All Saints Day 2015 – Prayer and Action

A letter from Eric Hinderliter serving in Lithuania

November 2015

Visų šventųjų dieną or Vėlinės

November 1 is All Saints Day, when many of us recall the hymn “For all the saints, who from their labors rest.” In Lithuania November 1 and 2 are special days when, according to the state tourist information page, “all Lithuanians go to cemeteries to put up candles on the tombs of their loved ones, also on unvisited tombs, and to say a prayer, in the belief that this will help to keep the link between the living and the dead, as All Souls’ Day is a special time, when souls come back home.“ Cemeteries are aglow with candles. Yet many find that these traditions have become exaggerated folk rituals bordering on ancestor worship.

Young theologians Joshua Searle (centre) and Mykhailo Cherenkov (right) offer good insight into effective mission practice in Ukraine in their new book A Future and a Hope (2014)

This time of year I especially miss the saints who have passed on.  My mother died when we were at the 219th General Assembly (2010) in Minneapolis.  Our daughter-in-law died in early 2011. These are all the more painful because we were far away when they died.  One of our melancholy tasks has been to purge our mission letter mailing list of several dozen names of those who have died. Often these were the saints who blessed us on our way to mission. Thomas H. Green, a well-known Jesuit writer on Catholic spirituality, puts his thoughts about those who are now gone from us this way when he remembers his parents:  “Usually it is simply a remembering, a recalling of what I already know and the mind’s remembering brings joy to the heart. … All I ask of you is forever to remember me as loving you.”  Indeed, if we are prayerful, we become quiet in remembering, and “our understanding and our imagination become organs of remembering the Lord and his love for us” (When the Well Runs Dry, p. 54).

For us this is the traditional fall break for our mission partner, LCC International University. It’s a time for us to catch our breath and be refreshed, a time to think about what we are doing and why we are doing it. I was drawn to the words of 2 Timothy 1:6: “For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you …” It is the grace of God we share.

Earlier this fall we met two young theologians, Joshua Searle from the UK, and Mykhailo Cherenkov from Ukraine, both from the Baptist tradition.  Both were speakers at the PC(USA) mission gathering in Hungary in September 2015. Their book A Future and a Hope (2014) is a thoughtful reflection on the past 25 years of mission in the former Soviet Union (FSU), which includes Lithuania. They offer some pointed observations about the failings of Western-style mission.  What they wish for in Western missionaries in the FSU is a spirituality of humility and vulnerability. What is wanted is not the importation of Western models of education, but recognition of the context of the FSU. We worship at the historic churches—Lutheran and Reformed—faith endures here.  The needs are to encourage, empower, and equip our fellow Christians, many of whom endured the repression of faith in Soviet times.

I seek a spirituality that is at once both transcendent and concrete.  Prayers and personal devotions are part of my ritual.  I follow the lectionary and keep a journal.  This contemplative approach keeps me on an even keel.   But I find more is needed; the world intrudes.  Catholic spirituality always comes around to the concrete.

A typical village cemetery in Lithuania where graves are lighted with candles on All Saints Day.

Here’s a harsh reality for prayer and action. Prisoners have taught me much over the years. Prisoners are humble; they must be patient; they don’t expect much; they wait in line. One of my former students, Annas, a recent LCC graduate from Nigeria, is now sadly in prison, accused of financial crimes.  He faces some hard times. He wrote to me asking for an economics book to help pass the time, so I sent him Malcolm Gladwell‘s David and Goliath, a business book about how underdogs can win. Annas replied:  “I just don’t know how to thank you for the book you sent me.  It is like a cup of chilled water on a hot dry season day in the desert.  I just read the David and Goliath story from my Bible a few days ago but reading how Malcom Gladwell explained it gave a different dimension to the story.  I must say that I am facing such a  ‘giant’ today and don’t know how to confront it.  This book gives me hope that there might be a bright light at the end of the tunnel. I am powerless as it is now because I have no one to call on here to assist me.  I am left to face the battle alone. … I have no access to money as my account is frozen.  Those I used to call friends also deserted me, so I could not get a personal attorney to advise me.”

This is a situation we can’t “fix.”  We are praying for him as he moves through a legal system foreign to him. Concretely we have arranged legal counsel for him.  Hebrews 13:3 says, “Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison.” So what is success in mission? Our young theologian friends Joshua and Mykhailo offer this perspective on mission:  “Success becomes apparent when our lives become transformed into Christ-likeness and when the hope of the Gospel reveals itself through the incarnational witness of our lives to the watching world” (p. 91).  Our faith is both transcendent and concrete—daily devotions and cups of chilled water.

Please join us in this work and witness—help us to “fan into flame the gift of God.”  Friends, we are able to do this work here in Lithuania only because of your prayers, your encouragement, and your financial support.  We are increasingly urged to generate a larger and larger portion of our support through designated giving to our mission account both by individuals and congregations. Will you please consider supporting us?  Much remains to be done to equip, encourage and strengthen those we encounter.

Grace & peace,
Eric & Becky Hinderliter

The 2015 Presbyterian Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 329