Remembrance Sunday Thoughts
2014
I imagine most of you
have read about and perhaps seen pictures of the amazing installation of
poppies round the Tower of London. Artist Tom Piper has created over eight
hundred thousand ceramic poppies, representing British and Colonial troops who
lost their lives in World War One. If you haven’t seen it, these are planted so
that they seem to flow from a window in the Tower and round the moat; a
glorious red sea that can be seen from aeroplanes flying into Heathrow. It’s
impressive and a wonderful spectacle.
However, like all good
art, it has also challenged us and produced controversy and discussion.
Jonathan Jones in The Guardian and Simon Jenkins, I think of The Mail, have criticised the work and, I think, they have raised some really pertinent questions we, if we
claim to be Christians, may need to ask ourselves. I’m not going to answer them, just reflect on some of
them and invite you to reflect too.
The poppies form an
installation undoubtedly of great beauty, but Jonathan Jones suggested that, as
such, it sanitises war and maybe the moat should have better
been filled with barbed wire, mud and skulls, symbols of the hardship and death
of the trenches, along the lines of poems by the Great War poets, like Wilfred
Owen in “Dulce et Decorum Est” – he didn’t pull any punches and destroyed the
lie that it is “a sweet and honorable thing to die for one’s country” (Read it here). I don’t think people would have flocked to the Tower if that
had been so.
Buying and wearing a
pretty poppy is such a relatively easy token, but we must not shy from the
horror it represents as poppies sprouted from the soil of the battlefields;
poppy seeds that had remained dormant for decades in the soil, now stinking
mud, churned up by bombs and shells and tanks and weary worn boots. It was only
as a result of the awfulness that we have the symbol of the beautiful poppy.
War is not beautiful
or glorious and, as we wear a pretty poppy (or indeed use our hard-won freedom
to choose not to wear a poppy or to wear a white poppy), we need to be honest
and recall that mud and the smell and the blood. Mr Jones questions and so
should we, is the artwork a sentimental piece that just makes us feel good?
Each one of those eight hundred thousand poppies represents a life brutally
ended. People around the artwork have been chattering, singing and shouting. It
should make us weep.
But that then poses a
further question. Whom do we remember?
This artwork has one
poppy for each of the British and Colonial troops who died. What about the rest
of the allies, many dying far from their homes and families?
And what about this? In
Ablain-Saint-Nazaire, near Arras in France, there is a new war memorial, which
commemorates all those who died in Northern France in WW1 – and I mean all
those who died. (Click here) There are 42 John Robertsons, but also 72 Karl Schmidts.
The Germans are listed alongside the Allies all in straight alphabetical order.
If you have been
watching The Passing Bells on TV, you will have seen parallel stories of lads growing
up from opposing sides – their families, their lives and their loves – growing
up to fight and die for their respective countries, experiencing national pride
and courage, mixed with absolute terror right down to their bowels. Every
German soldier and of course German civilians too, had a mother and father, and
brothers and sisters, maybe a fiancée just like “our lads”, and they died doing what they were trained to
believe in, just like “our lads”.
So the critics of Tom
Piper’s art also wonder whether narrow
nationalism has any part to play in our quest for true peace and freedom as we
look to the future. The earth’s resources know no national boundaries – God's rain
falls across man made borders – and yet we seem to put great store in them. We
need, in my view, to avoid pandering to those who promote political
nationalistic superiority, if we believe in the future of humanity – I think
they, you know who I mean, are taking advantage of a centenary groundswell of
nationalism. We are all equal children of God. Perhaps this French war memorial
is more appropriate these days and perhaps we should think about being more
generous than remembering only our own dead. What do you think?
I wrestle with all
this. I wrestle with the rightness of war every year and sometimes I weep. I recognise that war is regarded sometimes as being
the only remaining option in the face of evil, but it is surely never right. It
is simply the least bad option. Even Winston Churchill is reputed to have said,
“To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war”.
Although Jesus got
angry at times, he said to Peter to put down his sword in the garden of
Gethsemane, when the heavily armed soldiers came to arrest him. Jesus then went
on to win the greatest ever victory over the greatest ever evil. If we claim to
be Christians, what does this teach us about the road we must take? It may be
counter-cultural. It may lead us to question openly some of the behaviours expected of us around this time of year.
We may have to be the ones bold enough to be the ones who go the extra mile to
achieve tolerance and peace; tolerance that is not just putting up with others,
but complete acceptance of them and their differences; non-judgmental
generosity to their needs, whatever their culture and religion. And Christ's
peace is a peace that is not only an absence of war, but absolute confidence
and trust in others. As with so many things, it starts with a commitment to
prayer for ourselves and above all prayer for our political leaders for right
decisions, for that peace can only be achieved with God's help. It is said that
charity starts at home, so too do tolerance and peace.
Until we find that
true peace, then every life lost in war has been in vain and the artwork of
poppies is a hollow gesture, because nothing has changed, and wearing a poppy
is pointless. We have a responsibility to those who have died in war not to forget. If we have taken part in an Act of Remembrance it is incomplete without a
genuine Act of Commitment for a better future.
