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Jesus in : an Orthodox experience (to appear in 2001 Studia Missionalia, Pontifica Università Gregoriana)

Father Stephen C. Headley (Moscow Patriachate)

One cannot expect a distinctive Indonesian Orthodox theology from a church founded just ten years ago. Furthermore, since the Orthodox Church, the church of the seven councils, is united by one theology, it is to be expected that any variations in that theology will be found in its cultural expression more than in its dogmatic content. In order to describe the conversion of a small number of Indonesians, mostly Javanese, to Jesus Christ and their entering the Orthodox Church (Metropolia of Hong Kong and Southeast Asia; Ecumenical Patriarchate) we need to listen to their witness, and to situate it in the context of the Orthodox in Asia1. We also need to understand something of the cultural milieu in which their journey took place. Peoples are very different and experience Christ in their own way. I have become sufficiently familiar with the island of Java in over the last thirty years to willingly admit how much lies outside of my understanding, nonetheless I will discuss the following:

- The relation between custom and religion. - The relation between family and religion. - Individual evaluations of faith. - Liturgy and cosmology.

The relation between custom and religion in Java One can only approach the Holy Trinity through the voice of Christ. The guards sent by the Pharisees tocapture Christ, on returning empty-handed, said “Never man spake like this man (John 7:45). His voice is also unique for the Javanese Orthodox. In a country where religious practice is so important, and religious pluralism is so much in evidence, the distinctiveness of Christ’s voice is critical. He incarnates a different revelation and this difference creates the space for their communion with him. This dimension of personal evaluation of the quality and of the value of words of Christ has been, to my knowledge, the initial step of every conversion. Afterwards the involvement with the Orthodox spiritual fraternity across the island seems more important than it does in Western Europe. In Java one’s close friends, who are also in the process of

1 - cf. Stephen C. Headley, « Orthodoxies asiatiques » pp.242-60 in Contacts. Revue Française de l’Orthodoxie , no. 191, 3rd. trimestre, 2000.

1 2 deepening their faith in (God) provide the “culture of conversion” in which one’s own faith forments and matures. This was especially the case during the founding of new parishes. In Java the first one (Sumber Surakarta, central Java) dates from 19902. The parish structure in Java is “downstream” from the religious practice of the believer carries out with his family and friends. In a society like the Javanese everyone believes in God. The content of their faith and the praxis of prayer differentiates one from other believers. An example: like the Javanese Protestants, Javanese Orthodox always bring their Bibles to church with them to read the words of Christ as they hear them preached. On the other hand unlike the Protestants, they expect from their priests a sermon that is not exclusively based on scripture, but one that also shows how the Church has experienced and understood the Word of God. To this extent it is a church / community specific exegesis. The Javanese who convert from are especially sensitive to the uninterrupted apostolic succession in the Christian umat (community). It is the purity of faith and doctrine that the Orthodox church proposes which carries conviction. This unity of the faith down through the centuries around the unique person of the Messiah consolidates the Word of God, the sacred text of His teachings and their transmission across the continents. Given the very visible divisions between Protestant and Catholic churches in Java, for the majority of the local population who are , the Orthodox represent an insignificant numerical minority. Nonetheless since Islam is the majority faith in Indonesia and benefits from an immense prestige, comparisons between it and Christianity are unavoidable. To defend themselves the Orthodox not define themselves as Javanese, as we will show below, but sometimes stress that their faith also are from the Middle East. The common geographical Middle Eastern origin of the faith of Orthodox Christians and Muslims is valued since ninety per cent of Modern Javanese religious terminology is of Arabic origin. For theological debate Arabic terms, if not Arabic language is prevalent3. For all their capacities of assimilation and the cosmopolitan location of this archipelago (the great maritime route from India to China), Javanese society, religiously speaking, is very Java-centric. It is important to explain this last point succinctly.

2 - cf. Stephen C. Headley, 1990 « Naissance d’une Eglise Orthodoxe en Indonésie », 19 pp. Supplément au Service Orthdoxe de Presse no. 152, novembre, 1990. 3 - Cf. P. J. Zoetmulder, Pantheim and Monism in Javanese Suluk littérature. Islamic and Indian mysticism in an Indonesian setting ; 1935 (Dutch edition) / 1994KITLV Press, Leiden.

