Romanian Road #4
Our conference in Sinaia ended Thursday (3/22) at noon, and by 1:30pm we were en route to Cluj Napoca, Romania’s second largest city: a city of approximately 500,000 people, experiencing significant economic growth. (In this latter regard, Microsoft is in the process of building “a little city within a city,” intending to employ 5,000 workers.). We finally reached Cluj, literally and figuratively the heart of Transylvania, about 9:30pm, after having had a pizza dinner (if desired, in Romania one orders ketchup with pizza) in a fascinating, double-walled citadel fortress, Alba Carolina, first built by the Romans and then renovated generations later in the 1530s.
For some moments as we drove through the Carpathian Mountains — which provided wonderful scenes of snow, mountains, rushing streams, grazing sheep, and fields abounding with colonies of moles— I heard of a “missionary wing” of the Orthodox Church. As a 1920s response to life within the church, not unlike our para-church organizations within Protestantism or the multitude of historic orders within Catholicism, this “wing” is led by lay leaders, who are essentially “tent makers,” but who meet with “their flocks” in their own buildings. The difficulty of this arrangement, as is true in our American settings, arises vis-à-vis the sacraments: Who is able to administer and to receive them? Or stated differently, how does one relate to and change traditional practices and/or authority, particularly when these appears to be inhibiting or even forcefully quelling necessary reforms or life? Within the Romanian setting, the dynamic between these “cults” (so denoted by the government) and the Orthodox Church was exacerbated during the communist era, when by the fact that some priests within the Orthodox Church functioned as informants for the Communist Party. Of course, since 1989 that situation no longer exists, but the memory lingers.
As I thought about these church dynamics and relationships, I was reminded of our Sinaia discussions regarding 2Timothy and Paul’s relationship with some who had been under his leadership. Twice within that letter he noted that he had been “abandoned,” or so he felt, by those with whom he had shared much. They had turned elsewhere — whether or not seeking new life, security, or chaffing under his leadership can be debated — raising for me that question: How do you keep the sheep together? This question and attending problem was true for Paul, and remains true for the Romanian and US church. Comparable to centrifugal force, we the “sheep of His pasture” tend regularly to be pulled away from our center, who is Christ; I venture only He has the power to pull us back together.
Hopefully,
Stan