Window Quarterly Vol. 3, No. 2, 1993 Copyright 1993 [Permission is granted to use, print, reproduce this article provided the following acknowledgment is given: From Window Quarterly 3, 2 (1993); ACRAG c. 1993. *** HYPOCRISY: THE DEADLIEST SIN by Elise Antreassian Of all the many and formidable obstacles to salvation, the fathers of the Church deemed seven to be "deadly." We are reminded of their alarming presence every Sunday at confession when they are cited aloud (although the classical Armenian does much to defuse their menace): "pride, envy, anger, sloth, covetousness, gluttony, lust." It is an unbearable list; each word is a stinging slap. Is there anyone in the congregation who has not been touched by some if not all of these sins? In a good week I may manage to elude just one of them. But that is rare. And so with each Holy Communion comes the pledge to begin the good race anew, a race that can be run gloriously and well enough but for those seven deadly snares. For the past several years, however, I have detected in the Armenian Church and even in myself another much deadlier menace. It has always been creeping about, but there were, once upon a time, the heroes and dragon slayers, the saints and martyrs who kept it at bay. It has been feeding on the huge, corpulent body of apathy and self-absorption that has settled in our pews, our church meeting rooms, even our homes. Hypocrisy. And I want to tell you how I, to my horror, have helped to feed the monster. In my life, there have been two great challenges (in addition to an infinite number of lesser ones) to the depth and sincerity of my faith. One was when I, having studied faith in the abstract, emerged from seminary, a woman, a female missionary dropped like an ice cube into the fiery world of applied faith. It is now fifteen years since I was first accepted into St. Nersess. I was congratulated and told there were no guarantees for placement after graduation. It is disturbing to think that a school of vocation-especially one so painfully lacking in candidates-could take in students without some assurance that they will be able to find work in their chosen field some day. Many an auto mechanic school promises a job and a bag of tools upon graduation. Does engine repair supersede the mending of souls? But this is the entire church community's problem and one that should be resolved if it continues to invite women to study theology. I worked in the church before I went to seminary and I have worked there since. The difference, however, has been formidable because seminary education gave me a far more informed notion of what the church is meant to be. This information has not always been helpful. What the church is meant to be and what it actually is are two different things and in church vocation one struggles endlessly to reconcile that difference. As a woman, I have had to face the prejudices and misogyny of the ignorant with a smile. But now I think that has been a traitor's smile, the smile of one grown weary of prolonged battles on behalf of lost causes, the smile of one more intent on getting on with things than making them better. The amiable smile of the hypocrite. Although it is true that our Diocese has female department heads, it is also true that the altar is a male fortress facing a sea of predominantly female faces in the congregation. Who are these women? Does anyone know their stories or those of their mothers and grandmothers? When we remember them, when they are celebrated or even when a woman is honored in her parish, we always hear first what loving wives they are, what devoted mothers, then, ultimately, what loyal widows. The historical record has a way of immortalizing what we want to see immortalized. Who are these women for whom I have not spoken, for whom I have not risked unpopularity and censure? They not only cook and clean and sew the altar cloths and the vestments, they also established and continue to form the membership of the Women's Guilds, a pivotal force in the Church today; they are the women who run and staff our Sunday Schools, the women who go to church, leaving their men in church lobbies and outside to smoke and talk about politics, as if that were the way to change the world, when the real revolution was going on inside. We celebrate the Battle of Vartanantz every year with great pomp. The Battle of Avarayr was lost. What we need to revere, what women have always understood, was the mighty power of the believing heart. Over the years, there has often been difficulty in coming up with new saints' names for the annual Women Saints celebration in the Diocese. It's not that there are none; they have remained sadly anonymous and whatever names are known do not come quickly to mind. And yet in my own life, I have seen the quiet completely undocumented faith of women, their ability to put that faith into action was simply a fact of life. I remember my grandmothers. Their names are far from household words, unless you count the several households that comprised their families. When she was in her eighties, my mother's mother - who fended for herself for seven years after the massacres before miraculously rejoining her husband in New York where she brought up her family - had a daily morning ritual. Upon rising, she would open the back door of her basement apartment, a door that led up to a garden. The sun would shine in, the early morning dust spiral up in the shafts of light for all the world like incense, and she would say, "Thank you, God, thank you for one more beautiful day and one more day in the world for me." Her prayer wasn't printed in the newspapers; her simple hymn was never set to music. As for my father's mother, every day she would read her tattered, yellowed Bible, held together with a corroded rubber band. God knows what that ancient Bible had seen, to what sorrowful places she had