March 13, 2022 – Second Sunday in Lent
The Old Testament People of God showed us that we need to pray about calamity in the world (like Russia’s war with Ukraine) even if we don’t know how God will act - God is still Lord!
Let us pray. Holy and merciful God, we give you thanks for the gift of your presence in this time and place, and within each one of us gathered here and gathered in the many places we are worshipping you. Help us now to open our minds, our hearts, our whole lives to receive the gift of your living Word for us this day, and may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
Normally the preacher would focus on the Gospel Reading for the day and perhaps tie in one or more of the other readings and maybe the Collect Prayer. But I’m not going to do that today. And the reason I’m not going to is because I really believe it’s imperative that God’s Word is able to address what is current and vital in our hearts and in our minds. And surely, at this time, it must be the horrible conflict in Ukraine.
So I want to begin with today’s Psalm 27. And in verses 3 & 4 of that psalm we heard these words,
“Though a host of men were laid against me, yet shall not my heart be afraid; / and though there rose up war against me, yet will I put my trust in him.”
Surely lines like that must be in the hearts and minds of many residents of Ukraine – and especially, I suspect, President Volodymr Zelensky. The Psalmist cries out to God because God has moved him to do so. A little further in the Psalm, he says,
“Hearken unto my voice, O Lord, when I cry unto thee; / have mercy upon me and hear me. My heart hath talked with thee: ‘Seek ye my face’; / ‘Thy face, Lord, will I seek.’
And then, the Psalmist reminds both himself and maybe God, of how God has sustained him in the past. And he continues,
“Thou hast been my succour; / leave me not, neither forsake me, O God of my salvation.
Now I suspect that many of us, in times of personal turmoil or tragedy have prayed something like this. We’ve called out to God like this, in a kind of desperation. But again, I suspect for many of us, our experience has probably been very local. It’s either been a plea for ourselves or for someone that we know and care about deeply. But what about for horrendous military conflict – with armed forces and missiles and artillery and tanks –and the national leadership determined to achieve their objective regardless of the collateral damage or hardship to their own country. This in our prayer life seems to raise the stakes exponentially – I think to the point that we usually weaken. We’re tempted to keep our religious life, and the God that it’s focused on, to a much smaller and more personal sphere – not willing to “hang ourselves out there” – and our faith in Christ. Suddenly the world stage is separate from God and our own personal prayer lives.
But the interesting thing is, for Israel that was clearly not the case. Israel was not shy about bringing God intimately into their nation’s political life. And they were not naïve. God was not always on their side! And they admitted that. Today’s choir anthem that we just heard contains selected verses from the Old Testament book of Lamentations. And that Book was written in response to the destruction of Jerusalem, military occupation, and deportation of its citizens, by the invading Babylonians. In referring to Israel as ‘her’, we read in the opening verses, “The Lord hath afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions: her children are gone into captivity before the enemy.” Israel saw this disaster happening under God’s watch – not caused by God – but also not happening separate from God.
And clearly Israel didn’t pretend to always know God’s ways or understand why these things were happening. As we hear from the prophet Isaiah in the 55th chapter, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Yet, even in their limited understanding, in their suffering and despair, they could say (through Lamentations), “It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed: because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.” And in the Psalmist today, we heard these words, “I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord / in the land of the living. O tarry thou the LORD’S leisure; / be strong, and let thy heart take courage, and wait upon the LORD.”
And as disciples of Christ, we even have to look at our own Saviour, Jesus. In today’s Collect Prayer we prayed, “Almighty God, whose Son was revealed in majesty before he suffered death upon the cross, give us faith to perceive his glory, …” That prayer is referring to the majesty of Jesus revealed in the Transfiguration story which we read two weeks ago. Peter, James and John witnessed Jesus in his divine glory – with Moses and Elijah on the mountain. While it did in fact reveal Jesus’ true nature, and it foreshadowed his glorious victory at Easter, it did not eliminate his humiliating, torturous death. Our Christ played, and still plays, in the real world – not just in our personal religious lives.
So what does that spiritual reality mean for us? I think there are two obvious and easier responses: one – we could attempt to block out the grim realities on the ground and idealistically assume and pray for a glorious victory for Ukraine. We could become like “cheerleaders” – safely removed thousands of kilometres away - trying to remain upbeat and positive, and to cheer on the Ukrainians – shouting with certainty that victory is theirs! Or, we could become overwhelmed by the darkness and seemingly hopeless odds again Ukraine, and be paralyzed into a kind of placid numbness that simply carries on in our lives – assuming the worst and quietly waiting for the inevitable. Neither of those options is very faithful as a disciple of Jesus Christ. Yes, the situation in Ukraine is very challenging to our faith. But it challenges us to “up our spiritual game” – to move our prayer life, you might say, “into the big leagues.” Because, as we can learn from our ancestors in the faith - today from Psalms and Lamentations – one has to pray without knowing or fully understanding ‘how’ all of this will turn out. One has to pray acknowledging that God is God and we are not! We pray, very confident that God is good, loving, and gifting this world with peace. But how or when, we know not.
This is not a comfortable place to be. It requires vulnerability and humility. But if God is God, then God is bigger than military might, and bigger than world leaders. And, of course, it gives us courage to pray for Ukraine, but it also gives us courage to pray for President Putin as well – for he, too, is subject to the Lord. We can’t pretend to know how, nor should we try. But we need to step up to the challenge of praying and acting with the conviction of who really is Lord! That is all we can do. The rest is up to God.
Amen.
