Thessaloniki: Pascha of the Lord

Sitting in a balcony, I'm looking across the hundreds gathered for Sunday's liturgy.  There's constant movement in the old church, believers coming, believers going, priests roaming the aisles.  It's the "Third Sunday of Pascha" in Thessaloniki's largest Orthodox Church, the Church of Agios Dimitrios.  As the bearded priest reads the Gospel, I'm watching a young woman standing in the back: she's multitasking, profoundly modern, but deeply engaged just the same.   She's got an iPad (on which she seems to be reading along) and a cell phone too, poised and ready for action.  Her head is covered.  And she's rocking with the rhythm of the priest's reading.  I marvel at this: this capacity for reverence in the midst of it all--chaos and creativity, gadgetry and liturgy. 

What's happening this morning, at the Church of Agios Dimitrios (Saint Demetrios), is beyond simplification.  Priests walk the side aisles with huge censors, waving incense in all directions; the sweet smell of worship is everywhere and it fills my lungs.  On two sides, two different choirs take turns (it seems) in chanting prayers, scripture and liturgy.  Their voices are resonant and somewhat discordant, beautiful and rich and haunting.  

And everywhere I look I see icons--the Holy Mother, the Holy Mother and Child, Sofia the Wisdom of God, Disciples and the good saint, Demetrios himself.  Spontaneously, women and men rise from their seats to approach an icon, bowing before it, and pressing their lips to it.  This liturgy is clearly ancient and reverent, but there's a kind of intimacy to it.  An intimacy that is about the HERE and the NOW and the GOD who is here and now.  There's so much going on--a feast, a banquet for the senses, all of them.  I can smell it.  I can see it.  I can taste it.  I can hear it.  The Third Sunday of Pascha, the Passover of the Lord.

A little later, I learn the story of Demetrios, who was born in the late second century of the common era and raised in a privileged military home.  Gifted in leadership, Demetrios was tapped by Rome for military leadership in Thessalonica; but secretly, he converted to Christianity, learned the ways and practices of Christ, and was baptized without much notice.

Icon at Agios Dimitrios

Faith changed Demetrios--and he balked at the Emperor's order to persecute and terrorize the emerging Christian movement in Macedonia.  He also began to tell his story to friends and colleagues, a story of conversion and compassion.  And he mentored, more and more openly, others in their own baptismal journeys.  Their journeys with Jesus.  From a biography at goarch.org:

The Emperor Maximian had just won a series of brilliant victories over the Scythians and was on his way back to Rome when he halted at Thessalonica to receive the acclamations of the populace and to offer sacrifices in thanksgiving to the idols. A number of pagans, envious of the success of the Saint, took advantage of the Emperor's presence in the city to denounce Demetrios as a Christian. Maximian's astonishment gave way to violent indignation when he was told that Demetrios' was making use of his official position to spread the faith. Demetrios was summoned and confined in a cell, located in the basement of nearby baths.

Demetrios of Thessaloniki

Soon after, having persisted in defiance of the Emperor, Demetrios was executed, run through with spears.  He challenged the empire, trusting in the Power of God, even as the mighty power of Rome proved itself swift and harsh.  I'm struck today by Demetrios' calling: the invitation to mentor disciples in the faith, to encourage and support new journeys of compassion and creativity.  For this, in a sense, the good saint was martyred.  

In his own Letter to the Thessalonian Church, two centuries before Demetrios, Paul offered his own encouragement to a community he truly loved (1 Thessalonians 5):

We urge you, beloved, to admonish the idlers, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with all of them.  See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all.  Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.  Do not quench the Spirit.  Do not despise the words of the prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil.

I've always been strangely ambivalent about Paul, but he was (like Demetrios) committed to his calling.  Even more, he was committed to his people, to the young believers taking risks in a new faith and risking almost everything for Jesus and his vision of a world at peace.  I wonder what it might mean for me, for us, for mentors in my own church.

As a leader, a pastor, a mentor, do I practice patience and rejoice in all circumstances and pray without ceasing?  Am I willing to model it and teach it, no matter the cost?  And is it still possible to say--among 21st century believers--that our Christian calling has everything to do with resisting vengeance, refusing to 'repay evil for evil'?  How do we teach that?  How do we hold one another accountable for it?  What kind of mentoring, what kind of pastoring, what kind of friendship makes such lively discipleship possible?

Stairway and Windows at Agios Dimitrios