Witness to the Armenian Orthodox Way

Review

The Two Mountains
In session two I mentioned a quote about tribalism and community from David Brooks’ book which I got for my birthday The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life. The concept behind that title of that book ‘the second mountain,’ is based on a profound truth about life which has been the foundation of several sermons and studies we have done at St. Hagop in the past. The concept is that in life we all have one mountain to climb, but our highest calling, for those who wish to find profound joy, truth and beauty in life, is to move on to climb the second mountain.
Here is how Brooks describes the first mountain. The first mountain is the life we live to build up a healthy ego and live up to the values our society endorses: to be secure, to become a success, to experience personal happiness. But a funny thing happens to most honest and reflective people when they get to the top of that first mountain. They look around and find the view; unsatisfying. They realize; This wasn’t my mountain after all. There’s another, bigger mountain out there that is actually my mountain. And so they embark on a new journey. On the second mountain, life moves from self-centered to other-centered. They want the things that are truly worth wanting, not the things other people tell them to want. They surrender to a life of service, self-giving instead of self-seeking, eternal significance instead of merely worldly comfort and success.

The Two Mountains in Philosophy & Scriptures
This should sound familiar. Franciscan priest Richard Rohr talks about the first and second half of life, I’ve used that idea in several sermons. Carl Jung, the father of modern psychology first observed this pattern of development, writing that, “One cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning; for what was great in the morning will be of little importance in the evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening become a lie.” So there is a rhythm and progress to the good life we should pay attention to.
Even if none of this sounds familiar, it should feel familiar. None of these guys are just making stuff up, they are astute observers of the human condition and are describing something that appears to be baked into creation itself. It is of course a huge theme in our scriptures. We hear it once a year in our lectionary and every time we do a baptism. In John 3, Nicodemus a leader of the Jews is impressed by Jesus’ spiritual power, his joy, his strength in the face of evil. How did you get this way Rabbi, great teacher Jesus? ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born again.’ (Jn 3:3) We are born once into worldly things, then we are born again into spiritual ones. And careful here; we don’t get rid of worldly life when we commit to the spiritual one. This is not dualistic. We always transcend but include the stage before. The two mountains metaphor also explains well one of Jesus’ seemingly harshest teachings, which we read for requiems and funerals. ‘Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.’ (Jn 12:25) It is easy to misunderstand this passage as dualistically saying this world, our lives, materials bodies are all bad and only the things of soul and spirit are good. What it actually says is that your worldly life is only bad if you don’t lose it, give it away in service of a life even greater, if you stay on the first mountain and never have the courage to move to the second one.

The Two Mountains & Witnessing to the Armenian Orthodox Way
Ok great, so why are we talking about this today in our aspect of healthy Armenian Church culture, becoming witnesses to the world of the Armenian Orthodox way? Well it’s because this spiritual-organic pattern of the two mountains- rising, falling and rising again- not only outlines the paths of individuals, but peoples, communities and cultures as well. What we will explore today is whether we at St. Hagop Armenian Church in the Eastern Diocese of the United States are on the first mountain, the second mountain or perhaps somewhere in the valley between. And that using this profoundly true metaphor of organic and spiritual growth, the first and second mountains, will help us ascend to our highest calling of becoming witnesses to the world of the Armenian Orthodox Way.

Our Diocese at a Crossroads
So these are generalizations and life is always more complicated than this, but I think it is generally true that the churches of the Armenian Diaspora in the West, specifically the Eastern Diocese of which St. Hagop is a part, successfully climbed the first mountain of life and are looking over to the second mountain, or perhaps even have descended a little into the valley in between.

We look to the Armenian homeland and Etchmiadzin as the ancient center of our faith, as we should, but as far as the life-cycle maturity of our dioceses and parishes we are ahead of them in this way. Churches in Armenia are only about 30 years old. They were totally decimated and outlawed by Soviet Armenia and started again at independence in 1992. Our Diocese has flourished for nearly one hundred years before that.
We have become secure after generations of insecurity. We have built buildings and churches everywhere. We have made a name for ourselves after generations of being downtrodden. We could finally preserve our traditions in peace and prosperity. Our church even took on a whole bunch of other responsibilities that it never had before, keeper of the Armenian nation, teacher of the Armenian language, center of lobbying for Armenian political causes. One stop shopping for all Armenian causes!

These are all important first half of life, first mountain projects. Build up your self and your community. Build buildings, build political infrastructure, build up bank accounts, make your mark and the world, show everyone how great Armenians can be.

We have risen in so many ways, successful and wealthy people, stable and wealthy churches. But as the two mountains tell us, supported by scriptures and all of our life experience, we have gone over the top of the mountain now and are asking ourselves, so now what? We are a successful Diocese, but are we spiritually significant? We have also all surely noticed, that after our great rising as a Diasporan church in this country, we have started a decline in many factors. Church attendance is generally down. Sunday schools which used to have a classroom for every grade now just have a couple. Assimilation reduces Armenian language proficiency by 50% each generation, less people feel affiliation with Armenian heritage. People do not live together around a church, 2/3s of our population lives more than 45 minutes away from church.

