Dear Friends,

Attack and Remembrance:
Wrapped in Prayer in Russia and the Ukraine

We had just arrived in our Moscow hotel. Each one of us was exhausted following the Atlanta-Frankfurt-Moscow flight and three fatiguing hours standing in the passport control line at Sheremetyevo airport. Now, we stood riveted before images of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Though facts were few, the broad outlines of the terrorist attack were clear enough. Thousands of God’s children were dying before our eyes.

A hurried cell phone call had alerted Al, Michael, and me to the unfolding news. Now, as trip leader, the job fell to me to inform our group. Ten Americans from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) huddled in the bustling lobby of the Hotel Rossiya. With as much calm as I could muster, I summarized the details we had gleaned from the TV screen. With night falling and the Kremlin walls illuminated through the pane glass of the hotel, we cried, held hands, and prayed.

In Moscow, a city I have grown to know and understand, I suddenly felt very alone and very wary. Twenty years ago, almost to the day, I survived a terrorist bombing of the U.S. Air Forces in Europe headquarters in Germany. Images long forgotten of shattered concrete and glass, fire and steel, flooded into my mind.

We hadn’t eaten in hours. Quietly we walked closely together to the nearest restaurant. Soup and bread were all we could handle amidst the emotional distress. As we paid our bill and departed, the maitre de asked if we were Americans. I said "yes," but rudely walked past unwilling to enter into a political conversation. Then his words sunk in. This Russian man, a person we had never seen before, nor likely would see again, was offering his condolences for the victims so recently killed. I was ashamed of my rudeness. My protective guard had been so high, I almost failed to comprehend this gesture of human kindness.

So began almost three weeks of travel across major cities and minor villages in Russia and the Ukraine. So began a process of being wrapped in prayer and humbly receiving the spiritual gifts of care and concern from thousands of our brothers and sisters in Christ:

• Within hours of the attacks, sidewalks and security fences outside the U.S. embassies in Moscow and Kiev and the U.S. consulate in St. Petersburg were lined with bouquets of flowers, lighted candles, miniature icons, and hand-written prayers and expressions of human solidarity.
• Patriarch Alexei II, leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, held a special worship service to mourn the loss of the victims and to lift up the countless families affected. He stated, "We share America’s grief because Russia, through its own bitter experience, knows of the suffering that international terrorism brings to peaceful civilians."
• In Sunday worship throughout the land, our now-dispersed Presbyterians were wrapped in love and prayer in Baptist and Anglican churches across European Russia. Our shared faith in Jesus Christ and our shared humanity were never so dramatically expressed as in the aftermath of this crisis.
• Taxi drivers with whom we had only fleeting contact went out of their way to express their condolences after identifying us by our accents and manners as Americans. Gone was any sense of suspicion and mistrust, replaced by a quiet respectfulness in this difficult hour.
• The moment that touched me most took place on Sunday, September 23, in the rural Ukrainian village of Stepan. I was part of a delegation of the Reformed Churches of France, Switzerland, Scotland, and the United States. We were visiting reviving congregations of the Ukrainian Evangelical Reformed Church, a denomination almost completely destroyed by Stalinist terror in the 1930s and 1940s. Stepan is a farm village bearing great similarity to the village of Anatevka popularized in the musical "Fiddler on the Roof"—chickens, goats, flowers, and faithful people abound. Leading worship that Sunday afternoon was Pastor Vasil Pilipenko, a young man ordained only last year. As Vasil prepared for his pastoral prayer, he turned to our group and asked if there were any Americans present. I replied "yes," and stood. He grasped my hand and then led his small congregation in a prayer for victims, families, and America’s national leaders. I was filled with emotion and humility. In this small village, the pastor was reaching out in Christian love and kindness to me, his brother, a representative of a rich and powerful America now cast into grief and mourning.

In Paul’s letter to the Church at Ephesus, he writes:

I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (Ephesians 4:1-3).

As never before in my life, my September experiences in Russia and the Ukraine brought home to me the meaning of "bearing with one another in love" and of being a part of the Body of Christ in the world.

We Americans, citizens of the most powerful nation in history, are steeped in a tradition of giving and of lifting up others in times of distress. In our lifetimes, we cannot count the times we have prayed or heard our pastor pray for the victims of war in the Middle East, for survivors of flood or famine in Asia, or for thousands made homeless by earthquakes in Central America. We are not accustomed to receiving the prayers of others. We are not accustomed to the humility and gentleness to which Paul calls us.

The overwhelming message of Paul’s words was made clear to me by the events of September. We are not alone. And, we have never been alone. We are part of God’s Universal Church, and we are being lifted up in prayer during this time of distress and uncertainty by millions and millions of other followers of Jesus around the world. For this we should take comfort and feel those prayers.

As we move forward in these uncharted weeks and months ahead, may each of us be wrapped in that outpouring of love and concern. May we feel God’s healing presence in our lives. And, may we forever live out our lives in the "humility and gentleness" to which we have been called.

Gary Payton

The 2001 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 91