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Islam was the last pre-colonial religion and the first monotheistic religion to reach Indonesia4. These “eastern” Indonesian Christians sometimes stress their Middle Eastern, as opposed to the Greek, origin of their faith. Aramaic / Syrian / Antiochian Christianity comes from the same region that fostered Islam and dissociates one from the colonial period of mission that brought the two forms of western Christianity. Almost all the Orthodox priests have all been trained in Greek Orthodox seminaries, and their bishop, Metropolitan Nikitas, is of Greek extraction, so the Middle Eastern strain of Javanese Orthodoxy is more an affinity than real Antiochian expression of faith. This cultural complexity creates centripetal forces that work against an integral religious ethos in Java. Yet this ethos, the total manner of living the Orthodox Christian life is what most Javanese Orthodox are looking for. Not just parishes or a “church”. Orthodoxy is not supposed to be a part time religion, expressed in part time values. This claim necessitates presenting some background information.

The basic ethos of Javanese culture are capable of devaluating or strengthening confessional norms. Despite the last hundred years of state terror (colonial, Japanese, the military dictatorship of Soeharto, 1996-19985) and the disintegration of social order since May 1998, the Javanese have been seeking to re-deploy their own profoundly communitarian social ethos. The exploitation of the so-called Pancasila ideology as a social/religious ethic by the Soeharto dictatorship to create a civil religion standing over and above the monotheisms of Islam and Christianity. This kind of secularization was disavowed by the Indonesian population during the recent Reformation period (1998-2001). This is a society is seeking to rediscover its common ethos. Western individualism seems to them to create more problems than solutions. Anyhow individualist values have had little impact on the social mores of the Javanese. This does not mean that families are always close knit and that their intimacy is a constant constraint on personal expression and behavior. What it does means is that procedure of consensus and mechanisms of communal integration are highly valued. Christianity is judged by this criterion. In their search for a praxis of social harmony, the Javanese have scaled down their ambitions. Before, the kingdom was the unity in which social harmony was expressed. Now the Javanese only hope that social harmony may be realised in local residence communities. It is no longer expected that this

4 - A supposed Nestorian community on the west coast of (Barus), has not been confirmed by the recent archeolgical work their. Cf. Claude Guillot, Histoire de Barus. Le Site de Loba Tua, vol. I. Chaiers d’Archipel no. 30, Paris 1998. 5 - Cf. Violence in Indonesia, edited by Ingrid Wessel and Georgie Wimhöfer. Abera, Hamburg, 2000.

3 4 ethos will be shared by the entire population of the one hundred million people living on Java. Clearly Orthodox parishes are too few and far between to be able to feel as if they are “the Church” and challenge widely accepted Javanese custom. At best they can discouraged behaviour that is incompatible with fundamental Christian beliefs. Otherwise they attempt to express the Christian message in those positive culture forms that are dearest to them Their Savior is the Lord of heaven and earth, but their community is the territorial one based on where their house stands6. Thus their neighbors are unlikely to be other Orthodox or even other Christians. One’s neighbors expect friendliness, intimacy and mutual help (guyub) as opposed to business relations, based on pecuniary interest (tembaya). The normal cycle of life rituals, from childhood, the founding of a family through to death, are observed according to Javanese custom by all (Muslims, Christians and polytheists), but with confessional adaptations. The Muslim marriage will be celebrated alongside a “Javanese” marriage for a Muslim couple, while the Christians will incorporate many traditions from Javanese (custom) to their sacrament, modifying them to incorporate the Christian perspectives of that sacrament. Almost every Javanese Orthodox couple can show you elaborate photograph albums of their ritual vigil (lenggah midodarèni), bath (siraman : adusan), and wedding dressing which precede the extremely large reception that it is usual to hold. The Christian marriage rite is sandwiched in between. Nothing tellt us to which the greater importance is attributed. To deal with these ambiguities, one finds Puritan movements among both Christians (especially Protestants, i.e. Pentecostals, etc.) and Muslims () who refuse the continuation of traditional Javanese customs in these religious contexts. Even if this is theoloigcally justified, it is understood by many Javanese as a disavowal of their society in its inclusive dimension. Exclusiveness is considered to deny the universality of the kingdom of God as expressed in the Javanese sense of fraternity. Let me explain by using an example. A proposal in marriage (lamaran/ tembugan) to the family of the eventual fiancée involves asking the male members of that family for the hand of a daughter. This is couched in an elevated rhetoric which knows no religious distinctions; it is simply Javanese. In February 2001 I attended one of these proposal ceremonies. Both fiancés were Orthodox, but nothing distinguished the formal dialogue from a Muslim proposal. Only eventually does the ritual of engagement as practiced by the Orthodox Church mark the subsequent wedding with a Christian cachet. Such is the strength of Javanese culture. After the birth of a child the first rituals are not baptism which takes place when the child is several months old, but the calendric rituals which take place according to the Javanese calender and at home. This calendar possesses a five day and a seven

