It is Inevitable

Our "auxiliary" Bishop (don't ask me, I don't know exactly what the "auxiliary" stands for either) was in town this past weekend. Since I still have some sort of adolescent issue with authority, I'm never all that excited when bosses or hierarchs of any kind show up. But I must admit, we are fortunate to have such a down-to-earth man in Bishop Benjamin. Liturgically, it is wonderful to have the Bishop present during services - the "icon" of heavenly worship is complete, and every once in a while you get glimpses of what it's like in the kingdom of God. It brings the "summation of all things" just a little bit closer to the present moment. But with Bp. Benjamin, even when he stood up for an hour yesterday at Brunch for a Q&A session, it was a breath of fresh air. One thing he said really caught my attention, which is what I wanted to write about.

He was responding to a question about Orthodoxy and mission - someone had asked why folks have to literally stumble into services to discover Orthodoxy. He had a couple of things to say about that, and then remarked:

This country hasn't really noticed us yet. But when they do, they are going to have a big problem with us because the Orthodox way of life is the most serious threat to "this world's" culture there is.

I immediately thought of the martyrs in the first couple of centuries after Christ's resurrection from the dead. Rome hated Christians because they were such a pain in the cultural ass. They wouldn't "go along with the program" in order to keep the civil peace, and thousands of martyrs died at the hands of the government just like Jesus had forewarned them. These Christians were not "activists" (i.e. they weren't making public displays of protest, etc.) - they just had a stronger loyalty to God's kingdom than to Rome's kingdom.

That is the thing that Orthodoxy has preserved intact in its' liturgical life - this loyalty to true culture - the Kingdom of God. And when a people keeps that tradition alive liturgically, it inevitably spills over into all the other areas of their life and the way they interact with the "culture at large." In a sense, that is the whole purpose of ritual - to preserve, protect and proclaim a way of life. I believe Bp. Benjamin may be correct. When our self-serving, self-seeking, self-directed culture finally wakes up and notices Orthodoxy, all hell will break loose. It is inevitable.