Two years ago, nine months after the invasion of Ukraine, I was about to conduct a Remembrance Day service in St Andrew’s Anglican Church in Moscow – where I was the chaplain. On the opposite side of the road there was a group of about 20 protestors. They were chanting their slogans, in Russian, which included phrases like “defeat to the Anglo Saxon vampires”, “Go home” and, best of all, “Freedom to Scotland”. It was very controlled, very organised – someone had brought along all the banners - and incidentally very illegal. The Russian authorities brought in a COVID law that said it was illegal to hold an outdoor protest where there is more than one person – and they forgot to lift it when the COVID risk was reduced. But, of course, the police were not going to intervene.
So I decided, wearing my cassock, to go across the road to ask them what they were protesting about, and if they would respect a church service. They asked me, ‘Why are the NATO ambassadors gathering to celebrate the victory of England over Russia in the first world war?” I really thought that I had misunderstood. I pointed out that in both the first and second world war Russia and the UK were on the same side, and that at our Remembrance Day service, pre-Covid, we were always joined by a group of Soviet veterans who had fought with British forces in the Arctic convoys. It really was a classic case of a group of people who were committed to a particular view of the world and had been fed fake news which they wanted to believe.
I had crossed the road to them. They really needed, before they protested on the other side of the road, to cross the road to come to us.
We are, in our world, in desperate need of people who are willing to cross the road. We have Israel invading Gaza and waging war with Hamas, and now Hezbollah backed by Iran, because they think that it is the only way to guarantee long term security. We have Russia invading Ukraine, claiming that it is a defensive war, because they are convinced that the USA and the West are using Ukraine as a trojan horse to circle them, impose western standards on them and ultimately defeat Russia. We have the civil war in Sudan between two generals, with a staggering 9 million people displaced, but of course to our media and social influencers that war does not matter because it is between African Muslims.
In the story that we heard this morning (one of Jesus’ most well-known stories), he tells of two people, the priest and Levite, who cross the road in order to avoid becoming the neighbor to the man who is in need. They cross the road – possibly because of fear, possibly because of a sense of self-importance, possibly because they felt they could not do anything, or could not be contaminated or simply could not bother – in order not to see the man who had been beaten up. But Jesus also tells of the Samaritan who crossed the road in order to see the other, meet the other, hear the other, open himself to the other and to show mercy to the other.
Many of the early Christian thinkers see the victim in this story as humanity. We are in the gutter, beaten up and dying. We have been captured by sin, self-centredness, fear and pride. James, possibly the brother of Jesus, writes, “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight.” (James 4:1-2) It might sound a bit harsh, but we are lost and, if we are really honest with ourselves, we know that we are lost. We are in no position to help ourselves, let alone anyone else.
But Jesus crosses the road from heaven to come to earth. We were far off from God – we could not get to God – but he came to us. He identifies himself with us, he comes to us and becomes one of us, he lives the sort of life that God created us to live (a life of love: love of God and love of neighbour), he dies our death, but death cannot hold him, and he rises from the dead and he promises that whoever identifies themselves with him, whoever puts their trust in him will be forgiven, transformed and then raised.
Like the good Samaritan, he picks us up, dresses our wounds and carries us to a place of safety and healing.
We need people today who are willing to cross the road, not in order to absent themselves from the other, but in order to be present to the other: in order to listen, to understand, to be curious (why do they see this world so differently to us?), to open ourselves to the other, to reach out and maybe, if possible, to do acts of kindness for the other.
It needs to begin at the local level: A conflict over parking in front of the house, or where the bins are kept, over noise or a planning application. So often pride or fear or covetous desire grip us, and we react by metaphorically shutting doors and windows. We build the barricades and lob the hand grenades of social media posts, a word of gossip or even legal action. Dennis told me about his father who never spoke with his brother. They fell out over something. And many years later Dennis asked his father what it was that they fell out about, and his father could not remember. And so often all it takes is the choice to cross the road, to open ourselves up to the other, to listen and to understand.
And at the more serious level: crossing the road becomes even more important. I spent a year in Derry or Londonderry in between school and university, where my father lived, during the troubles. I volunteered at a workshop for young unemployed Catholics. The director of communication was deaf and dumb and taught the young men and women sign language. It was very Irish and quite inspirational. But I remember sitting with some of the Catholic young men in a car when the army jeeps rolled in and the soldiers jumped out and started searching a house on the Creggan estate. The lads I was with begin to yell abuse at the soldiers. And then one of them, an officer, crossed the road – at potential risk to himself - and came to the car and told a joke about Lord Mountbatten, who had recently been murdered. It was tasteless, politically incorrect, but it was brilliant. It broke the ice, and suddenly the young men from the Creggan and the young squaddies from Liverpool began to talk together. And you realised that these young men on both sides of the divide shared so much in common.
My crossing the road in Moscow was nothing. I was quite safe. A cassock in Moscow is respected in a way that it is not here, and my motivation was questionable: I was really doing it to impress ‘our’ side. It cost me very little.
But the most inspirational stories are when someone crosses the road to go to the one who should be their enemy, maybe even when one has suffered at the hand of their enemy. It is like the Samaritan going to the Jew, or today the Palestinian going to the Jew or the Ukrainian to the Russian, not giving up who they are, but attempting to also understand, maybe even to try and think themselves into the shoes of their enemy: being curious. What is it that motivates them, what are their fears and desires? Those acts of crossing the road can be really costly. You risk being misunderstood, even considered as betraying your own side. And there has to be an element of ongoing forgiveness, even when the other is not repentant – and that can be intensely painful.
But that is what God did for us when Jesus crossed the road to come to us; he came to us even though we had made God our enemy, and he died for us to bring reconciliation (Romans 5:10). This is the model that God gives to us, not the model of imposing ourself on our enemies. And it is out of such acts of crossing the road that a new reimagining of the situation, a re-creation, can emerge.
It is when you or I are willing to cross the road to be present to the other, even our enemy, that there is hope for our communities and hope for our world.