Remembrance Sunday [see also here and here].
Revelation 21.1-7
A vision of loveliness. A new heaven and a new earth.
What a vision of absolute loveliness! Like the shimmering beauty of a bride, resplendent in satin, jewels and eagerness. Like the translucent perfection of spring water bubbling from the rocks, gleaming diamond-like in the sunshine, a token of purity and life. And in this loveliness there will be no more death, or mourning or crying or pain. A new creation indeed.
What a vision! - a restoration of humanity to a beauty of existence even more delightful than the first creation, the garden of Eden. Here is that better thing worth living and dying for - the loving heart of God becomes the very place in which his people exist. Joy and peace the fundamentals of its life.
A vision to yearn for.
- that motivates.
- that draws the sting of present hurts.
- invigorates and enlivens even in the face of death.
- that speaks of a tomorrow that’s worth any sacrifice today.
The Soldier
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England.
There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust conceal’d;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Wash’d by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
Rupert Brooke 1887-1915
How I loved that poem as a teenager, when the war it spoke of was to me polished and engraved shell cases brought back by my soldier grandfather, romantic pictures with titles like “There go our brave lads,” and photographs of Granddad Albert in Royal Engineer's kit framed by the regimental badge.
What glory, what romance!
And it’s no accident that the poem has about it that visionary quality like the Revelation passage - it talks of England as heaven - a vision worth dying for. And of course, Brooke did. He died of blood-poisoning on board ship on his way to the Dardanelles in 1915, aged 28 years. And in his dying he became a symbol of romantic patriotism - nostalgic and sentimental. Could he possibly have written in that way if he had lived until 1918? I think not.
One soldier who did survive until October 1918, famously wrote:
Anthem for Doomed Youth
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles’rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries for them from prayers or bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, --
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of silent minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
No vision of loveliness there.
Indeed, elsewhere Wilfred Owen wrote,
…where God seems not to care.
The new heaven and the new earth, where God is ever present, where he lives amongst he people, comes as a sickening joke, a condemnation not a hope -no prayers, no bells, no candles of hope - just the drawing down of the blinds, the terrifying silence of the dead.
Owen at the Somme suffered the worst winter of the war, had trench fever and was concussed, and was sent to Edinburgh to recover from shell-shock. In August 1918 he refused the offer of an officer training post that would have kept him in England, and instead returned to the trenches. He was killed on the 4th November near the town of Ors, just one week before the Armistice, he was twenty-five years old. He had said that his return to the front was essential if he were to write poetry “in no sense consolatory.”
The author of Revelation offers a vision of God’s ever-presence. Here is the dwelling of God among people. But, for Owen, and so many like him, the vision didn’t ring true on the battlefield …where God seems not to care. The truth for him, so beautifully written, but in no sense consolatory.
All these years on, we remember. Not just those of the mud and turmoil of WW I, but others too, of WWII, the countless other conflicts down to this very day - yes, those in Helmand at this very moment, and comrades of theirs who have died or been terribly injured. How do we frame our remembrances? With the romantic vision of a Rupert Brooke? Or the
grim realism of a Wilfred Owen?
A while back the papers reported some ethnic attacks. Youngsters set upon, others jeered at and insulted.
Common enough, unfortunately, you might say - white on black, Christian on Muslim, whatever national against Gypsy. But no this was Scot against English. The first such report I noticed was ten years or so ago. The reporter then put it down to a new sense of national pride in Scotland. As an Englishman I rejoice in that sense of Scottish distinctiveness, and know it is real. But has its flip side always got to be antagonism?
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, said Samuel Johnson (1709-84). My hope is that he was wrong; my fear is that he was right. The particularity, the distinctiveness, the heritage, of the culture I rejoice in as English identifies me and gives me belonging, but why should it issue in any hostility to the other, the different, the various cultures that abut mine? Yet we all know it does. The war to end all wars certainly didn’t end this provoker of wars.
We have to prove Johnson wrong. Our patriotism, if it is not be the refuge of scoundrels, must be tempered by something else - a vision of what is ultimate. One translation of a sentence from that Revelation passage puts it like this
- Death is gone for good—tears gone, crying gone, pain gone—all the first order of things gone. (Eugene Peterson's translation The Message 21:4)
For this vision of loveliness, of God’s ever-presence, is a vision of the end. The risen Christ says, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I myself will give the thirsty to drink without cost from the fountain of living water.
The world that was has passed away. Both the despair of an Owen, and the romanticism of a Brooke, are reformulated in the light of an ultimate purpose that makes them both bearable.
Edith Cavell, as matron of the Red Cross Hospital, Brussels during WWI, helped some 200 Allied soldiers to escape to neutral Holland. On the eve of her execution, on 23rdOctober 1915, she said, "Standing, as I do, in view of God and eternity, I realize that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.
Only a remembrance that strives to renew the world in the light of God’s eternity, that is eager that all may have life in its fullness, - only that kind of remembering draws the sting of suffering and gives us hope. Neither romanticism, nor despair, but realism grounded in a God who suffers and weeps.
One day people will touch and talk perhaps easily,
And loving be natural as breathing and warm as sunlight,
And people will untie themselves, as string is unknotted,
Unfold and yawn and stretch and spread their fingers,
Unfurl, uncurl like seaweed returned to the sea,
And work will be simple and swift as a seagull flying,
And play will be casual and quiet as a seagull settling,
And the clocks will stop, and no-one will wonder or care or notice,
And people will smile without reason,
even in winter, even in the rain.
