Peace-making in the Midst of Conflict

 

                                                    A Child in Kherson, Ukraine, greets liberators 

[God] shall judge between the nations

    and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they shall beat their swords into ploughshares
    and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation;
    neither shall they learn war any more.
5 O house of Jacob,
    come, let us walk
in the light of the Lord!

                               Isaiah 2: 4-5 NRSVue 

“Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, 

for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 

 “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you 

and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 

Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, 

for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

                               Matthew 5: 10-12 NRSVue

Yesterday, which was Remembrance or Veterans Day in many countries, Ukrainian troops entered the city of Kherson and were greeted as liberators. The war in Ukraine rages on eight months after the unlawful invasion by Russia and this was a significant victory as the regional capital was set free. The photos and film footage were reminiscent of scenes from World War II when Allied troops moved into Nazi held cities and towns. The liberation of the Netherlands by Canadian forces comes to mind. This was another glimmer of hope in what has been a terrible conflict.

On the same day American military intelligence shared that there have been an estimated 100,000 Russian casualties, with a roughly equal number of Ukrainian soldiers injured or killed in the war which is not even nine months old. There are 40,000 civilian casualties as well, and millions have been displaced. Tens of thousands of buildings have been destroyed with a half trillion dollars worth of damage and destruction. Along the way we've heard that this war has created a global food crisis and now we're being reminded that the international efforts to address climate change, the deepest existential threat of our time, may be set back by years, if not decades. 

Why trot out the grim statistics? It is tempting to consider war as something from the past we remember or to emphasize gratitude for those who served in conflicts without recognition of the terrible toll for all of creation, then and now. I realized yesterday that my first public school Remembrance service was only fourteen years after the conclusion of World War II and veterans were still in their 40s, for the most part. Now the handful still living are elderly and even recent military actions fade into the background. 

Isn't it ironic that the sculpture below, inspired by the passage from the book of the prophet Isaiah, was created by a Russian artist Evgeniy Vuchetich and given to the United Nations in 1959 by the USSR, now Russia?  

Of course, we want the people of Ukraine to be freed and repatriated and Canada will continue to support their heroic efforts. At the same time we are called to do the prayerful and determined blacksmiths for peace, the peace-makers who Jesus describes as "blessed" in the Beatitudes of Matthew's gospel.