Remembrance Sunday 2016
England Scotland Football game;
Fifa and armbands; say no more about the game.
Fifa would not sanction the poppy
armbands to be worn because they considered the poppy to be a political symbol;
and as far as their reason goes, I think FIFA got it absolutely right.
That they got it right is shown by
the fact that the Prime Minister and other politicians felt they needed to
weigh in to the debate. I think they got it right first of all because any
large scale Act of Remembrance such as this is a political act because it is to
do with identity and particularly national identity. Surely part of the reason
that we are who we are as a nation is due to those great struggles of the
twentieth century, the freedom they bought and the cost they carried. Over the
last few years Remembrance Sunday and, in particular the wearing of a poppy has
become ever more important. Woe betide any tv presenters who are seen without a
poppy in the two weeks leading up to today. We kind of think they are letting
the side down. The silence kept in city centres on Armistice Day makes headline
news. It is only recently that we have re-introduced a ceremony here on
Armistice Day here in wedmore. More people turn up each year. And the sombre
and moving ceremony today at the cenotaph continues to be an important national
occasion. Perhaps the place of Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday as events
that shape our national identity have become more important as we search for
identity in an increasingly bewildering and fractious world. What will our exit
from the EU mean for a national identity? The election of Donald Trump suggests
that we aren’t the only country searching afresh for identity. The great
migration crisis of the twenty first century will continue to impact on
national identity perhaps for decades or even centuries to come. So days when
we come together to remember the fallen of those conflicts and the impact those
conflicts continue to hold can help us reflect on who we are.
And yet we do a great injustice if
we allow the focus to be on the big events, on the ceremony in London
or at the National Arboretum or if we attend too much to issues of national
identity, or even if we make it about remembering the war. For the real heart
of this day lies not in national commemorations at the cenotaph and the Royals
and the political leaders laying their wreaths and the marching of many people.
The real heart lies in services and events like this at the local level in
towns and villages across the land. We do an injustice if we make the day about
what we remember for it is rather about who we remember, the names that were
once flesh, the stories that shaped this village, the relatives whose lives
were changed completely by loss and who poured that sense of loss into the
fabric of our community.
William Mapstone and Elizabeth
William Bown and Jessie
Victor Bracey and mother
Smiths
I also think that the wearing of a
poppy is a political act because politics is about shaping society, working to
change things for the better; and surely there must be something of that in
what we do today. We can make our remembrance, listen to the trumpeter, fall
silent, lay our wreaths and then go to our dinners with talk of what a nice
service it has been and how good it is to see so many people here and children
in particular. Or we can go from here to do all those things and yet also be
inspired by our remembering and by those we remember to make a difference,
committed to change things for the better.
As a Christian priest one of the most
important act I carry out week in week out is to preside at our communion
services, the act of remembering, re-membering, making real in the present what
happened in an upper room in a house in Jerusalem some 2000 years ago – “Do
this in remembrance of me”, the disciples were told by Jesus as they celebrated
The Last Supper, ‘to remind yourselves of the sacrifice God made on behalf of
humanity and the hope that emerged from this sacrifice in the resurrection’. We
remember God’s great love for us in Jesus, we are nourished by it and then we
are sent out to make it real in the world.
‘Almighty God,’ we say ‘we thank
you for feeding us…’
That act of remembering in
communion is a political act because we commit ourselves to that kingdom we
heard about in the reading, where God will be with us and we will be with God ,
where there is no death or mourning, no sadness or tears; we commit ourselves
to shaping for good the world around us for Jesus’ sake
I pray that this act of remembering
today may be a political in a similar way
I was reminded earlier this week of
a passage in the children’s story ‘The Little Prince’ – ‘If you wish to build a
ship, do not divide the men into teams and send them to the forest to cut wood.
Instead, teach them to long for the vast and endless sea.’
As we name the dead today, as we
fall silent, as we make our political act of remembrance, I hope also that we
may be moved to yearn for that vast and endless sea that is the kingdom spoken
about by St John for the sake of
those whose names we will hear shortly; for the sake of God.
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