6 - Koentjariningrat, Javanese Culture. Oxford University Press, Singapore, 1979.

4 5 day week and a two hundred and ten day year. These rituals take place in the home of the baby’s parents which serves as a place of worship on many occasions. The mother will wait till her fortieth day to be churched but will have already ritually buried the placenta (= one of the baby’s four guardian angels). Another example of the cohesiveness of local social meshing: at , the end of the great Muslim fast of Ramadhan, a vast cycle of reconciliation ceremonies begins (Halal Bihalal) that involve all the networks of society both vertical and horizontal in a multitude of evening gatherings. Some are exclusively Muslim or some Christian, while others are for all the residents of the same hamlet or factory or school. If you are invited it is difficult not to accept. And who would want to refuse this harmony with people you see every day? Maintaining harmony above and beyond of the nuclear family is given a high priority 7. In this effort religious beliefs are an aid and only become an obstacle when manipulated by politicians who recruit fanatical groups for their own ends8.. Orthodox differ little from other Christians in their participation in their accomodation of religion and custom. Regardless of their religious affiliation, most people feel that the one enhances the other. All these examples of conforming one’s rite de passage to Javanese custom (adat) are felt to conform to supernatural links. Uniting society to the cosmos is a set of persuasive and pervasive correspondence. This is possible because there is a hierarchy of being stretching from Allah to the lowest form of created biological life. Society is woven together by this great chain of being. What justifies, for instance, praying at one’s father’s grave when facing an important decision or leaving on a long trip for a Christian, is not Polytheism or spirit cults, but the knowledge that one’s father’s soul still lives and this provides a link with the cosmos. As Protestant Christianity has shown when one exits cosmology one emininates eschatology. The Javanese generally share a believe in an all-pervasive Providence which is relayed by the hierarchy of spirits somewhat ressembing that of Pseudo-Dionysios9. Although spirit cults and black

7 - Unlike what A. Giddons (The Transformation of Intimacy. Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies. Polity Press, Cambridge, U.K., 1992) has described for Western Europe where a “democratization” of sexual mores makes intimacy more and more a question of experimentation, in Java the combat it not so much for maintaining matrimonial purity, although this can be problematic of course, for maintaining family harmony. 8 - Cf. Pos 25.VI.01 ; article by Asip A. Hasani. 9 - Cf. La Hiérarchie Célestes, Sources Chrétiennes no. 58, Editions du Cerf, Paris 1958. The fact that the notion of emanation is present in the Muslim cosmographies which derive from Neo-Platonic sources makes them seem closer to a Christian vision such as that of Pseudo- Dionysios. However if, in the past, the naturalistic Javanese cosmologies were suspected of

5 6 magic are still practiced by the Javanese, these are personnal options, and are separate, individual efforts to play on the cosmology I am speaking about. The custom (adat) has been severely eroded by the instrumentalizing of ethnicity, kinship and religion in political movements, but so far custom still commands spontaneous respect from the Javanese because one participates in the flow of life which carries on throughout the cosmos and which is harmonized by Providence.

