The News and the Good News - Exodus 3:1-15, Luke 13:1-9

Like many of you, I’ve been troubled by the news from Ukraine. Children like mine playing among cots in makeshift shelters. A maternity hospital bombed. Journalists shot by Russian soldiers. I listened to an interview this last week with a Ukrainian pastor whose seminary was hit by missiles, his office demolished, and all his books lost. Still, every day he goes out and cares for the vulnerable and feeds the hungry.

How do we understand all of this—only the most recent in a series of human disasters? When questions like these come to me, I often find myself wandering back to the advice of Karl Barth—a theologian and pastor who supported the German churches that refused to pledge their allegiance to the Nazi state.

Barth told his students that they must read the bible and the newspaper, but that they should interpret the news through the scriptures. I’ve spent much of the last few weeks reading and listening to experts on Ukraine and Russia, learning a good deal of history I never knew, but when it comes to the question of what do we do, almost everyone is speechless and even the experts are afraid of the possibilities. There’s no clear path. So, I followed Barth’s advice and turned to the scriptures for this Sunday. I found there the beginnings of an answer, a vision for what we’re called to do—waiting, praying, and changing our hearts and lives.

Moses knew what oppression looks like. He’d been rescued as an infant from genocide. When he became a young man, he recognized the violence done to his people, and like so many he responded with violence in return—murdering an Egyptian overseer. That killing didn’t stop anything, no justice was done. Instead, Moses was forced to flee to the wilderness, making a life on the margins. He met an Ethiopian girl at the well, got married, and settled down, working for her father as a shepherd. His hope for justice thwarted, he lived a simple life in withdrawal and waiting. It was then, when he’d given up his own ambitions to save the people of Israel that God came near and invited Moses into a conspiracy of rescue. God had heard the cries of his people and he was going to act on their behalf. It was into this action that God invited Moses, not as a military commander, but as a truth teller—listening, speaking, and enacting God’s word.

In Moses I think we can see a model for our own response to oppression. We want to do something, but far too often our doing simply perpetuates the violence. Going to the wilderness, stepping outside the frantic oppositions in daily life, we can find the space to listen and see beyond the surface. Most importantly we can learn to recognize the fascism of our hearts, rooting out our desires for power and control through patient waiting before God. And in that patient listening we can become ready to act when God calls.

This is not quietism, an avoidance of action. Instead, it is a call to act from depth rather than anxiety and exhaustion, fear and the violence it invites. Yes, we should respond as much as we can to the direct human needs and suffering before us. We should send money and whatever else we can to support the Ukrainian people fleeing Russian bombs and bullets. But we should also sit before God in silence, groaning in our hearts for the pain of the world, and knowing that in our prayers God is hearing our cries and the cries of all creation. Our prayers do something far more significant than any military campaign or sanctions can. They join our energies with the life of God who alone can act with real justice.

But there is something else our scriptures call us toward in response to the heartache of human life—repentance. That is the message of Jesus as he responds to the headlines of his day. Untimely deaths, whether at the hands of tyrants or the result of an unfortunate accident should not lead us to ask whether someone deserved what they got. Instead, it should remind us that life is short and fragile. We don’t know when we will die, so now is the time to get our lives in order, now is the time to repent.

I’ve preached before about this word repentance, but it is worth repeating. In Greek the term for repent is metanoia. A better and more literal translation would be “change your hearts and your lives.” That is what God is calling us toward. But what might this mean for us today? If we told Jesus the news about Russia and Ukraine and he called on us to repent, what would it mean?

That’s a question I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. The call of repentance in the Gospel is to align our lives with God and God’s purposes in the world, the work of healing and reconciliation. It seems clear to me that the conflict in Ukraine is in part rooted in the fact that our systems of life and livelihood depend on what is wrong. Jesus is telling us that we should not wait to change this. Now is the time to begin our turning.

It will take silence and time in the wilderness to hear what God is calling us toward, exactly. Whatever the call, I know that part of it will be the practice of humility in the pattern of Moses, the path of living in solidarity with the lowly and the oppressed, the poor and the downtrodden. Maybe repentance also means learning to live more simply so that we are less dependent upon the economies of extraction—whether it is the mining of lithium or the drilling of fossil fuels. I know that repentance means centering our lives in constant prayer—an ongoing conversation with God, waiting and asking and trusting that God is listening, and God will act. The Holy Spirit is within us groaning for God’s deliverance amid our confusion.

In the face of the war on Ukraine and all the turmoil of our world, let us listen to the advice of Karl Barth, who lived in a time every bit as fraught as ours. Let us read the news together with our bibles. But we could all do well with less news and more scripture, for the bible is what is truly essential, speaking to the deeper reality of the world. It is in the scriptures that we find the Prince of Peace who has come to heal all things. Our call is to change our hearts and lives to follow him, learning to wait and listen, so that we will be ready to join in God’s work of mercy, giving up our power to live instead from the All Powerful one who loves us and came to live with us, even in our suffering. Amen.