carried it with her. She was a school teacher in the old country, but no one had ever asked her what she believed. No one had to. Jesus Christ Himself was the ultimate example of liberator. He talked to women about their faith. What an unheard of thing, telling to a woman about what she believes! He healed them; He included them among his friends. In His life as it emerges in the Gospels, women circulated in the free air of this astounding new faith with a presence and importance men marveled at. Women mourned Him at the Cross; women saw and believed in His resurrection. And if you look at the Gospel of Luke (24:10,11), you will find that when the women told the good news of the Empty Tomb to the other disciples, they laughed at the "idle tale," no doubt a silly women's story. How much those women must have missed Jesus at that moment, He who had made them feel whole and equal in the fractured imbalance of New Testament times! How much He is still missed, as centuries of distorted scriptural interpretation and the bias of a "man's world" continue to cloud the pristine message of Christ. Am I not part of the problem for not fighting tooth and nail for women's ordination? Or against church practices that reflect primitive taboos against women, menstruation, childbirth? Am I not part of the problem for not even insisting that it be talked about? Anxious to discuss this from both practical and purely theological perspectives, women (and men) have been consistently discouraged. I am saddened that a church as strong and rich in tradition and one that had endured as many crises as my church, will not take on the relatively minor and extremely necessary risk of continuing to grow. It is disheartening as well to hear priests who were once the angry young men at seminary tow the establishment line now that they are ordained. Or is it that they, as I sometimes do, associate themselves more now with the church as an Institution rather than with the Living Body of Christ, the faithful? As a director of the Department of Religious Education, I am pleased to be serving in a creative and challenging capacity in the church. To people in general and to younger women in particular, I am a visible reminder that there is meaningful work in the church for women and that such work is very satisfying indeed. I cannot explain to younger women why they won't be ordained in our church; I can encourage them to be energetic and ambitious (in the humblest meaning of that word) in their service so that someday this too will be a reality. Or can I do more? The second greatest challenge to my faith has been motherhood and its incumbent challenge of passing along Christian lifestyles and values (and whatever else the parent deems vital, although not necessarily for herself). It is one of the ironic truths of Sunday School education that young couples, themselves, part of church families, having avoided church for the first years of their marriage, will promptly return as soon as they have children who should benefit from church and community life. It seems we often do things for the good of our children without wondering why, if they are of such benefit to our little ones, they have no real importance to us! In this way, generation after generation has passed along certain habits of faith without pausing to consider their true impact. We all have a share in this conspiracy because it is only human to avoid the great personal sacrifice that activism, reform and change require. But I ask myself, am I more culpable as a church "insider," as someone in a position to make informed demands and have not? This is the insidious hypocrisy, sadly, of convenience. It is the one that makes it all right to insist that my children go through certain motions because it is easier than creating new, more meaningful ones. It is the hypocrisy that tells my children it is important to go to church. If it is so important, why am I not there every Sunday? Because I am tired of praising, petitioning, and thanking God in a language as remote to people today as are the times in which it was spoken? Because I am immune to the same ethnic, nationalistic, or, if religious at all, then hackneyed message from the pulpit? Because I am tired of the top-heavy altar, overpopulated with deacons, sub- deacons, altar boys - girls have recently been permitted to join them if they are 12 or under. (Editor's Note: This age restriction is only placed in the Eastern Diocese. The other two American Dioceses do not have this restriction.) I shall leave it to your knowledge of biology to understand why - who would be bored silly if they were forced to sit in the pews with the rest of the congregation (and many of them, indeed, are very uncomfortable when they are not active participants in the liturgy)? Because I am exhausted by the length of the service, a length that is a source of pride to some ("oh, this is nothing; this would have taken five hours in Jerusalem/Beirut/Cairo....) and, for others, to daunting a challenge for revision? Because I am tired of the reproach, however subtle, of parishioners who watch my children fuss noisily in their seats, if they are not actually climbing up onto the service book racks - to, in the words of my four-year-old son, "see God better." How many in church that day, including myself, had come to see God at all? - and resent the disruption, as if this were an opera concert and the audience had best be quiet. Why? "Make a joyful noise to the Lord!" the Good Book says. And how many times did I put my finger to my lips and glare at my children? It is all of these and none of these. For there are times I sit in church and am moved to tears by unknown forces, the emotional tug of the sharagans, the memories, during Der Voghormia, of departed loved ones. But I have analyzed these moments meticulously. These are not the emotions of a religious