Relations between family and religion: networks of social confidence and cosmology The Javanese do not separate out nature and society as we do. The sphere of Javanese custom embraces kinship relations and integrates them so that they correspond with other relationships in society and nature at large. This reinforces them by a socio-cosmic harmony. Through micro-macro correspondences, one conceives of the world as a whole. For the Javanese this wholeness is a value on the same level as the oneness of God for monotheists. This is the model of totality, of life for the Javanese, into which all relations between persons and Allah (God) are integrated. It is a social “given”, as we have just tried to show above. What is not fully elaborated is a standard articulation between Christian Orthodox practice and this “Javanëity” (kejawèn). This is currently elaborated by each family on the basis of its criteria of intimacy (kakraban): intimacy is to be sought between the person and God, between the family and the neighbors, between the living and the dead. The Orthodox liturgical practice can integrate much of this adat-based Javanese vision once they “baptize” it. Orthodox eucharistic theology envisages the person not through an ontology, but through a theology of relationships. A person is and exists only when in communion with God through His Incarnate Word10. Since we are created by God, our relationship to Him (through his image in which we are created) makes such communion possible. The pastoral work of the Orthodox priest in Java consists in making this theology explicit and giving the Orthodox families the necessary criteria for evaluating their ancestral vision of the world around them. The identifying and distinction between Javanese values and Christian ones is critical and cannot be accomplished without such personal animism, by both Muslim and Christians, it seems to me that they nonetheless introduce a dimension of divine guidance that is much closer to a Christian vision than a secularized Western vision where the cosmos is emptied of praeternatural power but also of the Godhead that guides them. Cf. Stephen C. Headley, “Combining Javanese Cosmogonies and Muslim Cosmographies in the Manikmaya”, pp. 280-300, Indonesia and theMalay World , vol. 28, #82, 2000, London 10 - Cf. J. Zizioulas, Being as Communion. St. Vladimir’s Press, Crestwood, 1985.

6 7 family-based evaluation. General moralizations do not really help as they tend to “throw out the baby (the faith) with the bath water (eventual syncretism)”. What to do? Javanese do not want to detach themselves from their own culture. They have joined the Orthodox church to participate in the communion of the Trinity. Javanese culture over the centuries has shown an extraordinary ability to adapt and absorb11. The house-based religion of the Javanese is the depository of these accumulated traditions. Since the house is a temple for rituals concerning birth, circumcision, marriage and death12, this site of key rituals shapes the Javanese notion of person13 (Headley 1996). How a person is, say born and buried, how people of different religious adherence pray together on these occasions14 is clearly an expression of the social morphology into which the participants with varied religious commitments are integrated. Is there a fundamental incompatibility? The milieu of Christ preaching in Judea and Galilee does not seem so foreign to the Javanese. Both their experience in Java with paganism and sectarianism, and their understanding of an unequivocal comittment to follow

11 - Cf. Zainuddin Fananie, Restruturisasi Budaya Jawa. Perspektif KGPAA MNI. (The Restructuring of Javanese Culture. The Perspective of KGPAA Mankunagaran I). Muhammadiyah University Press, Surakarta, 2000. & , Jaringan Ulama. Timur Tengah dan Kepulauan Nusantara. Abad XVII dan XVIII. (The Network of the Ulama. The Middle East and Nusantaran Archipelago in the XVII and XVIII centuries) Mizan, , 1994. 12 - Even Christian rituals can contain approprate Javanese calendric feast like the commemoration of the deceased. At death thee are immediately three commemorations: the burial, nineth hour; and the tahlilan prayers on 7th day with a rice cone (tumpeng) and the Surat Yaasin. In the case of the Orthodox this last is replaced by the Panykhide (requiem) service. On the influence of Javnese prayer on the Muslim counterparts, cf. Stephen C. Headley “/Salat. The Javanisation of Islamic Prayer; the Islamisation of Javanese prayer” pp. 169-212 dans Stephen C. Headley et David Parkin (editors), Islamic prayer across the Indian Ocean. Inside and Outside the Mosque. Curzon Press, U. K. 2000. 13 - Cf. Vers une anthropologie de la prière: études ethnolinguistiques javanaises. (textes réunis par Stephen C. Headley). Publications Universitaires de Provence, Aix-en-Provence. 355 pp., 1996; & Stephen C. Headley "Notes sur les Types de Soignants à Java", pp. 225- 250 in Soigner au Pluriel coordonné par Jean Benoit. Harmattan, Paris, 1996. 14 -Andrew Beatty, Varieties of Javanese Religion. An Anthropological Account. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1999.

