“I REMEMBER
IT WELL”
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A sermon preached Readings: Micah
4:1-5, Revelation 22:1-5 |
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In the years immediately after the Viet Nam
War,
the Americans built the Washington memorial
in the form of huge slabs of black granite
covered with an immense list of 58,226 names.
I remember reading a piece written soon after
it was erected.
The writer described the memorial
but also the way that people approached it.
He said many people came just as sightseers,
walking along taking in the whole list as a whole.
Then he said he watched an elderly man come
searching for a name,
find it and lean forward and kiss the stone.
Then a woman with a young child in her arms finding a name,
touching it, and then taking her little child’s hand
and lifting it to touch the name engraved.
And he said – watching I realized this wasn’t
just a list –
every name was a person, loved and remembered.
Today we remember literally
millions
who have died as a result of war.
And God says – Every one of
these who fell is a child of mine –
everyone I have counted the hairs on their head.
And even when a sparrow feels I see and care –
how much more when one of my children falls in battle
do I see and love and care.
So today we remember those
who died –
we give thanks for what they gave to us
and the generations which followed them –
and we rejoice that every one was and remains forever
precious and loved in God’s sight.
If you’ve been to the Northcott
Theatre this week
to see “Matthew Miller”,
you will have seen an amazing piece of community theatre
celebrating memories of Exeter.
There is the day we beat Newcastle in the cup,
and the blitz and the devastation which
surrounded this area 60 years ago,
and lots more.
At the end of the show the cast sing about
memories -
and you know the song –
“…No, no, they can't take that away from me. We may never, never meet againOn the bumpy road to love.
Still I'll always, always keep the memory of The way you hold your knife;The way we danced 'til three;The way you've changed my life.
No, no, they can't take that away from me.No, they can't take that away from me “
Memories are precious.
There are those of you here
today
who still remember loved ones lost –
some 60 years ago and more.
And for you,
that may well always and inevitably be the principal focus of this day –
a day to cherish memories of those who meant so much.
For many of us of course,
particularly those of later generations,
the focus of our thoughts may not be so specific.
Today is also a day to
reflect on war in all it aspects -
the immense sacrifice it evokes and the suffering it entails.
Today we remember
·
the soldier and the civilian,
·
The hero and the deserter,
·
The one in whom war brought out the best,
the one in whom war brought out the worst,
·
Those involved in the two great wars
and those involved in a thousand other conflicts,
all the way down to Afghanistan and Iraq,
·
And perhaps most important of all,
we remember those who were on “our side”
and those who were on “someone else’s side” -
Each and every one a child
of God
Each and every one,
including every forgotten unknown
unrecognised soldier and civilian,
known unto God and remembered by him.
Last month the service
was held at Westminster Abbey
for the Iraq Conflict.
Those at the service remembered not only the
(as it then was) 51 British and 315 US dead
but also all the fallen in Saddam Hussein's forces,
all the dead civilians, and the peacekeepers.
The Dean of the Abbey said:
I don't think in today's
world at a national service
we can just behave like little Brits.
If we do, we are sowing seeds
of a greater disharmony in the future."
Memories and memorials can
be dangerous things –
They can be totems for my
tribe over against your tribe –
Perpetuating
those rivalries which are the stuff of war.
Look at the way that for
centuries
Northern Ireland’s present troubles have been
mirrored and inflamed by marches and murals –
sectarian memorials to the past, inflaming the present.
It is not enough just to
remember the conflicts of the past –
we need to remember them well.
We met at nine. We met at eight.I was on time. No, you were late.Ah yes! I remember it well. We dined with friends. We dined alone.A tenor sang. A baritone.Ah yes! I remember it well….. In
the glow of nostalgia
it is so easy to mis-remember:
And if I might misremember
and misquote the song,
That glorious war But children diedWe laughed and cheered Their mothers criedAh yes, I remember it well.
At the end of the 2nd
World War,
after the cells of Auschwitz Concentration Camp had been emptied,
someone caught sight of something
pushed deep into a crevice in the wall.
It was a small scrap of paper put there by a former inmate.
On that small scrap of paper there was a message
written from the death cell to that future world
which would survive the horror of the holocaust –
Just one word in Hebrew- “Zahor”
which means “Remember!”
Telling
that story the Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sachs says
“It
is for us to remember not in hate or anger,
but simply so that what happened
should not happen again”
Memories
can perpetuate conflict or help us rise above it.
I
think of the wise words of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
as it sought to rebuild a national community after the fall of apartheid –
In the words of Desmond Tutu:
”We …thought [that] monuments and memorials…
should be as inclusive as possible,
and designed to help us remember in a positive,
rather than a vindictive way;
memorials that would not alienate some
but would have the capacity to contribute
to the process of healing and reconciliation;
that would give us memories that would bind us together
after so long enduring things that were designed to tear us apart ...”
[Desmond
Tutu, No Future without Forgiveness, Rider, 1999, p.60]
I think too of those amazing
multicoloured quilts
created to remember those who have died of AIDS –
one square for each person -
a powerful memorial of those who have died –
but a memorial containing within it a powerful symbol of
unity in suffering and celebration and hope.
To day we remember the dead
and seek to honour them.
The best way we can honour
them
is to build a better world in the future –
a world in which the fabric of the nations
is like a rich quilt of rainbow colours.
The best way we can remember
them
is to live for the future in a way which honours their sacrifices in the past.
We can
get no better guide than the writers of Scripture,
who time and again find their world crumbling about them
in the midst of war, devastation and ruin.
But
even in their darkest hour, they always have a dream –
a dream of God’s Kingdom of Peace.
And, as it were, as the bombs fall,
they hang on to that dream of the day
·
when the lion and lamb will lie down together,
·
and swords will be turned into ploughshares,
·
and the tree of life will be for the healing of the
nations.
The first National
Holocaust Memorial Day Service
was held in Westminster Central Hall in 2001.
One of the speakers was a lady called Vera Gissing –
She said she was a little
girl in Czechoslovakia
and with the help of a kind man in England,
her parents managed to get her out to England.
She said the first thing her
foster mother said to her
when she arrived was “You shall be
loved” –
“And
these are the most important words a refugee needs to hear.
Years
later I asked my foster father why he took me in –
He said:
“I knew I could not save the
world,
That I could not stop a war
starting,
But I knew I could save one
human soul.”
So, zahor:
Let us remember –
remember the suffering & sacrifice.
Let us dream –
dream of the healing of the nations
And in God’s name let us act
-
one sword, one ploughshare,
one square in the quilt, one
human soul saved,
until that glorious day shall come when (Rev 22:4)
“he shall wipe away every tear from their eyes;
and death shall be no more;
neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain, any more:
and the former things are passed away “