Holy Week (April 2022)

Dear Friends

I am writing this Easter newsletter greeting as the Russian invasion of Ukraine continues. There is some talk of negotiations between the two sides but there is also appalling news of suffering as the fighting continues and the refugees flee. Who knows where the world will be by the time you are reading this? Such are the times we are living through.

The events of Holy Week are the culmination of the journey Jesus begins as Mary carries him in her womb and gives birth in Bethlehem. At various points throughout the gospels, Jesus makes clear his sense of the trajectory of his life and ministry; he knows it must end in Jerusalem and he knows that ending will be brutal. As we read in Luke 13: 31-34:

“At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, ‘Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.’ He said to them, ‘Go and tell that fox for me, “Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed away from Jerusalem.” Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”

Jesus knows full well the way the world works. Roman superpower is the ominous backdrop to the life of every Jew, and everyone else around the Mediterranean and across what will one day be Europe. Jesus lives within the so-called golden age of the Roman Empire, the peace of Rome or pax romana, which is often seen as beginning in 27 BC under Caesar Augustus. It will last for over two centuries and will shape the lives of something like 70 million people. Its influences will last far longer. Allied to Rome’s might are the local political and religious leaders whose power is held only with Rome’s permission. All of these will be the forces at work as Jesus heads to Jerusalem and the events we remember each Holy Week begin to unfold.

There is plenty here that resonates all too closely with the war we are watching, whose impacts we already feel in economic pressures. Some of us have close links of family and friendship amongst those suffering. And we may well find ourselves welcoming refugees. The consequences of this war will shape our world for years to come.

All of this echoes the world that Jesus came into. That is part of the power of the Incarnation. When the title Emmanuel is given to him, it is quite literally true that he is ‘God with us.’ Holy Week unveils again just how far this ‘being with’ goes. With us into the heart of the machinations of power and the brutality of violence. With us when homes are shaken to the ground and people have to run. With us when injustice seems to take the world under its complete and costly control. Nothing happening, now or ever, is unknown to God or untouched by God. The Spirit’s work is real amidst us all.

But the story we retell this season has more to say into the suffering of the world then and now. Jesus comes not just as one more victim of a vicious regime. He comes in judgement as the Lord of history. John’s gospel opens by reframing the life of Jesus as the source and goal of eternity reaching into creation (1: 1-5, 10-14):

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it… He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”

Thus it is that Holy Week must include not just the cross and all its accumulation of suffering. It culminates in the dawning of the day that dethrones every power of evil and the hold of death. The Resurrection reframes the power of Rome and every power ever wielded amongst the nations, across communities and in every institution and home. The love of God undoes all that would defy and defeat it. God’s timetable may not fit our own. President Putin and those around him may well endure a while longer. So have many who have sought to bend history to their own will. But evil does not win.

I end with the words of another Christian. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew is the spiritual leader of over 300 million Orthodox Christians worldwide. He is based in Istanbul, and in 2019 welcomed the Ukrainian Orthodox Church as it split from the Russian Orthodox Patriarchate based in Moscow. On Sunday, 27th February, he said:

“Indeed, a tragic humanitarian catastrophe has been unfolding in Ukraine for the last 24 hours. A war which, like any war, is an abominable and reprehensible situation. It is the domination of irrationality over reason, hatred over love, darkness over light, death over life. Again, from this position, we address another plea to end the war now! To immediately stop any act of violence, anything that spreads pain and death. Let reason prevail, love for fellow human beings, reconciliation and solidarity, the light of the Risen Christ, the gift of life. We express our full sympathy to our brother, the Primate of the Church of Ukraine, His Beatitude Metropolitan Epiphanios of Kyiv, and our unwavering support to all the seriously suffering Ukrainian people, who have a deep faith in God and chose to live freely and to determine their own lives, as every nation deserves. Although, unfortunately, some have come, these days, to the point of questioning even their historical and national existence. Our thoughts are constantly with the wounded and with the families of the innocent victims, irrespective of their ethnic identity, and we pray for the rest of their souls to the Lord of Life and Death. We are certain that the Lord will hear our prayers and will not abandon his beloved children in Ukraine.”

With my warmest wishes. May the peace of the risen Christ be yours, and all the world’s.

Neil