Good Thursday High Places,
If you'd like to scroll down to the section of our news and notes, I have them in bold below. The following section I offer my thoughts on Ukraine and encouragements, on how we as the people of God, can pray for peace. I want to begin by saying that I do not feel as though I am making political statements here, rather theological ones. Mentoring and leading a church to think theologically about the power of Christ in our modern world feels like part of my job description. If you see or feel this differently, I am always open to coffee and discussion.
I want to begin with the acknowledgment that Jesus took three occasions to bring theology to bear on the political world he lived in, the Roman Empire, which was perhaps the most corrupt and violent in human history. Given how corrupt and violent the politics of his day truly were, we should begin by giving ourselves pause as to how we engage in our political lives. Clearly, political comments were LOW on the agenda of Jesus. His primary focus was to "do what he saw His father doing." The three times that I am aware of Jesus making a seemingly political statements were, 1) His denunciation of King Harrod (a public outcry, as his cousin John had made, about the morality of the Jewish king), 2) An admonishment to not get wrapped up debates about taxation (give Caesar what is Caesar's and give God what is God's.), 3) An open invitation to Pontius Pilate to explore the nature of God's truth in relationship to human power.
I encourage the church to examine these three instances because I believe they speak to us a timeless truth about God's view of human political affairs. Those being chiefly that we need not be afraid to voice immorality in leadership when it is encountered, that the business side of government belongs to the temporary kingdoms of men and hardly worth our time, and that at every opportunity we are encouraged to speak eternal truths to human power, even at the risk of execution.
No one looking at Ukraine can do so honestly without recognizing the complexities of time, history, and the progressive revelation of God's great unveiling of human worth through the mechanism of historic democracy. That we "hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with inalienable human rights" is as much a spiritual statement as it is a political one. When we think theologically about the opening lines of our bill of rights, we see God's ultimate hope of 'shalom,' or peace, in the center of a democratic belief system.
This is not to say that the lines between good and evil are all that clear, mostly because within all of us there lives the propensity to live our lives independently of God and His great hopes for us all that were revealed in Jesus Christ. We know this to be true simply by looking at the Russian treatment of their own soldiers in this conflict. Each division of Russian troops is accompanied by a crematorium prepared to burn the bodies of their dead on the spot, as opposed to returning them to their mothers and fathers to be buried. The Russian soldier, who bears the brunt of his country's systemic evil, is as much the victim in many ways as the Ukrainian he seeks to kill. And the soldier's family is intrinsically reminded of the low value their dead soldier's life is worth in a system arranged and organized by a governance that does not reflect the value of human life.
Likewise, with indiscriminate shelling and bombardment of civilian centers, terror has become a tool of the Russian state, which places little value on the sacredness of life, not for its own soldiers, and certainly not for the enemy it fights against. All of those lives wrapped in the conflict are reduced in their humanity and placed under the shadow of an evil system of governance. As the Apostle Paul reminds us, "We do not fight against flesh and blood (people), but against principalities and powers and authorities in our dark world, and against the spiritual forces that abide in heavenly places."
The core concepts of warfare are revealed here in that the Russian soldier is quite likely just as much a victim of the worldly and godless power of his government as in the Ukrainian. It is from these spaces that we too look to our own entrapments in free societies, and to our own abuses of humanity, and we together accept and realize that each of us is likely in some way bound up in systems of violence and injustice for which we seek constant confession, healing, and transformation. The darkness, while perhaps not each individually owned in a conscious way, still guides all of the human race when it operates apart from Christ Jesus and the transcendent love he provides.
As we pray for Ukraine, we begin in earnest recognition of our own shortcomings and need for healing. Then we pray for the innocent to be protected. I heard from a friend who knows a pastor in Ukraine who texted him to say, "Tell the American Church that their prayers are working. Russian tanks are breaking down. Vehicles running out of fuel. Entire divisions being stopped in their tracks. Tell your church to keep praying." And this we will pray, that somehow in God's supernatural provision, He will intervene to protect the innocents in the line of slaughter wrought by a godless system of government which does not recognize the dignity of each person. Just as, I hope and trust, many were praying for our nation as we slaughtered the Native American people and held fast to three centuries of brutality in slavery, thus compromising the teachings of Christ and violating our own founding documents as a people.
We pray also for the aggressor in this war, most likely a common Russian teenager or young adult, who by no will of his own, has been placed into the arena of suffering. We pray that their commanders recognize the sinfulness of this brutality and turn their aggression upon the real evil at work in their nation, which are the very powers and principalities of which Paul wrote 2,000 years ago. We pray for both sides to lay down arms and flee the violence to pursue the path of Christ.
In the event that these prayers seem to remain unanswered, we are left with the heartfelt request to God about how to respond. Those responses are varied in the Scripture, and there is evidence for a variety of them to be employed. We pray for wisdom as to which of these to pursue. Personally, I subscribe to the "Just Peace" theology of conflict (as opposed to the "Just War" theology). A Just Peace theology holds at the center that justice and peace are intertwined, and that when one is removed, the other is lost. A Just Peace theology is not against war, but instead will only see war as an instrument of maintaining peace and justice. It does not see combatants as the enemy, but rather sees systemic and organizational structures as being enemies of the Gospel, of God's Shalom, and it responds in any number of ways necessary to re-establish the link between justice and peace as God directs.
I recognize that your mileage may vary on these, and perhaps other issues. My only prayer is that we, as the redeemed of God, move as He commands, and in the order He commanded in Micah 6:8 -- that we first seek justice, a second that we love mercy (because mercy cannot exist without justice), and that we do all this by "walking humbly with our God."
I pray for all parties involved in this conflict, and pray for God to bring swift resolution for HIS name sake. Amen.
NEW AND NOTES
We've been blessed to have Orion Wilson working with our staff for this past year. As his grant time comes to a close, I've asked if he would share with us this Sunday about his journey. Orion has been immensely faithful and available in all he has put his heart into this last year (and before that too!). We've spent time working through our core beliefs and growing teachable to round off the High Places FAT metaphor so many of you have heard so often. Please come and lend him your support this Sunday as he shares.
April 1-3 is our adult retreat. If you plan to attend, please let me know. I am again attaching the flyer to this email. It's going to be a great weekend and I certainly hope you'll prayerfully consider being a part.
Much love to you all. Please pray for God to continue moving in the hearts of so many in our broken world. And pray for those displaced and suffering because of this egregious act of violence on the civilized world.
In Him,
David