Last week we remembered the Russian Orthodox Bishop and Saint Innocent of Alaska.  I figure since we are on a role let’s keep going with the Russians and so tonight we remember Tikhon, who was also a Russian Orthodox Bishop and Saint.  His day is actually tomorrow although in the Orthodox Church it was yesterday so we can split the difference.  In all honesty I was thinking of skipping him because this is a lot of Russians in a two week period, but he has a number of local connections, so he is probably worth recalling.

         If you were here last week you may recall that Saint Innocent was Bishop of the Aleutian Islands and Alaska.  Well by happy coincidence so was Tikhon, but we will get to that in a minute.  Tikhon was born on January 31st, 1865 in the area of Toropets in Russia, which is west of Moscow and south of St. Petersburg.  As a bit of trivia he was born on the same day that Congress passed the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery in the United States.  And one more thing before proceeding, I should put the same caveat in effect as I did last week that I am going to butcher a lot of Russian names before I am done.  Tikhon’s given name was not Tikhon but was Vasily Ivanovich Bellavin.  In 1878 he went off to seminary in Pskov (which is near Estonia) and after that he went on to St. Petersburg Theological Academy from which he graduated in 1888.  Interestingly, he did not get ordained at this time but instead became an instructor of Moral and Dogmatic Theology at the seminary in Pskov.  It would not be until 1891 that he took a monastic vow and as part of this new life he got a new name, that of Tikhon which he did to honor the 18th century Russian saint, Tikhon of Zadonsk who was known for being a bishop and for his spiritual writings.  If you want a sample of those writings (and why wouldn’t you) here is a little blurb that I kind of liked:

 

"Try to know yourself, your own wickedness. Think on the greatness of God and your wretchedness. Meditate on the suffering of Christ, the magnitude of Whose love and suffering surpass our understanding. Ascribe the good that you do to God alone. Do not think about the sin of a brother but about what in him is better than in yourself .... Flee from glory, honors and praise, but if this is impossible, be sorry that such is your lot. Be benevolent to people of low origin. Be freely and willingly obedient not only to those above you but to those below .... The lowlier we are in spirit, the better we know ourselves, and without humility we cannot see God”

 

Not bad stuff, but enough of that Tikhon and back to our Tikhon.  He rose up through the ranks pretty fast being appointed Bishop of Lublin in 1897.  Lublin is in modern day Eastern Poland.  He only stayed in that position for a year before being appointed Bishop of the Aleutian Islands and Alaska on September 14, 1898.  When we last visited this Bishopric it was part of Russia, but now with Tikhon it is part of the United States.  While it was called the Diocese of the Aleutian Islands and Alaska in practicality it covered the entirety of North America.  And so Tikhon found himself taking care of various Orthodox emigrant communities in the United States especially around New York, Chicago and the steel making regions of Pennsylvania and Ohio.  In this time Tikhon would become a naturalized U.S. citizen.  Recognizing his new role he changed the name of his diocese in 1900 from Diocese of the Aleutian Islands and Alaska to Diocese of the Aleutian Islands and North America.  He raised funds to build a cathedral in New York and even Czar Nicholas II donated some money to this venture.  1900 would also be the year that Tikhon would get his connection to Wisconsin. 

He realized that there was a tremendous amount of diversity in American Christendom and so he set about to establish relationships with various denominations.  Enter into this a former priest at St. Matthias in Waukesha by the name of Reginald Heber Weller, who had been elected Bishop Coadjutor of the Diocese of Fond du Lac.  In a show of ecumenism Tikhon came and in one of the more famous and somewhat scandalous actions a photograph was taken of his consecration.  This photograph was and is somewhat disparagingly referred to as the Fond du Lac circus (and there is a copy of it at the end of your bulletin – Tikhon is on the far right of the photo).  The reason this photograph was so derided is that all of the bishops present were pretty gussied up wearing things like copes and mitres.  In those days many in the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America were pretty protestant.  So a lot of the dress up that we take for granted was scandalous in those days to many…but back to Tikhon.  He would stay in the United States until 1907 when he returned to Russia.  He continued to do Bishop-y type things there and on August 14, 1917 he became metropolitan of Moscow. 

If you remember your history a lot went on in 1917 in Russia.  For example on October 28th of that year the Bolsheviks seized power in Petrograd on their way to taking over the entire country.  The Bolsheviks as you probably know did not have that old time religion and were very hostile towards anything that competed for loyalty to the party.  A good rule of thumb is that if the ideology you follow describes religion as the opiate of the masses the church is probably going to go through some rough times.  In this time many bishops were exiled, imprisoned or that Bolshevik favorite – shot.  Tikhon somehow survived for a while.  In 1922 when the Bolsheviks did what communists do best and created a mass famine they blamed the church.  In 1922 he was placed under house arrest for protesting the government stealing church property.  In 1923 the Soviets set up their own church council wherein they deposed Tikhon and decreed that he was "henceforth a simple citizen—Vasily Bellavin.”  The Russian Church never recognized this action.  In 1924 Tikhon fell ill and died on April 5, 1925.  An interesting footnote to end this.  St Tikhon's relics were believed lost, but on 19 February 1992 his coffin was found in a hidden crypt in the Donskoy Monastery (which is in Moscow).  A few days later the coffin was opened and his body was discovered to be almost entirely incorrupt.  This means his body had not decayed in the normal way unlike Lenin who had to be pickled to keep his radiant glow.  

         There is a curse that is attributed to the Chinese, but is probably a British invention, which says “May you live in interesting times.”   Tikhon seemed to have been cursed with this.  Perhaps his greatest witness may have been that he remained human in a very inhumane time.  The church for which he had worked his entire life was suddenly labeled as an enemy of the people and he had to live into that new reality.  The church has been attacked in the past and will be attacked in the future and the best that we can do is to remain Christian to follow the witness of Christ and the witness of those like Tikhon who continued to do what he was called to despite the madness going on around him.  When you can be jailed for protesting theft, you know the world has truly turned upside down.  A definition of evil is that up is down, down is up, left is right and right is left.  When such times as those come, our job is to continue to live in the reality that says up is up and down is down.  In a world gone crazy we are called to witness to the world the life that Christ calls all of us to both today and forevermore.