As I keep thinking about what this full-scale war is doing to me, to my family, to my ministry and my calling, one verse from the Gospel narrative comes back to me more and more often: “Now as they led Him away, they laid hold of a certain man, Simon a Cyrenian, who was coming from the country, and on him they laid the cross that he might bear it after Jesus” (Luke 23:26, NKJV). Here are a few lessons I have drawn from that verse and from our war, and which I am still drawing.
1. Willingness to help
Simon was pulled out of the crowd at random and made to carry the cross of Jesus, a man simply walking in from the countryside, and it was the soldiers who chose him. None of this was in his plans for the day. In wartime, theological educators in Ukraine have likewise been called to serve in ways nobody would have chosen, taking on work that came to us by force rather than by decision, and compelled into the Mission of God by circumstances that had very little to do with peaceful prayer and Christian resolve. How do you turn unwillingness into willingness, and accept what has been laid on you with faith and trust in God, when the circumstances are a full-scale war you did not choose? And how do you keep hold of the distinction that matters most, that in the end you are not obeying the soldier who gave the order but serving and following Jesus, even though this is not the road you would have picked?
2. Willingness to accept help
Jesus, for His part, was made to accept help from an unexpected source, a stranger walking home from a day’s work in the fields, and again it was the soldiers who arranged it. How do you learn to receive help from sources you did not choose during a war, when you do not know the people who are helping you, and when they come from another faith or another culture altogether? Carry your own cross, even through theological education, even in wartime, since this is precisely what Jesus told His followers to do, to take up their cross daily and follow Him (Luke 9:23). And how do you recognise that you are not obeying the soldier’s order to hand your cross to someone else, but that another person has simply become willing to help you, even if the help does not arrive in the form either of you would have preferred?
3. Willingness to notice a human being in tears
On His way to the hill of death, Jesus still stopped to speak with the weeping women of Jerusalem, and His own suffering did not shut His eyes to the grief of the people around Him. How do you learn to show compassion toward those who are also suffering, perhaps less than you, while you are walking that same road? Where do you find words of encouragement for the people beside you when they do not share your beliefs and do not understand what is happening to you? Simon was a stranger to Jesus and showed compassion anyway by helping Him carry the cross, and this is what we are learning in this war, compassion toward the suffering and toward strangers. Simon had to give up his own plans and his own errand in order to help. I see the same thing in our partners, who gave up their time, their resources and sometimes their safety when they travelled across Ukraine during the war, under air-raid alerts and everything else that comes with it.
4. Willingness to be a Community of Hope
The cross was a heavy burden for Jesus and for Simon alike, physically and emotionally, and Christians in wartime carry their own weight of fear, grief and loss. Simon’s example is a reminder that these burdens can be carried with the help of others and with the strength that comes from God, whatever that phrase means to you, even when carrying them was never our choice in the first place. So how do we come together as a Community of Hope, as the People of the Bridge, working toward a common purpose and holding one another up through the hardest days of this war? That unexpected turn on the road allowed Simon to become part of the story of Jesus and to serve Him in a way no one else did. We theological educators in wartime have met a great many unexpected situations, and they are what brought us together as a Community of Hope, as the network of seminary-based refugee hubs. We were forced to pick up a cross (we stayed, we did not leave, and we do not condemn those who left Ukraine), and inside that compulsion we have learned to recognise the opportunity, to show what a Community of Hope actually is and what the People of the Bridge actually means, and to serve others and one another in ways we had not tried before.
Memory is a gift of God, and I ask Him that I may not forget this, that every pound of the heavy cross brings us closer to Jesus, that every pound of it leads toward resurrection and toward an empty tomb, and that every pound of our own cross leads to glory and to eternal life with the two Communities of Hope held together as one, the Trinity and humanity, united at last by what the God-man accomplished. God became a human being in order to restore our true humanity, the Imago Dei in us.
Peace be with you, and I wish you a silent night.
Taras Dyatlik, Ukraine
20 April 2023, the 421st day of the ongoing full-scale russian war against Ukraine
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