A reflection for Holy Week

by Peter Reiss

Like many, I find the news from Ukraine ever harder to cope with – new and worse acts of brutality on innocent and helpless victims. I don’t want to be subjected to this news, but then how much worse to be subjected to the actual horror, or to witness it. I am also aware that this is not a new and strange outburst of brutality; it has been happening in too many parts of the world for so long; it is abuse on a massive scale, but each individual is a precious individual, not a statistic.

Faced with such brutality, I am struggling for words – whether to try and make some sense of it, or to pray. Words don’t cut it against knives and bullets and tanks. This blog asks us to wrestle with power-imbalance, abuse of power, the victims and the perpetrators.

A few weeks ago we heard of fresh-faced Russian soldiers captured in Ukraine and feeling lost; is it those same cohorts of soldiers who have become rapists, torturers and killers, or is there a different breed of soldier? How could a young conscript become so hard and hardened?

One answer may be that they were told the Ukrainians would welcome them not shoot back; when this did not happen, a new narrative was needed. Rather than consider themselves unwelcome invaders / the wrong-doers, they have relabelled the Ukrainians as a despicable enemy which does not respect Russia, which no longer has a right to live.

One answer may be that these soldiers have become used to seeing death, inured to it, scarred by it, brutalised, almost sub-human to survive. Another answer may be that they have become captured by the orders of more senior officers who have demanded these actions, until they have become customary. If I was a young soldier would I have the courage to say No?

These are only my attempts to make sense of what is happening; I suspect there is a blend of all three and more.

Three Scriptural links may be of a little help if we are trying to respond from a faith perspective.

In the masterfully written story of Cain and Abel (Gen 4: 1-16), the first violence between humans, the first mention of sin in the Bible, Cain is angry and his countenance fell – anger and jealousy are potent forces; The Lord speaks to him, and Cain has choices – “if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you but you must master it.” – he still has choices. Two things are noteworthy – first that Cain fails to master sin- the crouching sin grabs him and it is his brother who suffers – despite choice it is sort of inevitable, humans are not good at mastering a crouching sin. Secondly, the passage involves conversations between the Lord and Cain before and after the killing; the Lord is more concerned for the one who is about to sin, or has sinned than the victim; the Lord does not step in to protect Abel. Theologically this is unsatisfactory to us, but it speaks clearly of how the world is – God does not step in to protect the victims. Abel speaks only when dead when his blood cries out from the ground. I say this is a masterful composition because it speaks of God’s silence and absence as well as the failed dialogue with the aggressor. It is not the complete answer but it is an uncomfortable part of an answer; our faith requires us to live with this silent absence from the vulnerable, and the blood continuing to cry from the earth. Good Friday / Easter may offer hope. I find this passage helps me think theologically.

The second passage is one of the poems in Lamentations, or more particularly half of one verse, 1: 12 – “is it nothing to you, you who pass by? ..” How am I affected by the cries of the victims? Lamentations, like many of the psalms, is written from the horrors of war and violence, but their authenticity to their context means that others in other places may not frame their pain or their thoughts in this way. I cannot assume that their voice will be the same as the ancient voices from Jerusalem. I must listen to each voice not assume I know. The question from 1:12 catches me. Will I listen and be changed, or will I switch channel or scroll to find something easier to cope with? This passage demands a response – the wounded ask that of me.

The third very different passage I turn to, is the role of the crowds in Holy Week. The events of Holy Week do not take place in a church but outside – Roman soldiers and crowds buzzing with restless energies. The crowd on the way into Jerusalem on the Sunday are positive and excited. By the end of the week the dominant crowd are hostile and calling for one of their own people to be crucified. is this a crowd with a very different make-up from the Sunday crowd, and if so, where are the Sunday people? Is the second crowd stirred by agitators, so that the dominant voice is hostile to Jesus? I have been amazed at the courage of unarmed Ukrainians standing against Russian troops in the early days, a bit like a Palm Sunday procession in defiance of the Roman troops who presumably watched from ramparts but did not get involved. I am now numbed by the brutality of those Russian troops who have ransacked, tortured and executed in so many towns as well as shelled indiscriminately and defaced and defecated in shops, livelihoods and homes. If the story of Cain and Abel makes me ask if I can trust a God who does not protect, then this story makes me ask whether I would have remained supportive of Jesus by the end of the week or whether I would have been cowed into silence and submission by the louder voices. I don’t think that the same people who cried “Hosanna” on Sunday necessarily had shifted to “crucify” on Friday. I suspect many had gone silent in the face of opposition.

If jealousy and anger are potent forces for an individual, then mob-power, crowd-mentalities are even more potent in causing fear and silence. Jealousy, anger and hatred can hide the humanity of the other, so that they can be abused. The story of Cain and Abel holds individual choices and external forces in tension. The individual can lose their individual potency in a crowd, or in a mob, or even in an army, in a way that probably many of us cannot fully comprehend.

When faced with brutality, faceless brutality of a system or the heated brutality of an agressor, fuelled by seething emotions, it takes enormous courage to keep going. Holy Week for me this year will have a real edge – do I really see in the crucified Jesus the hope of the world, and if so, how might I say so in the context of such appalling suffering on such a scale.

But there are those who read this blog for whom abuse and suffering are firsthand, and I am always grateful for the courage of your comments. You have faced Cains, you have been ignored and passed by, drowned out by organised louder voices. I dare to believe that the blood of all victims cries out, and in God’s gracious economy is not lost but in Christ’s blood finds or will find resurrection life. But if I do believe that then I must find the courage not to be silenced, and the silence to listen to those who are crying.