As I have mentioned previously, my brother in London died just over two weeks ago. His funeral will be taking place today, Thursday (UK time) in the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of the Dormition of the Mother of God and All Saints, which is the Russian Orthodox cathedral for the Diocese of Sourozh (Great Britain and Ireland), within the Patriarchate of Moscow. (What a mouthful!)
As you will probably have noticed from what I’ve just written, when you enter the world of the Orthodox church, the language, turn of phrase and concepts change (for example, the Cathedral’s announcement of my brother’s death referred to him as having “reposed in the Lord”). It takes a while to get one’s head around some of it! I have dug out my copy of Timothy Ware’s book on The Orthodox Church, supplied to me by my brother many years ago. It’s a lot to take in!
As Baptists, our heritage is rooted in the Protestant Reformation of the 15th / 16th centuries. Our direct history goes back maybe 500 years. The Eastern Orthodox churches (including Russian and Greek Orthodox) however, trace back to the early church of the eastern Mediterranean, with a history spanning more than 2000 years. Inevitably, therefore, many of their doctrines and theology are quite different to our own! I have appreciated trying to understand some of that over the years, and especially recently since his death, as a way of getting to know my brother a bit more through his faith.
For Orthodox believers, there is a far stronger connection between the individual, their community and the church than we would understand. The Orthodox Church, in believing in God as Creator, see God as the only giver of life, and the one who has the only authority to allow our death. Based on this, the Orthodox Church sees its role as guiding its people from their birth, throughout their life, and until the grave. This life is seen very much as a preparation for the life that is to come in eternity. So, in dying and in death, the church plays a strong role in helping the individual transition into eternity. The funeral service is a formal mixture of Psalms, readings and prayers for the person who has died – as I understand it, anyway. The focus is on the person and their eternity with God – not on their life that has ended (so no eulogies or stories of pictures). All very different.
There is an amazing richness in the diversity of the expressions of faith within the Christian church and all its various branches, isn’t there? When it comes to Orthodox Christianity, words like ‘lavish’ and’ exuberant’ come to mind in thinking of the interiors of their churches and cathedrals with the overwhelming use of gilded ornamentation and brilliantly coloured icons. Post-Reformation Protestantism went a totally different way in seeing all such ornaments as idolatry, and therefore to be destroyed as distracting us from God. I find church history really humbling in helping me realise that I certainly don’t have a monopoly on truth – and that there are many, many traditions and practices which we can draw on to help us draw close to God.
Carol and I and our family won’t be staying up until the early hours of tomorrow morning to watch my brother’s funeral live. We have, though, arranged for the service to be videoed for us, so that we can participate in some way from a distance in his life and death and his faith and his church.