As Churchill called it, “the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime”—new entries are being written in it.[1] Everyday all over the world, we add to it, of course; but not in Europe, not in this way, what we’ve seen this week, for a very long time.
If, however, we’d been paying attention, we would have seen this coming. It was on this day, February 27, 2014, that unmarked Russian soldiers invaded Crimea; and then by a sham election, under the barrels of guns, the Crimean people voted to allow themselves to be annexed by Russia. Later that year, you may remember, a Malaysian airliner flying over eastern Ukraine was shot down, killing almost 300 innocent people, by a surface-to-air missile the Russians had loaned to eastern Ukrainian separatists, a weapon which seemed to disappear once investigators got there.[2] Each incident, of course, was met with a strange see-through Kremlin lie, outrage and sanctions in the West, and then the forgetfulness and sedation of our leisure, our own divisions, the tearing of our body politic, and our moral decay. If you’re wondering how future historians may write of this and us, it may begin something like this.
It remains true and unrealized what Solzhenitsyn said, that “We must rebuild a moral Russia, or none at all.”[3] But it also seems true what Maurice Paléolgue, a French ambassador from a century ago, said, that the “Russian Empire is run by lunatics.”[4] But what does any of this matter to you or to me? And why on earth am I talking about this in a homily? Am I just hopped-up on CNN and can’t think of anything else?
I’m talking about this here, first because what we do here in this sanctuary, this church, matters for the world—for you and me and how we exist in the world. We’re called to be wise among wolves, Jesus said; we’re called to see the world.[5] In fact, we’re expected to see the world more mystically and more clearly than anyone else. The Church is not some mental rest lounge, like some religious Admirals Club in an airport, but a place where we’re to look at things like the apostle John did, mystically upon all the power and evil of the world—to see how God conquers, not evil.
But also, I’m talking about it because these are moments we’re called to see and strengthen ourselves, to purify ourselves. Judgement begins at the house of the Lord, the Bible says.[6] Before the Jesus comes, we repent. When Bonhoeffer looked around to find himself surrounded by Nazis the first thing he did was to examine brutally his own sins and the sins of his fellow Christians. “Will some entirely blameless people stand up at this point?” he asked. Responding to the evil of the world by first being honest about one’s own evil, one’s own sins—that’s how the “form” of Jesus Christ emerges in the Church, Bonhoeffer said.[7] And he was right. And, in fact, it’s the only authentic way for Christians; we just need to stop yelling at people on Twitter, stop blaming all those other people who ruined everything and look at ourselves.
Hence the wisdom of the splinter and the wooden beam, the advice of Christ when we see sin and evil.[8] Yes, sin and evil exist in the world—writ large in places like Russia and Ukraine, but writ actually everywhere. Writ even upon our own sinful and bent hearts. Which is why the Church’s advice to you, that you get yourself back here this Lent in earnest, in repentance, is perhaps the best you’ll get anywhere in this wicked world, the one thing we can actually do that does anything—to pray and not just watch, to remember who the king is and whose kingdom will conquer. Amen.
[1] Winston S. Churchill, Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat: The Speeches of Winston Churchill, 149
[2] Abraham Ascher, Russia: A Short History, 287-290
[3] Edward E. Ericson, Jr. and Alexis Klimoff, The Soul and Barbed Wire: An Introduction to Solzhenitsyn, 142
[4] John H. Morrow, Jr., The Great War: An Imperial History, 179
[5] Matthew 10:16
[6] 1 Peter 4:17
[7] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 115-116
[8] Luke 6:37-42
© 2022 Rev. Joshua J. Whitfield
