The sombre gathering in March 2022 - looking for hope in a darkened world #Ukraine

We gathered online in March in the first few days after Russia invaded Ukraine, when the general mood in the public space and in our own private spaces was dark, angry, fearful and unhopeful.  Light was hard to find.

The president for the day managed to capture this mood perfectly by choosing the topic “In the Shadow of the Cross”, and picking a path through some sections of scripture seldom mentioned in Unitarian gatherings.  This was not in order to persuade, or to divert people from their own hard-won positions, but in order to show the power of biblical literature to express deep currents of emotion experienced by humanity at stressful periods in history.  Tuning in to expressions of those personal experiences, experiences which outlast every shift in history, experiences which may be thought of as everlasting, as the same in every age, is valuable.  Especially when nothing that is being said in the media news cycle seems to touch our personal responses to what is going on all around, deep, dark and ugly.

The gathering started with the following words as we lit the candle in our chalice: 

"My soul is sorrowful, even unto death, stay awake and keep watch with me" (the book of Mark in the Bible, chapter 14 verse 34)

This is the call we answer tonight. 

There are people fearful, and we would be with them.

There are people grieving and we would be there.

There are people who must make choices we are currently spared, and whilst we dare not counsel we would have them know they are not alone tonight. 

In the darkness and the quiet we will be with them,

We will seek strength for and with them,

We will seek comfort for and with them,

And we will hope that each of us may rise to answer the call we alone can discern in our hearts.

The first reading was from the book of Psalms in the Bible, from Psalm 22, where the poet is in great anguish from the world, and sees and feels a gaping hole where they thought God would be to help them.  Nonetheless, the poet salvages scraps of trust from the Jewish faith that God is there, not far away.

The second reading was from the book of Luke in the Bible, chapter 26 verses 23-43.  This is the story about the man Jesus being executed in the vicious and cruel way that Romans treated their criminals — crucifixion —  and about the exchange between Jesus and two criminals also being crucified alongside him.

About the first reading, our president for the day said, “It is a powerful poem, a cry of anguish and perplexity.  I freely confess that I do not share many of the assumptions of the poet about how the world should work but that does not hold me back from entering into the experience of what is being voiced.  Just as I can read and resonate with a poem by Rudyard Kipling without sharing his views on Empire, or one by Gerard Manley Hopkins without being a Catholic, so too I can turn to the Psalms and find value without being obliged to a fixed world view. 

“Psalm 22 is not just a cry of pain, one amongst many voices raised in a world of suffering, it is the cry of pain of people of faith. The anguish of not just experiencing the horrors of fear, torment, and hunger, but doing so when everything you believe about the world says this shouldn’t be happening.  Where is the God who saves, why are bad things happening to people who have led good lives, what does this say about us and … whisper it … what does this say about the God we believe in?

“When beliefs meet realities, when what has been trusted to sustain through hardship weighs heavy instead, when there is true suffering in a world we want to call good, how do people of faith go on?”

The second reading was reflected upon as follows.  “Our second reading takes us to another familiar place, to another image of suffering.  In the story woven by the author we are presented with a man in extremis.  A man in whom, we have been told time and time again, no crime could be found.  A man we have seen doing little but be kind.  And yet here he is being publicly humiliated, and tortured to death.  Whatever else the author is trying to paint for us here, this is an image of unjust suffering, of a world not being how it ‘should’ be.  When we speak of the Shadow of the Cross it is this shadow, the shadow of innocent, undeserved, inexplicable suffering; a shadow that would dim the light of faith; a shadow made darker by that same light.

"Here we have a man of faith, an ‘Everyman of faith’ if you will, having everything he preached thrown back in his face, having his convictions about the world dashed, on the rocks of how the world actually is.  I cannot imagine the pain, the shame, or the anguish coursing through him in these moments.  Where was that other way of living in the world, the other ‘kingdom’, now?  People hadn’t repented, they hadn’t had that change of heart, and now Might was triumphing over Right.  Power, not Compassion, was having the last word.”

In the reading, Jesus is mocked by the Roman soldiers on execution duty, and by the Jewish leaders who had led him away to the Romans for becoming a trouble maker in the region.  One of the suffering criminals also mocks him, challenging Jesus to save himself and them, too.  But the second dying criminal, of all the people in the scene, takes a different standpoint.  

Our president went on, “We call him the ‘Good Thief’, but it was not for being good, nor for simple thievery, that Rome crucified.  Let us be under no illusion — this was a man who had lived by the sword, who had been wed to the logic of Might and Power.  Yet this was the man who, despite his own suffering, despite his own vulnerability, spoke up for our Everyman of faith; not because his words could change the world they lived in, but because it was right, because he felt compelled to do so.  A life governed by Might and Power, seemingly suddenly under a different law, a different kingdom.  Right and Compassion broke through. 

(extract from the reading) '...... he said, 'You got the same sentence as he did, but in our case we deserved it : we are paying for what we did.  But this man has done nothing wrong.' '

"How tenderly he then speaks: 'Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom'.  He calls him by name, not by any of the mocking titles thrown at Jesus, not even by 'Teacher'; he calls him by name and asks to be remembered, the one who had repented, who had had that change of heart; and in that instant shows that the kingdom Jesus believed in, where it is Right and Compassion that governs our lives, is still at hand. 

“Beyond all looking for, or expectation, it turns out to be Jesus who is preached to on the Cross, who is shown that his faith was not misplaced.

“They both still suffered, they both still died: beliefs about a world where these things shouldn’t happen still met the realities of a world where they do.  Nothing made it all ok, but in that shadow, Jesus was not alone, and what he had lived for, and ultimately died on account of, was shown to hold true.  People can change, and against all the odds people do make choices answering the call of what is right and of compassion. There is bravery, there is kindness in the world, when those are the very things that seemingly should not be, but they are; and, every time we live in that way, we too are in Paradise, not because suffering ends, not because all our needs are met, but because this is the world our faith tells is meant to be.

“This is the world as we speak of it ‘in the beginning’.  I dearly hope there is someone on hand for me, for you, and for all those suffering tonight and in the time to come, who will say our name with kindness, and against all the odds make the world that ‘is meant to be’ present for a moment, for as long as it lasts.  More than that, I dearly hope for us all that we too will answer that call of Right and of Compassion that will enable us to bring Paradise to those we meet.”