Window Quarterly
Vol. 2, No. 2, 1991
Copyright 1991

[Permission is granted to use, print, reproduce this article 
provided the following acknowledgment is given:  From 
Window Quarterly 2, 2 (1991);  ACRAG c. 1991. 

***

Mission in the Diaspora: Mary's Example

by Vigen Guroian

On his frequent journeys from Galilee to Judea and 
Jerusalem our Lord took special pleasure in visiting with 
friends. Among these friends of our Lord were Lazarus and 
his sisters Martha and Mary. They lived in the village of 
Bethany on the road from Jericho to Jerusalem.  We have 
mention of this family in St. Luke's touching story of Mary 
and Martha.  St. John also informs us in his gospel that at the 
close of Jesus' earthly ministry, our Lord revealed his great 
power over death itself by raising Lazarus; and visited these 
friends just before his triumphal entrance into Jerusalem on 
Palm Sunday.
	
But for the moment, I would like to turn to Luke's story of 
Martha and Mary.  It has been a story of enduring interest 
and speculation in Christian theology and spiritual reflection.
While they were on their way Jesus came to a village where a 
woman named Martha made him welcome in her home.  She 
had a sister, Mary, who seated herself at the Lord's feet and 
stayed there listening to his words.  Now Martha was 
distracted by her many tasks, so she came to him and said, 
"Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to get on 
with the work by myself?  Tell her to come and lend a hand.' 
But the Lord answered, 'Martha, Martha, you are fretting and 
fussing about so many things; but one thing is necessary. The 
part that Mary has chosen is best; and it shall not be taken 
away from her."(Luke 10:38-42)
	
This domestic scene captures how any one of us might 
respond when visited by a guest of great importance.  
Martha, caught up with preparing  for the arrival of Jesus and 
his disciples, hurries to tidy the house and prepare dinner. 
"Martha made him welcome in her home. . . . Now Martha 
was distracted by her many tasks."  Meanwhile, Jesus seated 
himself and began to teach.  We do not have difficulty 
imagining the scene.  Mary and all the other guests have 
gathered around Jesus breathing in his every word.  Martha is 
left by herself to finish setting the table.  In the midst of her 
toil, she grows increasingly angry  at her sister Mary who she 
thinks is avoiding her responsibilities. Thus Martha bursts 
out, "Master, do you not care that my sister has left me alone 
to do all the work?  Tell her to get up and attend to her 
tasks."  But Jesus refuses to reprimand Mary. He will not 
command her to help Martha.  Instead, he says, "Martha, dear 
Martha, there is no need to worry and become aggravated.  
Such lavish preparation is not necessary. Something simple 
will be enough.  Your sister, Mary, has chosen the best repast 
of all.  Would you take it from her?  I will not do such a 
thing."
	
Jesus recognized Martha's good intentions.  It is right to 
attend to the physical needs of others, to feed and comfort 
the weary traveler, to heal the sick, and care for the less 
fortunate.  The story of Martha and Mary immediately 
follows the parable of the Good Samaritan in the Gospel of 
St. Luke. When viewed in light of that parable, Martha's 
behavior cannot simply be condemned.  She acts consistently 
with the Samaritan story's exhortation to practice charity.  
Works of charity belong to the kingdom of God.  Jesus is the 
autobasileia, the kingdom in Person.  Martha's actions fall 
short of the demands of the moment only because she forgets 
that the physical preparations for the celebration of God's 
kingdom are of secondary not primary importance.
	
For Armenians there is a larger lesson in this story.  It 
reminds us that there is such a thing as being too concerned 
with physical well-being and political survival. Our Lord and 
his saints did not value physical and political survival so 
highly. The vicissitudes and needs of this life all too easily 
can distract us from the 'one thing [that] is necessary."  What 
a curse the Turk set upon Armenians when he persuaded 
them through all the years of the Ottoman captivity and then 
the massacres and genocide of 1915 to think in obsessively 
survivalistic terms.  There is little in this sort of temperament 
or behavior which belongs to the kingdom of God.  "For 
whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses 
his life for my sake will find it." (Matt. 16:25)
	
Jesus' answer to Martha is humorous.  He makes a pun.  But 
this is a play on words which instructs and does not merely 
entertain.  "Mary," says Jesus, "has chosen the right portion, 
the best part of the feast."  He is referring  in metaphor, not 
to the food which fills our stomachs, but to the food which is 
the word of God, the spiritual bread of eternal life.  Mary has 
chosen to listen to Jesus.  She understands that without this 
spiritual food salvation is not possible.
	
