Broken hearted



Text: Luke 13:31-35

Over the past two weeks, so many striking images have flashed across my screens from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. A little girl singing “Let it Go” in a bomb shelter in Kyiv, sandbags in front of the opera house in Odessa, lines of people waiting to get on busses and trains while other people tearfully bid them goodbye, folks cooking and serving food to those who have lost their homes or are fleeing Ukraine altogether. And of course scenes of utter destruction, guns and tanks and fires and smoke and rubble. 

But the image that finally brought on the tears I’ve felt lurking every day was the photo of empty baby strollers lined up at a Polish train station just over the border from Ukraine. They were left there by Polish mothers for the Ukrainian mothers they knew would be arriving with their children, refugees of this war, mothers who would have grabbed up their babies and held them close as they quickly took what they could carry and fled their country, fleeing the smoke and tanks and guns and fiery destruction, leaving their children’s fathers behind to fight.


I wept when I saw the photo in the newspaper. I wept with a broken heart for the mothers and children for whom they were meant, and I also wept with gratitude toward the mothers who left their own children’s strollers at the train station, many loaded with baby supplies. These women were not just watching the news on tv, they were participating in humanitarian work to alleviate the suffering of the victims of war.


And it reminded me that it is in times like these that we as followers of Jesus are urged to ask the question: What is God doing in Ukraine? And in Poland and Moldova, and in Russia and Belarus - what is God doing while this tragedy unfolds? Where is God in this? We need to look for God, look beyond the mayhem, and we need to not look away either, but try to see what is God up to so that we can join in God’s work as best we can.


It may seem simplistic to say, well, God is where God always is and doing what God always does -- but that is what we believe. God is with those who are suffering, and God is inspiring those who are working to alleviate that suffering. God is with the dying. God is with the mothers who are running for their lives, and God is with the mothers who are leaving their strollers at the train station for them. And God’s heart, like mine, is broken by all of this.


There’s a lot we could say about Jesus’s exchange with the Pharisees in today’s Gospel reading, but in light of what’s happening in Ukraine right now, what I hear most is Jesus’s anguish about the violence and death-dealing in the world and his desire to protect even those who he knows are themselves death-dealers who will reject him. Like a mother hen, he says (because he knows that the world is full of foxes) like a mother hen do I wish to spread my wings and shelter you. Jesus’s heart is broken by what he knows the world is like and he cries out against it in pain: you are against me, but I am still for you. If you only knew, he says, that there is another way. If you only would let me take you under my wing, like a mother hen among the foxes.


The mothers in Poland have taken the Ukrainian mothers under their wings. It is their way of responding to the death dealing ways of the world. And God is with them. 


And our broken hearted God is also with those in their tanks or trucks, or who are filling sandbags or pulling bodies out from under collapsed buildings. With those who are trying to negotiate peace. And with those hiding in bunkers and trying to get on trains. And those who are left behind, suspecting they will never see their families again. God is with them.


And God wishes to shelter even those who themselves are purveyors of violence, too, broken hearted that they cannot see another way, wishing to shelter them from what this violence is going to do to them, knowing what awaits them, wishing to bring them to see that God wants to save them, too. Jesus’s lament today says this clearly - he loves the world that ignores him and the people that reject him, because they are his. We are all his even when we are wrong and do wrong.


We have to allow ourselves to be broken hearted with God when we see what is going on in the world and not give in to hatred and a desire for retribution and revenge. That doesn’t mean excusing violence, and it also doesn’t mean that we don’t hail the heroes we see in the midst of all this. But it does mean, I think, that we feel the pain and lament that indeed the war to end all wars did not end war, that even the death of Jesus did not stop human beings from continuing to hate and kill one another. We lament that we as a society still will not beat our swords into plowshares nor vow to not study war any more.


So what can we do? We can feel our feelings and allow ourselves to be brokenhearted with God. We can pray, pray for peace, pray for hearts to be broken in love instead of inflamed with hate and contempt. We can give financially to humanitarian efforts in Ukraine and surrounding countries. We can spread stories showing those who are making a difference, like the two young men from Harvard who created a website to match up refugees with people who can shelter them, stories that give us hope, and refrain from spreading stories that are irresponsible or say things to stoke the fires of enmity and hostility. 


And we too in our sorrow can seek shelter under the wings of Jesus who will never give up on us, seek shelter in the midst of such a world as ours, and let ourselves be loved by the one who gave his life to teach us what love is.




Credit: AP Photo/Francesco Malavolta













Comments

Thank you so much for this word today. I, like so many others I have talked with, have been reeling with mixtures of emotions. I am a pacifist who is now cheering on Ukraine's armed resistance, a baby boomer who thought we had moved beyond nuclear threats, a Christian hoping against hope for the love of Christ to prevail. Wartime dashes so many of our assumptions. Your post is helpful in giving us some steady ground in the midst of uncertainty.
Thanks, Charlie. These are sad days, and it is hard to find and keep the center. I appreciate your kind words.