Go tell that fox: Ukraine, war and lies

 The lust for human domination, power and land has not been far from the headlines in recent weeks. It has been eighteen days since those first bombs fell out of the sky in Ukraine, bringing to an end a peace which – with some exceptions – had fallen across Europe since the cold war and given us all a false sense of security. Today, Russian forces continue to advance on Kyiv, and meanwhile the West looks on in horror, yet also in impotence. The fear of the aggressor keeps us away from the battlefield – not wanting to trigger what could be the conflagration of all conflagrations. Yet as we watch on, civilians are killed in their beds, and maternity hospitals are bombed.

There is nothing, of course, that shows quite how shielded and Eurocentric we are as a society, than the way we have responded to this war on our doorstep. For so many, war is a historical entity – war is something that happened, to other people, in a different age. Yet for so many people in the world today, war is still very much present and alive. And at the heart of war, so often, is a very simple – very human – desire, for more. For mastery. For domination and for power and for simple gain. However these desires might be dressed up, whatever historical psychodrama is applied, however many stories of the saints or the martyrs or folklore or the rest of it are co- opted and made passive collaborators in this evil, these desires begin in the human heart, and in the ultimate blasphemy – to make mankind, to make ourself, the master of all we survey.

The crying of children, the sadness and resignation of displaced people, those desperate to find somewhere to sit or somewhere to spend the night before they try again tomorrow; people from every walk of society, every age, people denied dignity and forced to flee for their lives, leaving family behind. The imprisonment of those who object to war and aggression. This is what human sin does. This is what happens when those two commandments – those two clear commandments the Lord gave us, love your neighbour as yourself and love God above all things, above yourself – this is what happens when we ignore them and make ourselves gods.

 

Last week, we heard of Jesus being presented with just such a temptation in the desert -a temptation to subjugate God – and yet with a stark refusal to take Satan’s hand and become his vassal. In today’s reading, we hear of Herod Antipas, the Herod who executed John the Baptist, doing quite the opposite. ‘Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you’ – Herod the client king, seeking out the son of God in case he meddles with Herod’s own plans. Herod, who has looked over his earthly kingdom, and come to quite the wrong conclusion. For none of this belongs to him before it belongs to God. Our world is a gift, because our world – and everything within it – is the Lord’s.

We see this gift in our first reading, with Abraham – the father of nations – being given both a heritage and a land through faith. Yet it was in this very land that Herod was trying to kill the one who had come to save the world, sent by God to usher in a kingdom of peace and justice. Only a few months ago, we were singing of the joy of the angels at the incarnation of Christ, and yet here we are – not only looking towards Lent and the Passion of Christ but also watching the rejection of God playing its way out only a thousand miles away from here in yet another human conflict. ‘Yet the world did not know him’, St John’s Gospel tells us.

But beware, brothers and sisters, for our self-aggrandising grasping at power – our leading Christ back to Jerusalem for suffering and death – does not end with the waging of war. Deception, misinformation, disinformation and obfuscation too are all essential parts of the anatomy of this insatiable human lust – and so often run their lies in the wake of conflict. The chilling line from the start of compline comes to mind: Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: whom resist, steadfast in the faith. But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us. St John’s Gospel speaks of the Father of lies – surely we hear him speaking to us to this day.

The Church, too, is not immune from these voices of deception. The Patriarch of Russia is quite right to call what is happening a metaphysical struggle, yet his analysis that this war is the result of liberal values and gay pride parades would be farcical if it were not so repugnant. Patriarch Kirill suggests that pride parades ‘are designed to demonstrate that sin is one variation of human behaviour’. The obliteration of towns and cities, lives and livelihoods over the past two weeks suggest that war is a much better demonstration of that sad fact. The sad history of that church since the end of the Cold War, indeed, shows the danger of trying to serve two masters.

And the forces of destruction do not end at the Ukrainian border. Here at home the voices of whataboutery and a phoney bothsideism become louder and louder, voices which seek to sow division in the name of so-called free thinking, and that instead put politics and self- interest at the centre, displacing further those whose lives have been torn apart by war. There are no both sides in war crimes, in the shelling of childrens’ hospitals. Here in the west, already the cynicism, xenophobia and slyness of a fox are being seen on the ever-encroaching fringes of our political debate. Already, the Ukrainian – and the Russian – people are being used as means and not ends in themselves.

In our own country, our own Government’s warm words have not been met by anything like the necessary actions to take in refugees. Already, the war in Ukraine is being used to plaster over political difficulties at home and to divert from the economic crisis facing the poorest and most vulnerable. And still, questions over links between our own politicians and the funds of those who support the Russian war machine remain unanswered and deflected. Mastery of the world takes many forms.

Yet the challenge of Jesus Christ in today’s Gospel is more than simply to seek out the attempted dethroning of God in others – it is to look into our own hearts too. Herod may want to kill God Himself, yet Christ utters a note of defiance – tell that fox I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Jesus walks towards those forces of darkness whilst still healing the sick and proclaiming the kingdom, still offering to keep his brood safe from the foxes of this world. Yet how often we too look the other way, or desert, or collude with the forces of darkness. How often we rejoice that our house is left to us. How often even God is a means and not an end.

Lent calls us to hold ourselves in the refiners fire and ask ourselves – will we be complicit? When it comes to it, when the chips are down, or more importantly, when we are flying high, will we try to dethrone God too, or will we cling to the cross in praise, adoration and in the service of the kingdom. When we come to the altar today – before that greatest gift – and proclaim ‘the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours’ – do we mean it?

Let this be our Lenten discipline this year, brothers and sisters. Let us never stop asking ourselves – who are we serving? Are we coming in the name of the Lord, or are we co-opting God to come in our name instead? Is God our Lord – or our weapon? And if we are coming in the name of the Lord, how might we show that in our lives and in our own response to the sin of war, deceit, corruption, lies, hate and destruction. How might we sing the song of the prince of peace, hailing Abram’s God and mine?

Therefore my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved.

Amen.