We as a Diocese, and I believe as St. Hagop Church, are in an in-between time, a cross roads, in the valley between two mountains, and there are naturally two ways we can go. The first is go back to where we came, more of the same, let’s protect everything we have before it slips away.

Cling to First Mountain
The church’s main role, in many people’s hearts, is to defend our identity and position. We are Armenian, our identity must be preserved and never changed. We have achieved substantial power, wealth and success, we must achieve more to defend our identity and position. We must stop assimilation. It’s a failure for our children to marry non-Armenians. Our language must be maintained at all costs, even if it leaves out 75% of people who can’t understand. Our Armenian heritage is our very reason for existence as a church, if we lose this, there is no reason for our existence. All of this thinking and feeling is understandable and natural and it is the way of the world. But there is another second calling from the depths of our centuries old Armenian Orthodox faith.

Call to Second Mountain
The call of the second mountain is the call of our Lord to be born again and to lose our life so that we can gain it again. As a church and a people we have been blessed with all the gifts of the first mountain, our beautiful ethnic heritage and identity. But we aren’t meant to stay on the first mountain, of identity defense, self-preservation and success, we are called to move on to the second mountain of identity sharing, self-giving and significance.

And this is where the last sign of a healthy Armenian Church culture comes into play. A healthy Armenian church, will be less inward looking on preserving the Armenian church for Armenians, but more focused outward on sharing the church with non-Armenians, on giving the church away to those in need in Armenia and in the neighborhood and-to return to a phrase in first session making sure that “Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.”

For those with faith, we know that there is really no contest between clinging to the first mountain, and descending and rising to the second. The first choice is a dead end, because If you try to defend your claims on the first mountain, you will lose it all. But if you surrender to a fall into the valley and start your second climb, you will not only be blessed with the beautiful new views and lands of the second mountain, but will also keep with you many of the gifts of the first mountain. ‘Seek first the kingdom of God and all these other things will be given to you as well.’

Genocide: First Mountain & Second Mountain
Ok, for the last part of this presentation let’s get more concrete and pick one way specifically that moving on from the first to second mountain will help this church and our people know ourselves better and have the world come to know us as witnesses of the Armenian Orthodox Way.

Let’s take the case of a terrible and important aspect of our people’s culture the Armenian Genocide. We have climbed the first mountain of this struggle. We have poured millions of dollars into its recognition, teaching it in curriculum, lobbying for its recognition in US Congress. We continue to take every opportunity to present to the world that if you know one thing about Armenians, we want you to know that we were victims of the Armenian Genocide. This was understandable and necessary. The Genocide was and continues to be denied. The victims and their survivors had every right, a duty even to have their story be told.

But now what? 106 years have passed. The Armenian people have many more things to share with the world than merely we are victims of Genocide. The Armenian people have many great problems in the world, building a strong homeland and defending its borders, that are more important still than recognition of genocide. The survivors are all past, and Armenians born today, thank God, have little experience with what our ancestors endured. We have gone over the other side of the first mountain of Genocide. And rather than continuing to pour our resources into this one issue, to insist that the world know us with this one issue, let’s let go of the first mountain and listen for our call to the second.

If we do respond to our second mountain calling, I think it might look something like this. We would not be fixated on recognition of our genocide, we might be much more engaged in the genocide of Rwandans, Cambodians, South Sudanese, Assyrians, Jews, knowing that recognition is a hollow victory compared to a deep solidarity and community we could form with other peoples who have endured as we have. This deep solidarity would also produce real allies in present day struggles, which the war in Artsakh showed us we deeply lack.

If we respond to our second mountain calling regarding Genocide, we would not be fixated on exacting revenge on Turkey. This also is a transient and hollow victory. What if instead of fixating on the loss, we started sharing with the world and Turks that the one thing that emerged greater than ever from Genocide was the belief that Our Lord blesses and delivers those who mourn and those who are persecuted for righteousness sake. What if instead of hating Turks, we got to know them. What if we got to know them well enough that we began to share our experience of Genocide with them, but most importantly our experience that our faith in Christ redeemed and made us stronger out of our suffering. What might God do with that?
If we respond to our second mountain calling, we would not be fixated on getting reparations of land from Turkey. We would realize that we have more country than we can successfully steward in current day Armenia. What if we poured all of that energy we use for Genocide recognition into recognizing that the sky is the limit for what a true Disaspora-Armenia partnership could look like in building up a country that would be a blessing for all. We might realize that the main enemy of Armenia’s and the world-wide Armenian Church is not Turkey or Azerbaijan, but mainly our inability to come together and work with what we have instead of being fixated on what we lost.

Conclusion
So this was just one example of what it might look like if the Armenian Church took up our second mountain calling, but there are so many more. I hope that this Lenten sermon series has given us a chance to reflect on our church culture, continue on in the areas where we are doing well and challenge ourselves for what we might become. We are strong, influential and blessed as Armenians and as a church, we will be further blessed as we learn how to give away and share the life of our church with those around us, here in Pinellas Park, in our Armenian homeland, and everywhere witnessing to the Armenian Orthodox way, raising us up to our full stature as individuals and as a community.