wfn.org | Attack and Remembrance: wrapped in prayer in Russia and Ukraine

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Note #6883 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

05-October-2001
01368

Attack and Remembrance: wrapped in prayer in Russia and Ukraine

by Gary Payton
Regional Facilitator for Russia, Belarus, and the Ukraine
Worldwide Ministries Division

SANDPOINT, Idaho - On Sunday (Sept. 30), I returned from my latest trip to
Russia and the Ukraine.  I was in Moscow on the day of the attack and then
traveled widely across the two countries in the subsequent three weeks.

	We had just arrived in our Moscow hotel.  Each one of us was exhausted
following the Atlanta-Frankfurt-Moscow flight and three fatiguing hours
standing in the passport control line at Sheremetyevo airport.  Now, we
stood riveted before images of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Though facts were few, the broad outlines of the terrorist attack were clear
enough. Thousands of God's children were dying before our eyes.

	A hurried cell phone call had alerted Al, Michael, and me to the unfolding
news.  Now, as trip leader, the job fell to me to inform our group. Ten
Americans from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) huddled in the bustling
lobby of the Hotel Rossiya.  With as much calm as I could muster, I
summarized the details we had gleaned from the TV screen.  With night
falling and the Kremlin walls illuminated through the pane glass of the
hotel, we cried, held hands, and prayed.

	In an international city I have grown to know and understand, I suddenly
felt very alone and very wary.  Twenty years ago, almost to the day, I
survived a terrorist bombing of the U.S. Air Forces in Europe headquarters
in Germany.  Images long forgotten of shattered concrete and glass, fire and
steel, flooded into my mind.

	We hadn't eaten in hours.  Quietly we walked closely together to the
nearest restaurant.  Soup and bread were all we could handle amidst the
emotional distress.  As we paid our bill and departed, the maitre de asked
if we were Americans.  I said "yes," but rudely walked past unwilling to
enter into a political conversation.  Then his words sunk in.  This Russian
man, a person we had never seen before, nor likely would see again, was
offering his condolences for the victims so recently killed.  I was ashamed
of my rudeness.  My protective guard had been so high, I almost failed to
comprehend this gesture of human kindness.

	So began almost three weeks of travel across major cities and minor
villages in Russia and the Ukraine.  So began a process of being wrapped in
prayer and humbly receiving the spiritual gifts of care and concern from
thousands of our brothers and sisters in Christ:

* Within hours of the attacks, sidewalks and security fences outside the
U.S. Embassies in Moscow and Kiev and the Consulate in St. Petersburg were
lined with bouquets of flowers, lighted candles, miniature icons, and
handwritten prayers and expressions of human solidarity.

* Patriarch Alexei II, leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, held a special
worship service to mourn the loss of the victims and to lift up the
countless families affected.  He stated, "We share America's grief because
Russia, through its own bitter experience, knows of the suffering that
international terrorism brings to peaceful civilians."

* In Sunday worship throughout the land, our now-dispersed Presbyterians
were wrapped in love and prayer in Baptist and Anglican churches across
European Russia.  Our shared faith in Jesus Christ and our shared humanity
were never so dramatically expressed as in the aftermath of this crisis.

* Taxi drivers with whom we had only fleeting contact went out of their way
to express their condolences after identifying us by our accents and manners
as Americans.  Gone was any sense of suspicion and mistrust, replaced by a
quiet respectfulness in this difficult hour.

For me, however, the moment that touched me most took place some days later
on Sunday, September 23, in the rural Ukrainian village of Stepan.  I was
part of a delegation of the Reformed Churches of France, Switzerland,
Scotland, and the U.S.A.  We were visiting reviving congregations of the
Ukrainian Evangelical Reformed Church, a denomination almost completely
destroyed by Stalinist terror in the 1930s and 1940s.  Stepan is a farm
village bearing great similarity to the village of Anatevka popularized in
the musical "Fiddler on the Roof" - chickens, goats, flowers, and faithful
people abound.  Leading worship that Sunday afternoon was Pastor Vasil
Pilipenko, a young man ordained only last year.  As Vasil prepared for his
pastoral prayer, he turned to our group and asked if there were any
Americans
present. I replied "yes," and stood.  He grasped my hand and then led his
small congregation in a prayer for victims, families, and America's national
leaders.  I was filled with emotion and humility.  In this small village,
the pastor was reaching out in Christian love and kindness to me, his
brother, a representative of a rich and powerful America now cast into grief
and mourning.

	In Paul's letter to the Church at Ephesus, he writes:

        I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy
of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and
gentleness, with patience, bearing with one
another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in
the bond of peace.  (Ephesians 4:1-3)

	As never before in my life, my September experiences in Russia and the
Ukraine brought home to me the meaning of "bearing with one another in love"
and of being a part of the Body of Christ in the world.

	We Americans, citizens of the most powerful nation in history, are steeped
in a tradition of giving and of lifting up others in times of distress.  In
our lifetimes, we cannot count the times we have prayed or heard our pastor
pray for the victims of war in the Middle East, for survivors of flood or
famine in Asia, or for thousands made homeless by earthquakes in Central
America.  We are not accustomed to receiving the prayers of others.  We are
not accustomed to the humility and gentleness to which Paul calls us.

	The overwhelming message of Paul's words was made crystal clear to me by
the events of September.  We are not alone.  And, we have never been alone.
We are part of God's Universal Church, and we are being lifted up in prayer
during this time of distress and uncertainty by millions and millions of
other followers of Jesus around the world.  For this we should take comfort
and feel those prayers.

	As we move forward in these uncharted weeks and months ahead, may each of
us be wrapped in that outpouring of love and concern.  May we feel God's
healing presence in our lives.  And, may we forever live out our lives in
the "humility and gentleness" to which we have been called.
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