Day Dream by ASJ Tessimond.
What a vision of absolute loveliness! Like the shimmering beauty of a bride, resplendent in satin, jewels and eagerness. Like the translucent perfection of spring water bubbling from the rocks, gleaming diamond-like in the sunshine, a token of purity and life. And in this loveliness there will be no more death, or mourning or crying or pain. A new creation indeed.
What a vision! - a restoration of humanity to a beauty of existence even more delightful than the first creation, the garden of Eden. Here is that better thing worth living and dying for - the loving heart of God becomes the very place in which his people exist. Joy and peace the fundamentals of its life.
A vision to yearn for.
- that motivates.
- that draws the sting of present hurts.
- invigorates and enlivens even in the face of death.
- that speaks of a tomorrow that’s worth any sacrifice today.
The Soldier
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England.
There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust conceal’d;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Wash’d by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
Rupert Brooke 1887-1915
How I loved that poem as a teenager, when the war it spoke of was to me polished and engraved shell cases brought back by my soldier grandfather, romantic pictures with titles like “There go our brave lads,” and photographs of Granddad Albert in Royal Engineer's kit framed by the regimental badge.
What glory, what romance!
And it’s no accident that the poem has about it that visionary quality like the Revelation passage - it talks of England as heaven - a vision worth dying for. And of course, Brooke did. He died of blood-poisoning on board ship on his way to the Dardanelles in 1915, aged 28 years. And in his dying he became a symbol of romantic patriotism - nostalgic and sentimental. Could he possibly have written in that way if he had lived until 1918? I think not.
One soldier who did survive until October 1918, famously wrote:
Anthem for Doomed Youth
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles’rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries for them from prayers or bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, --
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of silent minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
No vision of loveliness there.
Indeed, elsewhere Wilfred Owen wrote,
…where God seems not to care.
The new heaven and the new earth, where God is ever present, where he lives amongst he people, comes as a sickening joke, a condemnation not a hope -no prayers, no bells, no candles of hope - just the drawing down of the blinds, the terrifying silence of the dead.
Owen at the Somme suffered the worst winter of the war, had trench fever and was concussed, and was sent to Edinburgh to recover from shell-shock. In August 1918 he refused the offer of an officer training post that would have kept him in England, and instead returned to the trenches. He was killed on the 4th November near the town of Ors, just one week before the Armistice, he was twenty-five years old. He had said that his return to the front was essential if he were to write poetry “in no sense consolatory.”
The author of Revelation offers a vision of God’s ever-presence. Here is the dwelling of God among people. But, for Owen, and so many like him, the vision didn’t ring true on the battlefield …where God seems not to care. The truth for him, so beautifully written, but in no sense consolatory.
All these years on, we remember. Not just those of the mud and turmoil of WW I, but others too, of WWII, the countless other conflicts down to this very day - yes, those in Helmand at this very moment, and comrades of theirs who have died or been terribly injured. How do we frame our remembrances? With the romantic vision of a Rupert Brooke? Or the
grim realism of a Wilfred Owen?
A while back the papers reported some ethnic attacks. Youngsters set upon, others jeered at and insulted.
Common enough, unfortunately, you might say - white on black, Christian on Muslim, whatever national against Gypsy. But no this was Scot against English. The first such report I noticed was ten years or so ago. The reporter then put it down to a new sense of national pride in Scotland. As an Englishman I rejoice in that sense of Scottish distinctiveness, and know it is real. But has its flip side always got to be antagonism?
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, said Samuel Johnson (1709-84). My hope is that he was wrong; my fear is that he was right. The particularity, the distinctiveness, the heritage, of the culture I rejoice in as English identifies me and gives me belonging, but why should it issue in any hostility to the other, the different, the various cultures that abut mine? Yet we all know it does. The war to end all wars certainly didn’t end this provoker of wars.
We have to prove Johnson wrong. Our patriotism, if it is not be the refuge of scoundrels, must be tempered by something else - a vision of what is ultimate. One translation of a sentence from that Revelation passage puts it like this
- Death is gone for good—tears gone, crying gone, pain gone—all the first order of things gone. (Eugene Peterson's translation The Message 21:4)
For this vision of loveliness, of God’s ever-presence, is a vision of the end. The risen Christ says, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I myself will give the thirsty to drink without cost from the fountain of living water.
The world that was has passed away. Both the despair of an Owen, and the romanticism of a Brooke, are reformulated in the light of an ultimate purpose that makes them both bearable.
Edith Cavell, as matron of the Red Cross Hospital, Brussels during WWI, helped some 200 Allied soldiers to escape to neutral Holland. On the eve of her execution, on 23rdOctober 1915, she said, "Standing, as I do, in view of God and eternity, I realize that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.
Only a remembrance that strives to renew the world in the light of God’s eternity, that is eager that all may have life in its fullness, - only that kind of remembering draws the sting of suffering and gives us hope. Neither romanticism, nor despair, but realism grounded in a God who suffers and weeps.
One day people will touch and talk perhaps easily,
And loving be natural as breathing and warm as sunlight,
And people will untie themselves, as string is unknotted,
Unfold and yawn and stretch and spread their fingers,
Unfurl, uncurl like seaweed returned to the sea,
And work will be simple and swift as a seagull flying,
And play will be casual and quiet as a seagull settling,
And the clocks will stop, and no-one will wonder or care or notice,
And people will smile without reason,
even in winter, even in the rain.
Day Dream by ASJ Tessimond.