The images this week from Bucha and other areas surrounding Kiev in Ukraine are, for many people, too devastating and horrific to bear.
When you learn of the kinds of atrocities and terror committed it can become physically sickening, emotionally disturbing and spiritually jarring.
Some people in this world have suffered the worst that we can imagine. Some people have suffered worse than we can imagine, and finding out is a kind of assault to our humanity, let alone to the humanity of the people who actually suffered.
Dehumanizing others is easy. In such atrocities there is dehumanization on every side. The terrible acts assault the dignity of those who are victims, but the perpetrators become dehumanized as well. There is sorrow all around.
There are no answers, no statements at such incidents of terror. Somehow there are only questions. How? Why? What next?
In my Christian faith I hold a general trust that Jesus has entered the darkest abyss. When I see images of mass graves in Ukraine, dumped bodies, I am compelled towards a spiritual question,
“Have you entered darkness that is that dark?”
“What does it mean that you have?”
“What difference does it make to those who suffered like that, and to those who caused such suffering?”
“What difference does it make to those who are afraid that such terror is the way of the world, that there is little cause for hope?”
My questions can, at times, be enough. It is faith, after all. In this season of lent, Christians recall that Jesus is headed towards the cross, that he has “set his face to Jerusalem”.
We are about to mark Palm Sunday, the so-called “triumphal entry” of Jesus into the city. He allowed the praise of the crowds that day, but he seemed to be aware of a much deeper, painful, sacrificial call that lay ahead. He cried over the city that day and in prayer said that the the people just did not get it.
We don’t get it.
Why is there such heinous atrocity as we still see?
What does it mean that Jesus fully enters the darkness and, in doing so, overcomes it?
They can remain only questions, because if you try to give an answer you somehow diminish the real suffering of the actual people who, for most of us, remain faceless and nameless. These people are known to their families and to their communities. Their names and faces, according to the faith that I and others hold, are known to God.
As Jesus moves closer to the cross, where I am told all the darkness that ever was is upon him, I have only questions in prayer and I pray for you as well. If you are struggling to find hope in a world that includes such images as we have seen this week, I pray for you, I pray for you whether you believe as I do or not. Our humanity is connected.
I am grateful for you.
Dear God,
What does it mean that Jesus enters the most terrible darkness? I don’t think that I can know. I don’t think that I mostly want to know. Such knowledge is too much for me, too devastating to attain. My faith is that you are with us. I pray that those who are weighed down in grief and sorrow and pain would know that somehow life and hope are bigger than death.
I pray for those who feel a dullness, a lifelessness over circumstances of their lives and over situations in our world.
We might not ever understand it, but help us to find hope in the assertion that Jesus has “trampled over death by death”. Help us to know that in the end life, not death, is victorious.
Grant us hope.
Amen.