The first Christians didn’t adopt the Jerusalem Temple as their place of pilgrimage; there was no place of pilgrimage for them. For them, as for us, Christ himself is the Temple; the Body of Christ, the Church, is the Temple. They understood themselves (as do we) as offering spiritual sacrifices through Christ, the sacrifice of praise and lives offered to God through him. However, this basic view didn’t stop Christians from understanding their faith in terms of place. Paul writes his letters to the church in a specific place; the great patriarchates arose in the major cities of the Roman Empire. After the Peace of Constantine, Christians in Jerusalem, who had preserved the memory of the places of Jesus’ suffering and resurrection, built churches upon them. The city itself became a place of pilgrimage (read the Itinerarium Egeriae, a late fourth-century account of visit to Jerusalem by a nun from Gaul; it’s been translated into English, and if I recall correctly into Finnish as well).
We continue to hold specific places, specific communities, as important to our faith and faith journeys. And so this year we celebrate the 180th anniversary of the St. Alexandra parish. This community, this temple, this place, have been and remain central to the lives of generations of Orthodox Christians over the years. This is the place where our faith has come to expression, where our faith has been and is formed. This place is a center of Orthodox Christian presence in Turku, and has been so for 180 years now. We have much to give thanks to God for in this very fact.
I think that we human beings associate place with place, in memory and experience. I grew up in a part of the United States where anything over 100 years old was considered very old. Still, in my own family experience and memory there are such communities, such places, that came into existence at the same time as our parish. You could say that one such place eventually led to my life in this place here in Turku. In 1840 my ancestors founded a church in western Indiana that still exists and thrives. It’s called the Mount Carmel Baptist church. I wasn’t reared as a Baptist, but the faith of my ancestors who lived in and came from that place I claim as part of a chain that connects me now to this place, this community, in Turku. Because it exists, because they lived their faith there, I am here now. From place to place, person to person, community to community, we live in faith and in union with the One who became flesh, became subject to location, to place, for our salvation. May God continue to bless this place in which faith has grown and flourished for the past 180 years.
Grant White