What we are all witnessing right now on our television screens, in our newspapers, and on the internet is the Passion of Ukraine. It’s still Lent, and Easter isn’t quite here, but in this sacrificial journey towards the Christian commemoration of the arrest, torture, and murder of Jesus we see Ukraine in all of its blood and tears.
The word “Passion” comes from the Latin for “suffering,” and seldom have we been such armchair-witnesses to the most hideous barbarism and slaughter. Easter, however, can only be properly understood if we also embrace the Resurrection, and I firmly believe that through the screams and the agony there will indeed be a rebirth, a rising again of this great and proud nation. I certainly pray so.
Such a statement and such an idea would have been surprising, even jarring, to my father’s family. They were Ukrainian Jews. Most, my direct line, left in the 1890s, but others remained, through the truly grotesque years of Stalin and Hitler. Their relationships with their Christian neighbours and rulers were seldom comfortable, and sometimes deadly.
Now, so many years later, there’s me, a Christian priest, an Anglican, but one who will never, and could never, forget his Jewish heritage. Even more extraordinary, now there’s Ukraine’s President, a Jewish man who embodies the country’s resistance, strength, and courage. That, I promise you, would have amazed and stunned my people on so many levels.
But then Jesus was Jewish of course, as was his mother, and most of his early followers. The blood he and they shed was Jewish blood, and that has often been grotesquely forgotten by the church historical in so many ways of shame and horror. In all honesty, it’s sometimes forgotten even today.
The blood of the modern martyrs is Ukrainian, whatever the background, religion, or belief. The blood of men, women, and children, running in crimson innocence as brutal occupiers — not Roman now but Russian — bully their way into what is not theirs and doesn’t belong to them.
The five wounds of Christ are replicated in the holy wounds of Ukraine. Invasion, murder, lies, abuse, and terror. A country bleeds for us, not as Christ who some of us regard as the Messiah, but as a living obstacle, a heroic barrier to the ambitions of a malicious and cruel leader who exploits and oppresses his own people in his lust for power and land. It will not end with Ukraine, as history has repeatedly taught us.
Some in the world choose to wash their hands of all this, preferring to do nothing while the noble victims die in their place. Others genuinely lament what is happening but don’t intervene because they think it would be too dangerous for them. Then there are those who rejoice in it all. Crucify him, crucify him!
Some in the world choose to wash their hands of all this, preferring to do nothing while the noble victims die in their place
These Lenten lands, these Paschal paths, have never been so obvious to the world, and yet we respond with relatively little. No surprise if we think about it, because similar hell has been brought down on Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and so many other places. Perhaps our racism prevented and still prevents us from reacting properly to those repeated obscenities, and that’s an eternal stain. And yes, I’m fully aware of western and especially US hypocrisy in all of this.
So let’s begin the great and grand restoration here and now, and start the permanent revolution of grace and equality today. In Lent we Christians are supposed to remember the 40 days Jesus spent fasting in the desert. We do so in part by abstaining from something that gives us ease or pleasure. Not a lot to ask really.
Can we at this vital time in history not abstain from complacency, and thus save Ukraine? Abstain from once again allowing injustice to triumph? In doing so we could change everything! Humanity cries out, as it always has, and perhaps this time we can listen. Perhaps, perhaps, this time. Don’t forsake them, not again. The cry that echoes so loudly and so accusingly.
Lent, Passion, Jesus, faith, religion, and the sanctity of Ukraine. My ancestors may well have been confused and even bewildered by the language, but they would most certainly have grasped the meaning. Because in the end it’s not about nation, race, or religion, but about truth, justice, and peace. In Ukraine and beyond. It’s about people being truly free, and respect — and even love — being given to all of God’s creatures. For ever and ever. Amen. ◆
Rev. Michael Coren is an award-winning Toronto-based columnist and author of 18 books, appears regularly on TV and radio, and is also an Anglican priest.
