THESE DAYS I’M KEENLY AWARE that my dad won’t be here forever. At 92, my Armenian father is sharp as a tack — often winning at duplicate bridge — but his strength is slipping away. Recently he asked his kids to record conversations with him, ala “Story Corps.” I love that he’s considering our inheritance, the material portion of which is least important. He knows our choices will either carry on, or dispense with, what he leaves us.
Our choices won’t be easy. When mom died, just sorting through her things was oddly hard. Mom didn’t own a lot, but much held memories: a seashell from vacation, a string of pearls from her mother. As we sorted, we rehearsed stories behind the things. Sorting was less a burden than a sacred privilege.
Isn’t this the task our church family faces? Our generation is inheriting the sizeable holdings of a church that thrived in its time. But it’s slipping away. The church’s packed pews and wall-to-wall children in Sunday school, her youth memorizing Scripture and singing hymns by heart, her voice of justice and morality honored by the culture – that church is passing on. Now it falls to us to sort through our inheritance.
It’s less a burden than a sacred privilege. Everything is packed with memories, so it isn’t easy. Yet keeping it all wouldn’t honor our mother church’s life.
What’s required is discernment. What worth does each practice have in the story it tells and the value it might carry for those still to come? What do we hope future generations receive from the past church’s struggles, triumphs and hard-won wisdom? And what are once-useful things that could either be kept or let go now?
This inheritance is especially poignant for me this spring. It was 100 years ago, in April 1915, when the Ottoman Empire launched a systematic expulsion of Armenians, killing 1.5 million. Every family was impacted. I was five when my grandmother told me of relatives in Sivas who were lined up, forced to kneel and shot point-blank. Her uncle Vahan was taken by Turkish Gendarmes one day and never returned. Her grandmother — a devout, gentle woman whose husband welcomed missionaries into their Apostolic home and built the first Protestant church in Sivas — died in a death march, along with her daughter-in-law and grandchildren.
This April 26, churches are asked to observe the anniversary of the genocide. The PC(USA) website has resources; I also encourage a book study, like Bohjalian’s “Sandcastle Girls” or Balakian’s “The Burning Tigris.”
Why bother? We honor the martyrs who have too long been forgotten. We say to those who still suffer — Christian minorities in Syria, Iraq and other places — that they are not invisible now. And we cherish the inheritance of their unquenchable faith.
My father received the faith from his parents, who received it from their parents, who received it from generations before them, who received it from the apostles who brought the Gospel. In 301 A.D. Armenia became the first Christian nation. For centuries under the rule of religiously-diverse Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs and Turks, they kept the faith — even in the face of genocide.
Later this month (March 16-18) at NEXT Church’s conference in Chicago, I lead a workshop on intergenerational conversations about what to keep and what to let go … and how we decide. I hope it helps us consider our inheritance. It’s one small way I’m trying to honor the sacred legacy that I’ve received.
