| Job
19:23-27a, Psalm 17:1-9, 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17, Luke 20:27-38. |
How I wish that someone would remember my words and
record them in a book! Or with a chisel carve my words in stone and write
them so that they would last for ever.
Job 19. 23-24 (GNB).
Today, across the length and breadth of the country, people are gathering to remember. The Nation’s thoughts are focussed around the Cenotaph in Whitehall, where members of the Royal Family, Political Leaders and Church Dignitaries will lead an act of Remembrance. This event will be mirrored in towns and villages across the land. In each case, those gathering will be thinking of those whose names are carved in stone
Remembering is important. By the act of remembrance, we remember the bravery and sacrifice of the named and the unknown casualties and honour the memory of those who paid the ultimate price. Remembrance also reminds us of the pursuit of peace and freedom, which was the motivation for so many acts of sacrifice. As we gather in worship today, it is our responsibility to remember those names carved in stone and also God’s living words, also carved in stone. If we manage to hold these two etchings together, we might find that our remembrance is not only an appropriate act of honouring those who have died, but that it also helps us take a further step towards reconciliation and to true peace- peace, which is not just the absence of war, but which brings a sense of well-being with those who were once our enemies.
Events on our television screens this last year have reminded us just how difficult that process is. I can remember an image of the visit of a foreign dignitary to the Yad Vashem Memorial to the Holocaust in Jerusalem. The cameras showed a large Hall in which light from the flickering eternal flame illuminated the floor engraved with the names of the Nazi camps that attempted the extermination of a race. A geographical catalogue of Hell on earth. Adjacent to the Hall, the cameras followed the visitors into the Room of Names, where records of all who perished in the darkest moment of human history are archived. Next, our screens were filled with pictures of an exhibition portraying the rise of Nazism hand in hand with the rise of the persecution of Jews. Most moving of all were the images from the Memorial to the Children. A darkened mirror-filled room in which a few candles become an infinity of stars representing the children who were lost. The reporters commentary was silent as the names of the children were read in an almost endless litany of shame.
Then the cameras moved on, and we saw the modern day situation. We watched Politicians listening to the plight of Palestinian people who had had their land and homes confiscated, we saw evidence of where Palestinian homes had been bulldozed and new, Jewish settlements constructed. We heard testimonies of how many Palestinians had become prisoners in their own land, with travel restrictions denying their people access to traditional markets to sell their produce and even control of such basic commodities as water ensuring that whilst Jewish settlers have enough to fill their swimming pools, many Palestinians cannot water their crops. These television images can leave us asking how a nation, which was born out of economic slavery in Egypt in the time of Moses, whose people have known the horror of the Holocaust, can themselves be so directly responsible for the suffering of another race of people today. The pictures on the screen spoke of remembrance and amnesia, it was if the Holocaust and the plight of the Palestinians were two different issues, yet the thread of injustice and persecution ran through them both.
How I wish that someone would remember my words and
record them in a book! Or with a chisel carve my words in stone and write
them so that they would last for ever.
Job 19. 23-24 (GNB).
It is not always easy to comment on a situation which no longer directly involves our nation, but far harder and more painful when the issue is closer to home. During this past year we have seen pictures of the Queen and Prince Philip visiting a memorial in India to those killed by British Forces. The media raised the question as to whether the Queen should not only remember with a wreath, but also apologise on behalf of our nation. We have also witnessed the visit of the Japanese Prime Minister to our country and have heard demands for a full apology and compensation for their mistreatment of Prisoners of War. How is it appropriate to remember these two events?
Then, and even nearer to home, our nation is having to consider how it can appropriately remember and hold together the range of events from what happened on the so-called Bloody Sunday to what happened on Remembrance Day at Enniskillen.
How I wish that someone would remember my words and
record them in a book! Or with a chisel carve my words in stone and write
them so that they would last for ever.
Job 19. 23-24 (GNB).
Such stories, from the past and of the present, are a challenge to a Christian understanding of remembrance, but there are other stories which witness to both the remembrance of a dreadful event and of God’s living word.
In 1940, Coventry Cathedral was destroyed together with much of the city. At Christmas, not long after the bombing it was declared that the appropriate Christian response was not revenge but the offer of forgiveness. A young priest in the Cathedral gathered up many of the 14th century iron nails, forged pairs into a rudimentary cross and sent them across to the corners of the world together with the words of Jesus spoken from the cross “Father, forgive”. The action of one developed into the ministry of the Cross of Nails which has been a part of the life and witness of the Cathedral ever since.
There are other more localised stories of remembrance too. Halstead Congregational Church offered hospitality to German POWs at the end of the Second World War which began a relationship which has lasted ever since. The Church is now closely linked with two Churches in Saarn , a suburb of Mulheim on the Rhine, and regular exchanges are held.
These two stories seem to capture God’s spirit of remembrance. They honour the dead, do not try to mask the pain, and by seeking through their remembrance both forgiveness and reconciliation, they are witnessing to new life the other side of the suffering.
It was the same for Jesus himself. His words: “This is my body, which is for you; do this in memory of me” are words asking us to remember both sides of the cross. They are about remembering the betrayal, the denial, the pain and the death and on the Good Friday side of the cross, and remembering the forgiveness, reconciliation and new life which flowed from the resurrection on the Easter side of the cross.
When Basil Spence, the architect of the new Coventry Cathedral, first stepped into the ruins of the old Cathedral he felt called to ‘remember’ through his design. He later recalled: I was deeply moved. I saw the old Cathedral as standing for the Sacrifice, one side of the Christian Faith, and I knew my task was to design a new one which would stand for the Triumph of the Resurrection.
Basil Spence’s interpretation of God’s word is realised as you approach the new Cathedral, for before you meet the towering entrance of glass, etched with angels, you have to pass through the ruins of the old stones. The pilgrimage of remembrance continues to the altar, where, carved in the wood of the table are the words of Christ:
“Father forgive”
From the pivot of the cross Christ holds together the pain and loss with new life and love.
How I wish that someone would remember my words and
record them in a book! Or with a chisel carve my words in stone and write
them so that they would last for ever.
Job 19. 23-24 (GNB).
Amen.