Just another failed church

  • churchofresurr.jpg“Daily Lives” had an inter­est­ing com­mem­o­ra­tion for today that wasn’t on the OCA Web­site: it’s the con­se­cra­tion of the Church of the Res­ur­rec­tion in the Holy City:

    Emperor Con­stan­tine and his mother Helen built this church and had it con­se­crated in the year 336. How­ever, the Per­sians set fire to it and destroyed it in 614. Twelve years later, Abbot Mod­es­tus, who would later be patri­arch of Jerusalem, rebuilt it. In 934 the Sara­cens set fire to part of the church of Pascha, and again thirty-five years later, the Moslems set fire to the dome, stole all of the sacred objects within, and burned the patri­arch of Jerusalem in the flames. Then in 1010, the Moslems destroyed the church down to its foun­da­tion. Eigh­teen years later, Emperor Argyrus of Con­stan­tino­ple began con­struc­tion of a more mod­est ver­sion of the orig­i­nal, which was com­pleted in 1048. Fifty-one years later, the Cru­saders stormed Jerusalem and ruled for 88 years, but the church has remained intact since its last reconstruction.

    Man, only we Ortho­dox could com­mem­o­rate a 1600+-year-old church that’s been com­pletely trashed six times. Of course, we’re not giv­ing it a spe­cial day because it’s been so ill-treated. We’re giv­ing it a spe­cial day because it’s still standing.

    This kind of thing reminds me of the sur­prise I had when I first started delv­ing into the his­tory of the Ortho­dox Church.

    I was look­ing for a lot of heroic res­cues from the brink of dis­as­ter, a lot of near-misses that indi­cated that God wouldn’t let us “dash our foot against a stone” and explain how the Ancient Church sur­vived intact to the present day.

    Instead, I got a recur­ring theme of destruc­tion, con­quest, fail­ure, with the Ortho­dox Church on the los­ing side every time. From the Mon­gols to the Sara­cens to the Per­sians to the Turks to the Cru­saders to the Com­mu­nists, the Ortho­dox Church seems like it just can’t catch a break.

    As I read through these dis­as­ters, my ideas were chal­lenged, and finally they were just plain dumped into an ash­can. But in their absence, a kind of won­der grew that has had a lot more power for me. Here’s the Ortho­dox Church — beaten, suf­fo­cated, humil­i­ated, tram­pled, robbed, put to the torch, left for dead count­less times — but like the (very aptly named) Church of the Res­ur­rec­tion in Jerusalem, it’s still here. What in the world could sus­tain some­thing that should have died over and over and over? What but the grace of God, the truth of Jesus Christ and the action of the Holy Spirit could have kept some­thing alive that had been deprived of every­thing that gives life to an orga­ni­za­tion or religion?

    It would seem like a mir­a­cle to wor­ship in the Church of the Res­ur­rec­tion. In actu­al­ity, it’s a mir­a­cle to wor­ship in any Ortho­dox Church, from the hum­blest mis­sion to the grand­est cathe­dral. I hope we appre­ci­ate it. Fail­ing to do so — and to give God glory and thanks for it — may be the only things that could really fin­ish off a church.


    Related posts:

    1. The Ortho­dox prob­lem in Jerusalem
    2. An addi­tional Cross-word
    3. A Vic­to­rian take on the Ortho­dox Church
    4. St. Euphemia
    5. Thoughts about the Ortho­dox Church and cap­i­tal punishment

    December 9th, 2007 | Grace | 1 Comment |

One Response and Counting...

  • Diana 12.09.2007

    Thank you for this, I came across it at just the right time.

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