The irony of Armenian life which the story of Martha and 
Mary exposes is painful to admit.   The irony is that while 
our enemies nearly starve us to death by denying the people 
earthly bread, Armenians themselves do much worse by 
denying themselves the heavenly breadPMary's good portion.
	
As I think back upon my childhood, I am overwhelmed with 
memories of grandmothers and great aunts placing in front of 
me more food than I could ever eat - fruit and nuts, bread and 
cheese and delicious sweet pastries and candies.  I still can 
hear them saying to me: "Anoti es. Ger!"  These beloved 
women by their attention to my small needs were feeding 
vicariously all those whom they saw go hungry during the 
years of great tribulation at the hands of the Turk.  I am 
struck by the pathos of our shared lives. While I will remain 
forever grateful for the love and affection given to me as a 
child and do not blame those beloved women for trying to 
make my every visit and meal a feast - as Jesus did not blame 
Martha, still I wonder whether the behavior of these mothers, 
excusable in view of their own past, does not also stand as a 
symbol of our utter distraction and neglect of the "one thing 
that is necessary."
	
For in the thirty years since my childhood, nearly all of my 
generation, which carries with it such memories of 
grandmothers and great aunts, has wandered from the 
Armenian Church.  The ChurchPso obsessed with its own 
survival and Armenian identity, having been so attentive to 
provisions of earthly breadPhas starved its people of the 
Word of God.  It does not matter which parish one visits of  
the Diocese or the Prelacy.  All are marked by the 
conspicuous absence of the second and third generations and 
now their children. The subsequent immigrations from the 
Middle East and Armenia belie the fact that this is indeed a 
critical and dangerous moment for the Armenian Church in 
America.   The pews occupied by recent immigrants are also 
empty pews, emptied of the second and the third generations 
and their children. Whenever I visit an Armenian parish there 
is the haunting reminder of the children who left and never 
returned because their church lacked the courage and vision 
to change and transmit the tradition in the idiom of the new 
culture into which it was cast.
	
My former teacher, the late Will Herberg, himself a Jew, 
dedicated his classic study of religion and ethnicity in 
America, Protestant, Catholic, Jew , with these words: To the 
Third Generation upon whose return so much of the future of 
religion in America depends.
	
Well, the third generation has not returned to the Armenian 
Church.  And the Church is in serious dilemma, despite its 
habitual denials.  What a loss it is.  For in my generation and 
its progeny there is a near complete recovery from the 
genocide of 1915.  In these second, third and even fourth 
generations the dreams of the fathers and mothers have come 
true.  Among them are doctors, musicians, scientists, 
business leaders, lawyers and educators who should have 
become the lay leaders of the Armenian Church.  But they 
are not present.  Their absence is the terrible measure of how 
we have misdirected our energies and avoided attending to 
the "one thing necessary."
	
Martha the Armenian Church has been.  We have kept the 
feasts, we have repeated the ancient rituals, and we have 
celebrated the nation's past glory.  But without Mary what is 
Martha?  Without the living word of God vibrating in our 
heads, rushing in our veins, pounding in our hearts, the 
Church is a museum, a repository of heavenly artifacts and 
ancient rituals displayed on feast days whose meaning has all 
but been forgotten by the participants.
	
This a gross caricature of what a national church, such as the 
Armenian Church, was in its "natural" culture, but can no 
longer be in America.  There must be a renewal of mission.  
Sadly, instead of facing the challenge and the new realities of 
the diaspora, Armenians have persisted in viewing their 
church as the place in which is made present, not the 
kingdom of God, but the old world long since disappeared, 
which although it can be fantastically projected into the 
future as a dream or hope, is alien to the world in which God 
has placed them to live out their real lives.  No wonder that 
for my generation and now their children the Armenian 
Church is a strange place, irrelevant to their lives.
	
Let us return to Mary for a moment.  Mary's devotion was not 
a private one.  Her yearning was for the kingdom of God and 
she knew that the kingdom had been made present in Jesus of 
Nazareth whom she could call friend as well as Lord.

