Re-Membrance

Silence. Absence of speech. Heads bowed. Time transcended. Two minutes of eternity. Strangers’ names sounded aloud. Anchor still holding. Lighthouse in the storm. Death faced. Or not.

Our acts of remembrance are presented in many different ways. Most commonly, they are seen in terms of sacrifice (‘for your tomorrow we gave our today’), wistful romanticism (‘they shall not grow old…nor the years condemn’), and nationalism (‘I vow to thee, my country’ and ‘God save our gracious king’). They are often extended to express thankfulness for the current armed services, and more recently the emergency services as well. Others tend to focus on the horror of war and use it as a moment of reflection on the current state of the world and our place in it. Still others recall the deaths of the thousands of animals in war that had no choice.

Some of these are more helpful than others.

War is always predicated on difference. This ‘difference’ is promoted by those who would seek to benefit from it as a means of separating ‘us’ from ‘them’. The difference may be expressed in terms of nationality or race, ethnicity or creed, colour or ideology, tribe or geography, even gender. However it is expressed, the difference is used to distance the ‘other’ from ourselves, to separate ‘stranger’ from ‘friend’. Often it uses some form of fear to pose the other as a threat.

But difference can be cause for wonderment and celebration, excitement, education and insight. Before children learn their ‘histories’ and attitudes from the grown-ups around them, they have natural curiosity and delight in discovery. Their world is one of acceptance and joy, of play, fun and inclusion. ‘To enter the kingdom of heaven you must become like one of these little ones’, a messiah once said. Exclusion and bullying only enter later through attitudes learned, or experienced, from their elders around them.

So much political rhetoric these days seems to feast on vilifying the ‘not us’, and in particular, the threat ‘they’ may pose to ‘our’ situation. We have seen it in the riots on the streets of Britain this year, in terror-based extremism, in the elections held in the USA and in countries across Europe, in the horrific conflict in the Middle East between Jew and Arab, in the promotion of gender-based violence on social media. Every single one of these examples, and countless others around the world, derives from stories we tell about how ‘they’ are ‘not us’.

These are not stories with which we are born; they are stories told to propagate memories of separation through difference, stories of how we, or our forebears, have been hurt, or treated unjustly, or cheated out of something that should be ours, that foster hatred and bitterness, or that are based on greed, arrogance and condescension. They might take hold as simply as a ‘joke’ that tests the reaction of those around, to see who else laughs. And this is where the difference that ends in violence begins, with nothing more than the acquiescence of a smile. Or silence.

So the silence in our acts of remembrance needs to be that still point, that anchor that holds us to the reality of where it all can lead; two minutes of reflection on the horror of violence, the bitterness of separation, the cruelty of greed, the aggression of fear. But then on how we might be part of the solution, by meditating on the Beatitudes, and their extraordinary vision of what it looks like to be truly human, to be in Christ’s image. That is our hope and our prayer, that, one day, there can and will be a future founded on love, that Christ is the cornerstone, and that we are the building blocks. And that is the point of Remembrance.

The Bewcastle Benefice sermon for Remembrance Sunday 2024 can be found here.