christians in Russia. There are all generations represented – from tiny babies to the familiar headscarf-wearing elderly Baboushkas. Men and women and children, eager to celebrate their faith and to ask questions about prayer and about how that faith impacts on all the problems of daily life that they face – pretty much the same as here.
Faith is something that no political oppression, no man-made edict can ever truly eliminate. Faith endures in the hearts and minds of human beings – whatever political leaders may say or do.
One of the places I visited, as I told the congregation here on Wednesday, was called Butovo Polygon. It is the site of a former army base near Moscow, to which Christian prisoners were brought and executed – at a bare minimum 20,000 of them – those are the ones that they have records of – there were thousands more who went to their deaths unrecorded. It could be a place of sadness and silence – like the sites of former concentration camps in Germany. But today it is the site of a beautiful church – dedicated to the modern martyrs of Communism – including the Romanov Royal family of course, – and a lovely garden, tended by army recruits… probably much like the young infantrymen who acted as executioners in times gone by.
Jesus tells his disciples that he is going away, but also that he is coming to them. Not in the familiar form that they know him by, but in the form of the Holy Spirit. That Spirit that cannot be eliminated, cannot be destroyed, no matter how much evil is invoked against it.
Today is a day when by tradition we ask for God’s blessing on human endeavour – especially on the work of our farming community and all associated with it. As we do so, we need also to keep in mind what happens when human beings try to do without God, without faith; believing that they hold all the answers themselves. The results can be truly shocking.
And as we also look forward to the feast of the Ascension this week and then to Pentecost and the foundation of the Christian Church as we know it, let us give thanks for God’s Holy Spirit and pray that we too may be granted a full measure of it in our lives and our prayers. And if we – like Lydia – are judged faithful to the Lord, may he come and abide with us always. Amen.