 Six days before the Passover festival, Jesus came to 
Bethany, where Lazarus lived whom he had raised from the 
dead.  There a supper was given in his honor, at which 
Martha served, and Lazarus sat among the guests with Jesus. 
Then Mary brought a pound of very costly perfume, pure oil 
of nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped them with 
her hair, till the house was filled with the fragrance.  At this, 
Judas Iscariot, a disciple of his - the one who was about to 
betray him - said, "Why was this perfume not sold for thirty 
pounds and given to the poor?"  he said this, not out of any 
care for the poor, but because he was a thief; he used to pilfer 
the money put into the common purse, which was his charge. 
"Leave her alone!" said Jesus. "Let her keep it till the day 
when she prepares for my burial; for you have the poor 
among you always, but you will not always have me."  (John 
12: 1-8 )
	
Martha served a feast on that fateful occasion before Jesus' 
passion.   And so should we when the Lord is with us, when 
the kingdom is present among us.  Yet Mary poured out the 
fragrant oil of her heart's desire.  "And the house was filled 
with the fragrance," says St. John, the fragrance of Mary's 
abiding witness to the truth which gives us life and sets us 
free.
	
We must pay serious attention to Mary's example at this 
critical moment in the history of our church and the 
Armenian people. Yet Mary's example is not the only model 
to which we can turn.  We should be reminded of other 
women whom our church venerates and upon whom it 
bestows the glorious title of saint.  I am reminded of the 
witness of Hripseme and Gayne, of Ashken, and of Nooneh 
and Maneh. They were Mary's co-workers.  They were not 
content to educate themselves in the faith only, but sacrificed 
their lives to pass on the holy tradition of the apostles to 
family, nation and all who would accept the word of God 
into their hearts.

MARY AND MISSION

Mary's example is not merely an example for women, though 
we have gotten used to portraying it that way.  Mary is an 
example for all who feel called by Christ and know him as 
their friend.  Mary was a visionary.  She recognized that this 
friend was also the Lord and Messiah.  She anticipated the 
awful sacrifice he would make for her.  And she was willing 
to sacrifice for his sake.  Those who labor in the Lord's 
vineyard must also be visionaries. They must look into the 
future with courage and truthfulness and the willingness to 
sacrifice.  I will not avert my own eyes for the sake of false 
comfort, from the terrible failure of the Church to be a 
mission to the world.  It has forsaken my generation.  The 
Lord will judge the leaders who have failed. The Lord will 
hold all of us accountable for this. For we have not loved the 
Lord enough as Mary did.  Do we dare sacrifice future 
generations on the altar of our extreme ethnocentricism, 
having turned the Church into a servant of nationalism rather 
than a community of Christian discipleship?  In America the 
Armenian Church must no longer encourage Armenians to 
hide in ethnic ghettos making itself the house into which they 
retreat.  Such retreat provides only the illusion of protection 
against the massive assimilative forces of a pluralistic 
society.  The answer is not total Americanization of the 
Church.  But it does mean that Armenians must risk their 
identity in order to preserve and renew it.  For too long the 
Holy Spirit has been closed out of our churches, barred from 
entering by closed doors and stained glass windows.    But 
we must pull open the windows, unbar and open the doors,  
and let the Spirit in to blow where it wills (John 2: 7-8).  
Only the Spirit will set us free and give us the courage and 
vision to discern ways of change and reform.  We must 
engage the American order creatively and translate our 
church's universal truth and ethnic uniqueness into an idiom 
suited to future generations.
	
How much sense can the Armenian Church's relentless 
efforts to link the Armenian nation (inevitably interpreted 
politically by its people) with the Christian faith make to 
third and fourth generation Armenian-Americans? 
Furthermore, the Christian nation which St. Gregory the 
Illuminator founded was strangled  by the Ottoman yoke and 
crucified and put to death finally by the Young Turks.  In 
Soviet Armenia the Communists made certain the Christian 
nation would not revive.  The resurrection of the Armenian 
Church in the diaspora is in the form of a spiritual body. This 
will be so in Armenia, as well, as autonomous secular 
institutions of national life take primary responsibility for the 
nation.  The compulsive reiteration of the fact that Armenia 
was the first Christian nation becomes the pathetic testimony 
that Armenians have not yet come to terms with what 
actually happened in 1915 and subsequently in Soviet 
Armenia.  In spite of the conscientious commemoration of 
the slaughter of the two million we do  not yet believe that 
with their deaths the old Armenian world died.  As the 
disciples who after the crucifixion could not believe that 
their leader was killed and when encountered by Jesus in his 
resurrected, glorified body did not recognize him, Armenians 
also have not been able to recognize the Armenian Church in 
its resurrected body.  The Church's long isolation from the 
other Christian churches is over.  The era of the millet ended 
seventy years ago.  The era of Soviet captivity is ending.  The 
old survivalism which persists as a habit especially within 
the Church must no longer be mistaken for the "gospel" of 
Jesus Christ.
	