experience, someone in community, encountering God. They belong more to a kind of family ritual, performed so many times that they possess the power to move by sheer dint of nostalgia. Is this what I want for my children? No. But the torpor of hypocrisy is too heavy to dislodge. There is no time, there is no use, there is no real urgency for change, I seem to be telling myself, I must be telling myself. It is the hypocrisy that tells my children it is important to help others. The two great commandments of the New Testament are about love: love God; love one another. And yet what a conditional love ours has become. How indifferent we, whose suffering must surely occupy the greatest share of our national memory, are to the suffering of others. When the Department of Religious Education tried to organize a Lenten fundraising campaign (an annual tradition) in our Sunday Schools in the early 80s to benefit the genocide survivors of Cambodia, it was amazing how many times looks were exchanged between parents and teachers, as if to say "Cambodia? What does this have to do with us?" No doubt this was the common retort to appeals for Armenian genocide victims in 1915, but do we ever make the ironic connection? Many came right out and said that they would feel better helping other Armenians and, indeed, compromises were often made so that some obscure Armenian school or campaign would share the gift with, let's say, the world's hungry, or the world's homeless. Now, at least, a campaign for the miserable hordes would be ennobled by an accompanying Armenian cause, however trifling. And when the world opened its heart and everything else, pouring massive amounts of food, clothing, money, housing into earthquake-ravaged Armenia, were we the least bit influenced to give in kind? As an employee of the Diocese, I know what meager collections were received for the starving of Ethiopia, our sister in the Oriental Orthodox Church, a country whose most powerful icon in recent memory has been the picture of children bloated with hunger and besieged by flies. And meager as well have been almost all our Sunday School Lenten drives which have averaged less than $1.00 per child set aside during the 40-day Lenten period for those less fortunate, including our sisters and brothers in Armenia whose cause is now far from trifling. It's not the children's fault; their sense of generosity is just a reflection of their elders who have actually excused the paucity of the gift on poor motivation and the economy. Is it so surprising that our children have no notion of sacrifice, when their parents, and I count myself among them, are more concerned about the beauty of their homes than that no one in the neighborhood should go to bed hungry? Do we, the Armenian faithful, see the face of Christ in others? What have I done to make a difference? This is the monster I have fed and it grows larger by the moment because so many add to its trough. But hypocrisy can be defeated and indifference and ignorance transformed into the twin whips that drive it away. To all of us - parishioners, parish leaders, clergymen, Diocesan leaders - I offer suggestions to help us make the church the living Body of Christ again: * Ordain women and make the altar a reflection of the fullness of creation, male and female. * Revise the language and structure of the Badarak with care and purpose, but begin now. * Have an active social service auxiliary in every parish that is in the full-time business of dispensing aid to all who hurt in the community, not just other Armenians. * Have a social service center at Diocesan headquarters with the same outreach. * Teach our congregations what it means to worship so that on Sunday mornings our churches resound with song and responses. * Reform the sacrament of confession in the Armenian church so it is cathartic and real. * Have a Sunday School in every parish and hold it before or after badarak, or on another day entirely, to allow children to worship with their families. And let them, children only please, make noise. * Require a home-study course on the Armenian Church (a reading list, plus assignment) for anyone wishing to hold office in the parish or Diocese. The people in charge should know what they're in charge of. * Require Bible studies in every parish run by the clergyman or a competent volunteer or a paid professional. The Word of God should be given its due. * If a church gets too big for the clergyman to care for the spiritual needs of all its members or for parishioners to know each other, form two parishes. This is not divisive, it is true unity. A church should not be a corporation, but a large family. * Have catechism classes for new members of a church so that all parishioners have the same knowledge of the church's mission. * Stimulate discussion of current events, ethical dilemmas, politics and other everyday realities and encourage Christian concern and action. These are just a few. I know many more could and must be added to the list and taken seriously by those in a position to make changes. But changes are what Christianity is all about. When God broke into the world and was made incarnate, life and all human understanding were forever altered. Our relationship with the rest of Creation was restored with the proviso that we be true stewards laboring for the love of God and the good of others. This is the labor of the Christian soldier, unfettered by complacency, indifference, hypocrisy. Perhaps, with each other's help, it is a labor that can renew the Church and every faithful heart within. *** =================================================== _ _ _ _ _ |_| ___ _| | ___ _ _ _ | | | | | | _ / _ \ / _ | / _ \ | | | | | | | |_| |_| || |_ | | | || |_| || |_| || |_| |_| | \_________/\___||_| |_| \___/ \___/ \_________/ View Of The Armenian Church ===================================================