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Christ, is quite congruent with the social picture given by the Gospels of first century Palestine. Not everything about Javanese society challenges or compromises Christianity. An example: after the last day of the Muslim fast of Ramadhan one asks forgiveness on bended knee (sumungkem) of every one in one’s family and neighbors, Muslims and non-Muslims. In a somewhat similar way, but at the beginning of their fast, Orthodox Christians enter the fifty day great Paschal by reaching out to their entire entourage on Forgiveness Sunday asking for mutual forgiveness. Through ascetic practices (fasting, alms, and prolonged prayer) they will try to prepare for the feast or feasts, Easter. The reconciliation they are seeking is readily understandable to their non-Christian neighbors. This is a society that, despite the violence that has sapped it, knows the meaning of truth and reconciliation, both on the social-politcal level, but also on the religious level. If Orthodox asking for mutual forgiveness at the beginning of the fast does not seem out of place to a Muslim, no other Javanese will question the importance of repentence and forgiveness is the articulation of religion and the social life of the extended family. The real danger lies elsewhere. The political instrumentalisation of ethnicity and religion by political parties based in the capital of Jakarta tends to tear apart the fabric of Javanese custom and create a climate where violence is used to “purify society” of those whose sins (maksiat) “offend our religious values”. These laskar (jihad armies) by spreading a climate of fear are serving the interests of ambitious political factions, but they have also driven Muslims and Christians together in inter-faith networks that defend local religious tolerance. For instance, several times the Orthodox church in the western suburbs of Surakarta was threatened with being burned down and these networks were activated to protect it with all night guards. It may seem that has nothing to do with the relationship of religion and family, but in fact even the Indonesian constitution enshrines the ideology of community based on the model of the family as the principle (azaz, literally foundation) for community life. The link between religion and family resides in the fact that the extended (not the nuclear) family is the trope for society.The religious values invested in the one spill over to the other. The individual is not imagined over against a larger society of anonymous individuals, but as a member of a family. The family is destined to function as a prism of society15. When harmony breaks down in this kind of polity, it is considered a trial coming from God and the “family” must put itself in question. This is done most clearly by communal

15 - About a failed proposal in marriage, there exists a Javanese adage « to lose an affine is to gain a sibling” (tuna sanak bathi kadang. Here one sees how say in after failed request for a daughter in marriage, society converts the former fiancée into a sibling ; intimacy is entirely not lost between the former couple, but becomes that of a brother for a sister and vice versa.

8 9 prayer. In order to reintegrate the members of society and to prevent the triangular tearing apart of custom by factors of ethnicity and religion, the family model is primordial. It is here that the territorially based parish16 and the territorially based neighborhood look alike. They seem to function on the same model, the extended family. In the diagram below (fig. 1), we can see that economic and political forces breaking up the earlier unity of custom.. The norms of social behavior as ordained by custom used to apply simultaneously to all facets of society such that religion was inseparable from kinship and being Javanese. This unity once broke up gives rise to separate categories as shown below.

Religion / Agama

Custom / Adat = Social relations in a shared inhabitted space

Ethnicity Kinship / /Sukuisme Kekeluargaan

Figure 1- Triangulation and fractioning of Javanese custom-

Without losing its horizon of transcendence Christianity can help reverse this trend and consolidate a pan-Javanese custom by appealing to values of brotherhood and self sacrifice that animate local neighbor networks. Religion, as long as it does not let itself be recuperated by politics, has an indispensable role to play in Javanese society today. In Java thus far, Christianity has managed to stay out of Jakartan strategies of violence. Although Christians are only 5-20% of the population (depending on the area of Java), the different Christian churches there are trying to speak the truth and practice the beatitudes. Islam is

16 - For the relation between territorial and trans territorial parishes cf. ch. 4 in Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Gereja Diaspora. Canisius, Yogyakarta, 1999.