Our old ways of instructing the young must change. 
Instruction in the Armenian language and the transmission of 
historical information which fails to make connections with 
the living reality of this culture and its "faiths" is not 
sufficient to equip them for the kind of spiritual combat they 
will have to do in a society which is not Armenian.  A society  
in which nearly all the supports of Christian faith have 
crumbled.  We must not be content with instilling in the 
young a mere loyalty to the Church as a cultural institution.  
Rather an education in Christian life as discipleship, witness, 
and service is required.  The young must be trained not 
merely to be custodians of ancient and venerable institutions, 
but truly the faithful in Christ called to be the salt of the 
earth.
	
There is a need for a prophetic laity in the Armenian Church, 
like the monastics of a bygone era, men and women alike, 
who will courageously bring attention to our shortcomings 
and call us back to our faith.  The old monastic system has 
been utterly clericized and limited to a training ground for 
hierarchs and administrators. Administrators almost by 
definition find the prophetic spirit dangerous, not useful or 
necessary.  A prophetic laity in the ancient monastic spirit of 
renewal and reform, however, will  come about only if we 
pursue the sort of Christian instruction which I just 
described.
	
Furthermore, believers everywhere must join together in 
prayer and study of scripture and pursue together projects of 
service.  Like Mary, we must sit attentively at Christ's feet 
and listen to the living Word of God.   But after we listen, we 
have a right and a duty to serve.  It is time that the ancient 
order of deaconess be restored in our Church.  And let us not 
quibble over whether such women must be celibate or live in 
monastic communities.  That is a tactic of the fearful and 
those who refuse to permit the Church to adjust to the times.  
The church historian Jarislov Pelikan has written:  "Tradition 
is the living faith of the dead.  Traditionalism is the dead 
faith of living."  The Armenian Church is afflicted by the 
latter.  Real tradition is liberating , not confining.  Over the 
centuries the diaconate has been reduced to a  narrowly 
defined liturgical function.  It is time the diaconate be 
returned to its intended role of total service to the 
community.  And that must include our mothers, sisters, 
wives and daughters.
	
Our church is in desperate need of regaining its identity as 
mission.  Though we are not told so, we must believe that 
Mary not only listened to the words of the Lord, but also 
preached them.  I sometimes think the Armenian Church 
forgot the meaning of the words mission and discipleship 
somewhere between the fourth and twelfth century.  An 
evangelization of the people must begin anew - here in 
America and now in Armenia.  We here must create a model 
that can be appropriated with adjustments in Armenia.  
Preparing feasts for the lost sheep to attend is not sufficient.  
Jesus went to the lost sheep.  He did not wait for them to 
come to him. If the liturgy does not extend beyond the four 
walls of the sanctuary then it is an abomination. "I will praise 
the Lord at all times.  Let His praise be always on my 
tongue."  This is what the deacon chants after the benediction 
in the Divine Liturgy.  A massive effort is required to recover 
and return all those Armenians whom the Church counts on 
its roles, but who are not really present.  A massive effort is 
required in Armenia to evangelize a people separated from 
the Lord by seventy years of state enforced atheism.
	
In his second letter to the Thessalonians, the Apostle Paul 
exhorted: "So then brethren, stand firm and hold to the 
traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of 
mouth or by letter" (2 Thess. 2: 15 ). We are in the habit of 
calling our church the Armenian Apostolic Church.  We call 
it that not just because in the distant past our ancestors were 
evangelized by Thaddeus and Batholemew or because our 
bishops claim what is called apostolic succession.  Apostolic 
is derived from the Greek apostolos, meaning one sent forth 
who is especially commissioned to act in behalf of the one 
who sent him.  We are the ones sent. He who sent us is the 
very Son of God.  He has commanded us to "go .  . . and 
make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of 
the Father, and the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them 
to observe all that I have commanded you" (Matt. 19-20 ).  In 
this century, Armenians have been scattered to the four 
corners of the earth.  Had we the choice we might have 
picked another fate.  Nevertheless, this was not a choice to 
be made by us.  But it remains for us to decide whether or 
not we will make of our situation a holy service to the Lord 
and in God's good time earn, as our forefathers and mothers 
did, the appellation apostolic.

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