Remembrance Sunday 2013

2013 has been a special year of remembrance at Christ Church. Earlier in the year we remembered with thanksgiving that over 1800 Jewish Austrians were baptised at Christ Church by the Revds Hugh Grimes and Frederick Collard in 1938. On Thursday we remembered with thanksgiving the children transports that enabled some ten thousand Jewish children to leave Austria for the United Kingdom. One of our very own, Fred Gruber, who served with the Royal and Electrical Engineers, spoke to us about his experiences of being on one of the children transports and his time in England. It was a bonus that Anne Glenny, Martin Hale’s mother-in-law, was able to be present for this event to remember with us the children transports of 1938. Why? Her parents and her eldest brother were baptised at Christ Church in 1938 and Charles Beck, her eldest brother, was on one of the children transports to the United Kingdom. Anne’s parents left Austria to join their son in England in 1939. Fred, sadly was never to see his parents again.  In my hands I am holding a copy of Charles’ first letter sent from England and addressed to Liebe Mutti und Papi. He writes that they have arrived safely and that they have been well accommodated.

As some of you will know I have sought each year to address a theme to highlight the various facets of our remembering in recent years especially the role of women, as well as the exploitation of animals. Here, we have remembered the naivety with which WWI was entered into by both sides. The war would be over by the winter! No it wasn’t! It took four long and gruelling years. Years that would change perceptions. Prayers for the dead that up to that point had been resisted by Protestant Britain found their way into the liturgies of the Church of England. A pacifist movement grew up particularly in Britain. The war poets captured in words the horrors of war as well as the lasting effects on the soldiers, who were maimed physically and/or psychologically.  The words of Isaiah have been recited here that speak of the hope and the longing that wells up in each generation that we will have no need to learn war any more!

The reference to the war poets also explains the choice of this year’s reading from the Bible. It is taken from the Book of Lamentations. It was originally written in a poetic style. It captures the horror of war. It is written by a person who has come to believe that he and his people have been abandoned by God for their iniquities. The images are stark! They refuse to celebrate the heroic. They speak of abandonment and desolation.

What do the War Poets, persons like Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen and Robert Graves, tell us? Poets who since 1985 are commemorated with thirteen others by a black slate in the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey.

I have chosen only one poem on this Remembrance Sunday to recite in full. It is by Siegfried Sassoon, and I have saved it for the close.  I readily admit that his poems resonate with me and my perception of things, so here for starters is what he writes in a poem entitled Remorse,

‘Oh Hell! He thought – ‘there’s things in war one dare

Not tell poor father sitting at home, who reads

Of dying heroes and their deathless deeds

or in Attack

Men jostle and climb to meet the bristling fire.

Lines of grey, muttering faces, masked with fear,

They leave their trenches, going over the top,

While time ticks blank and busy on their wrists,

And hope, with furtive eyes and grappling fists,

Flounders in mud. O Jesus, make it stop!

and in They

The Bishop tells us: ‘When the boys come back    

‘They will not be the same;…

‘We’re none of us the same!’ the boys reply.       

‘For George lost both his legs; and Bill’s stone blind;      

‘Poor Jim’s shot through the lungs and like to die;

‘And Bert’s gone syphilitic: you’ll not find

‘A chap who’s served that hasn’t found some change.’  

And the Bishop said: ‘The ways of God are strange!’

What do these three extracts tell us? First and foremost they remind me that people don’t like too much truth! The Vietnam veterans had a hard time obtaining a voice! The poems tell us that no war or conflict should be entered into lightly without counting the cost. Who in 1914 would have thought that the assassination in Sarajevo of Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, Princess of Hohenberg, would be the trigger for the house of cards to fall? They tell us that war and the horror of war will forever change us for it strikes at our very being. War, in some words borrowed from the Psalmist, is like the pestilence that destroyeth in the noonday. The cost of any war is enormous and it goes to the heart of a nation. The simplistic divide that is used in party politics dividing people into doves and hawks should be shunned! The poems tell of our bewilderment in the face of the horrors of war, the atrocities committed and the waste of life. They touch on faith and on our Christian faith. God’s helplessness to tame and rein in the reign of terror once it has been unleashed. They ask us “will your anchor hold in the storms of life”? They speak of the consoling words of prelates that miss the point… Who do not really grasp why the cross stands at the centre of the Christian faith – experienced, endured, suffered and defeated.

There is a painting by George Baselitz in the Kunstmuseum in Bonn. It is entitled simply Die Hand - Die Hand Gottes (The Hand – The Hand of God). God holds even the chaos of our world in the palm of his hand. He holds you and me in the palm of his hand, we who can and do through our actions hurt others, contribute to the pain of the world, if we do not take care. If we turn a blind eye to our failings! Our shortcomings! Our sins!

I want to end with Siegfried Sassoon’s poem entitled To the Warmongers

I’m back again from hell

With loathsome thoughts to sell;

Secrets of death to tell;

And horrors from the abyss.

Young faces bleared with blood,

Sucked down into the mud,

You shall hear things like this,

Till the tormented slain

Crawl round and once again,

with limbs that twist awry

Moan out their brutish pain,

As the fighters pass them by.

For you our battles shine

With triumph half-divine;

And the glory of the dead

Kindles in each proud eye.

But a curse is on my head,

That shall not be unsaid,

And the wounds in my heart are red,

For I have watched them die.

We who belong to the post-war or “baby-boomer” generation are committed to listening to those who experienced the war, the prison camps, the deprivation and the refugees! Let us be guided by those who have experienced the horrors of war, who have had to watch comrades and adversaries die while others are maimed for life. Be they voices of the past or our contemporaries! Let us listen to them as we remember in prayer this day all who have suffered and are suffering as a result of war (those who this day are fleeing their homeland), while we seek to work with people of good will from every race, language, religion and nation to make our planet a place of God’s mercy, peace and righteousness. Let us begin today with ourselves, and those with whom we share our lives at work, at play and at home, by allowing God to minister to the deepest place of our need.

I want to give the very last word to George Steiner – a single sentence that has been my been my constant guide over the years, We remember because we have a future!

On the occasion of an Annual Church Meeting

‘Forget not all his benefits!’ These few words are taken from Psalm 103. Over the past weeks I have been hearing these words again and again through the still small voice of calm. In the storm of life God is reminding me, God is reminding us not to become forgetful of all his benefits towards us. The annual church meeting is a welcome occasion to remind ourselves as a church of God’s goodness towards us with thanksgiving and thus not to forget! The whole verse reads, ‘Praise the Lord, O my soul and forget not all his benefits!’