9 10 subject to much more nefarious pressures. Certain political parties, like the PAN, deliberately fan the flames of fanaticism. Christians in the Molukas have succumbed to this kind of provocation as well. This has awakened Indonesians to the realization that religion must remain religion, uniting (re-ligo) everyone. The Javanese beliefs based on the trope of the family for society underpins any reconstruction of social confidence after the recent violence. The Javanese belief in the socio-cosmic roots of brotherhood and togetherness defends not the equality of individuals, but the belonging of every person to the larger society which is seen as a ensemble with its own checks and balances. The rapprochement of this whole with monotheism cannot be made through any “civil religion”. This was tried by Soeharto’s dictatorship and only resulted in cynicism and selfishness.

Individual evaluation and faith

In a society like Java with a strong hierarchy of values, personal evaluation and verification of them is indispensable. This becomes doubly important when one is a Christian in order not to constantly participate in a sort of pseudo-holism involving the whole body of Javanese traditions. Indigenous ethnos itself provides the individual with a praxis of personal subjectivity. One doesn’t take on board all that is Javanese, but only those elements of tradition which correspond to what you feel. One seeks “satisfaction” (in Javanese, marem). If one feels at peace and at one with a belief, with a feeling (rasa), then one commits oneself to it. There is no Javanese word for conversion, but marem indicates this kind of deep personal approval. Pentecostals stress conversion, but the Javanese seek out this private “adequation” between inner feeling and outward praxis. It is not by chance that Javanese prayer is usually sotto voce. That is where one can hear one’s inner feelings (bathin) respond or not to the exteriors of religious praxis. On another level, Islam has introduced Java to the dialectics of dogmatic expression and theological debate. The highly integrated structure of Orthodox dogmatics appeals to some Javanese because it is expressed so completely in the liturgies of the Church. In spite of the fact that the entire hymnographic cycle of the Eastern Christian liturgy has yet to be translated into Indonesian, there exists among the faithful recognition that to follow the full cycle of church services is to hear a complete running commentary on the economy of salvation and its expression in Holy Scripture. The religious background of those who join the Orthodox church varies, influencing the behavior of these neophytes. Former Javanese members of the Calvinist (the Javanese Dutch Reform church or GKJ), because of their solid knowledge of scripture, need clear and coherent doctrinal expositions of every aspect of the faith. One of the Orthodox priests, they are all Indonesians, Father Daniel, has been at work on this task since the 1980’s. He

10 11 began by writing a exposition of the Nicene creed17. He continued with a rigorous exposition of the Orthodox faith18 and more recently has published a book on biblical dogmatic theology19. His approach is always scriptural. His preaching as well as his writing is clear and rigourous and is largely responable for the interest of university students in the Orthodox faith. Former Muslim (peasants), don’t take to doctrine as seriously, but, because of their capacity for good relationships with the priest and parishioners, are often extremely well integrated into the parishes. As with any neophyte, the awareness of their new faith will fade if they are not given proper pastoral care. There can also be difficulties due to mixed marriages or in a massively Muslim extended family20. The ability to defend one’s convictions is usually not on the basis of the fact that they are my convictions (i.e. individualism), but because I belong to such and such a parish or belong to such and such a prayer group. While personal evaluation is well developed, the phenomenon of successive sincerities, due to group pressure, is common. Javanese will often have been part of several religious bodies during the course of their lifetimes. This also can be due to genuine changes of conviction. However withdrawal (mundur) from young Orthodox parishes is not uncommon after several years if the convert is trying to articulate their new faith in conjunction with other earlier commitments to family, or if they are, as many were, destabilized by the Indonesian economic collapse of 1997. Catechism and Bible study groups can stabilize people in these fragile moments, but even say a Bible study group requires a certain homogeneity of level. These often operate without the presence of the priest, and if the commitment of those with a strong background in the Bible is not a mature and pedagogical one, then other members may becomer “stalled” (mandheg) , they may become discouraged. The quality of the participation of the neophyte and the level of the care by the parish priest and the active parishioners is indispensable in a cultural milieu like Java where the expression of the faith is deeply communitarian. Exploits of private solitary quest for the true faith are unusual. What is more typical is the neophyte’s visiting many parishes in an effort to learn from each one something of the fullness of the church he/she has joined.

17 - Pistawa Nikaya Winerdi (private edition, 238 pp.;1984) 18 - Apa dan Bagaimana Iman Orthodoks (private edition, 198 pp., 1989) This may be partially the same texts as the one published in 1997 under the title of Inilah Iman Kristen Orthodox. 19 - Aqidah Iman Kristen Rasuliah. Yayasan Orthodox Injili, 203 pp., ?2000. 20 - Cf. Stephen C. Headley, “Afterword: The Mirror in the Mosque.” pp.213-238 in Islamic prayer across the Indian Ocean. Inside and Outside the Mosque, edited by Stephen C. Headley and David Parkin. Curzon Press, U.K. 2000. and “The Islamisation of central Java: the role of Muslim lineages in Kalisoso” pp.52-82 in Studia Islamika, vol.4, no.21997, Jakarta.

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Liturgy and Cosmology Upto this point we have given more of the sociology of the Javanese Orthodox experience than its theology. That was done because, as I have stressed repeatedly, faith in Christ Jesus is experienced in one’s inner heart (hati nurani) as a personal belonging and group participation in Church, the New Israel. The Javanese Orthodox Christian is best observed when he participates in the divine offices of his faith. Prayer in Southeast Asia is polyvalent, able to address a multitude of kinds of beings21. There can be no ambiguity however about the destination of prayer during the divine liturgy (eucharist). Seated barefoot, head covered as in the mosque, looking at the iconostasis and singing the eucharistic canon in unison, the Javanese know they are waiting to enter the Kingdom of God through holy communion. Confession is an integral part of the preparation22 as are fasting and vigil services the night before. The miracle of the His descent into hell, His resurrection, the outstretched hand of Christ raising Adam from the dead, the joy of the beauty and the truth of the risen Lord standing before as he bends down to raise us from our fallen state, is visible on the face of the old and the young. There is no other place on earth that resembles this meal23. The most common rite in Javanese religious practice, the (“meal for well-being”) is also a rite of commensality, but as Beatty has shown (cf. footnote 14) both Adam and Vishnu can be addressed through participation in this meal. During the office of the Orthodox Church the ikons, the hymography and the whole world are seen and heard to praise the Lord’s holy resurrection. The cosmos turns towards its Lord and addressed its Maker singing of his light and truth. The symbol of symbols is the Nicene creed without which no liturgy can be celebrated. The hymn of hymns is the great Doxology with which Matins ends as the Divine Liturgy begins. Without doctrinal purity there could have been no extension of the Church of Our Lord to these tropical islands. Without the doxological dimension, there could be no celebration of the Holy Trinity. To enter the Church one has to be freed from the man / woman one had once been by that washing called baptism. The event of baptism is considered of great importance and is celebrated in the pool built directly into the floor of the church, as in churches in Greece. This permits total immersion and the service is

21 - Cf. Anthropologie de la priere: rites oraux en Asie du Sud-Est. textes réunis par Stephen C. Headley. L’Homme no. 132, vol.XXIV.4; oct.- déc. 1994. 22 - For instance Kembali Kepada Allah (Return to God) by Constance Tarasar (translated by Cornelius Reismartono) is used to prépare children for confession 23 - Cf. Daniel Bambang Dwi B,. Inilah Paskah. Ajaran Keselamatan Dalam Perayaan Paskah Gereja Orthodox (This is the Ressurection. The teaching of Salvation in the Celebration of Pascha in the Orthodox Church.). 108 pp., Solo, 1996.

12 13 followed by holy Communion such that the celebration of baptism is felt to be where “we are all to come to unity in our faith and in our knowledge of the Son of God, until we become the perfect Man, fully mature in the fullness of Christ himself.” (Ephesians 4:13) The theme of growing in all ways into Christ (Ephesians 4:15) is clearly distinguished by Christians from the Muslim topos of insan kamil (the perfect man); its difference lies in the fact that baptism is explicitly a liberation from mortality and from death (Romans 5:12). Nor is baptism confused with “normal” Javanese purification rites, called ruwatan24, for ruwatan can be repeated and are not indelible. Baptism does ressemble Javanese exoricisms in as much as the mantra of the later are taken from an old Javanese creation myth. The renewal of a person’s destiny is a new creation obtained by the recitation of the narrative of the first creation. This parallels the cosmological dimension of Christian baptism, except that here the communion of the saints is refashioned through communion with Holy Trinity. The work of salvation accomplished once and for all by the three hypostases of the one Godhead revealed to mankind the long-suffering love of the Creator for His fallen creatures. Christ’s cross, His descent into hell, His resurrection on the third day, His ascent to the right hand of God the Father and the second coming of the Logos are celebrated in the same tense during the eucharistic canon, the past tense. All has been accomplished and creation “from the beginning till now…has been groaning in the one great act of giving birth, and not only creation, but also all us who possess the first fruits of the Spirit,…” (Romans 8:22). Thus the dimension of the salvation revealed in the fallen world contains simultaneously its cosmological recapitulation in Christ and its redirecting towards the last judgement and the kingdom. The end of time, the Day of the Lord, as St. John says (Revelation I:17; from Isaiah 44:6), is not a moment but a person who appears as the universe disappears. The cosmological dimension of salvation for the Javanese is the opposite of an individual vision of one person’s salvation. If Christ becomes all in all, this Christian monotheism reifies their autochtonous intuition that one must conceive of the world as one. In the twenty-first century the Javanese desire for orientation inside the integrated whole will only be accomplished through a re- structuration of its religious tradition. It is not the state’s Pancasila vision of the totality which permits to envisage the whole, it is Allah that unifies the universe. If each part of the human world corresponds to a macro-cosmic dimension of the same whole, a personal revelation concerning how God has sent the “Word that enlightens all men” “full of grace and truth” (John 1: 9,1’) is at its apex. Not just the person of the Christ, but Trinitarian communion of persons

24 - Cf. Stephen C. Headley, From Cosmogony to Exorcism is a Javanese Genesis. The Spilt Seed. Oxford Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001.

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(perichoresis) becomes the paradigm for the brotherhood of the members of the church. Here again the fraternity of the church has its source in the intra- Trinitarian communion of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. And the cosmic order is a hierarchical reality mediating the unity of the Godhead through the primordial dispersal of the logoi accomplished by the initial firman (fiat) of Allah. In the visible world we find the symbols of the invisible world. The church building is such an image of the visible world, but the church is also an image of the human being. The soul is the sanctuary; the body is a nave and the mind the altar of the sanctuary. As to the human person himself, through the path of repentance the body can become “radiant by virtue of through the ascetic force of the soul”. In the inner sanctuary (bathin) of man, the mind before its altar “summons the silence abounding in song in the innermost recesses of the unseen and unknown utterance of divinity by another silence, rich in speech and tone.” (St. Maximos the Confessor) 25 Ancestral Javanese religion (agama leluhur) is thus abandoned by certain Indonesians to join the Orthodox church and to express the universality of the experience of our fathers in the faith. In a certain sense they do not experience any estrangement from their culture. For them, the faith as a “gift from another” (tradition; paradwsis) conforms to their own mind set. They expect tradition to transmit fundamental forms and values for each person to evaluate, to provide them with a ladder of ascent. What is totally new is the person of Christ, bending down towards them from the highest rung on the ladder that penetrates heaven, beckoning them upwards. And as they climb together they are in the company of the whole cosmos that is responding to the Word of God made Man.

25 - Cf. St. Maximos the Confessor, Mystagogia, P.G. 4:672 A-C; English translation by Andrew Loth, Maximus the Confessor, Routledge 1996:76.

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