Remembrance Sunday, 12 November 2017, Queen Camel
In December 1917, General Edmund Allenby led the Allied forces in the conquest of Jerusalem. In a remarkably symbolic act Allenby famously chose to announce the liberation of that ancient city by entering Jerusalem not on horseback, but on foot: remarkably for the time, and doubly so for a career cavalry general. He did this as a sign of humility, an opportunity to show his awareness of the city’s ancient roots and its sacredness for the people of many faiths.
War provokes some remarkable acts - this was one of them. It sometimes teaches valuable lessons. And we may learn this from Allenby’s entry into Jerusalem - that as he walked, on foot, he recognised that he was walking on holy ground.
He was also of course deliberately trying to avoid making comparisons with the Crusades, for the damage this would do to relationships with those vast portions of Britain’s empire in which Muslims abounded, and who were engaged on the side of the Allies in the struggles of the Great War.
Inevitably, though, people could not help themselves talking about Allenby without using crusading rhetoric. Soon he was being compared with Richard the Lionheart; a rash of pious legends developed, in which Allenby entered Jerusalem with a Bible in one hand and a crucifix in the other, proclaiming, ‘Today the wars of the crusaders are completed!’ - all these tales false, or wildly exaggerated. [1]
It is our way to want to make heroes of people who would rather we didn’t. If this was the case for Allenby it was also the case for many of those we know, who returned from war in silence and spoke about it hardly at all. The writer and Anglican priest Rachel Mann describes becoming fascinated with the war as a child, loving magazines like The Victor and making models of WW1 and WW2 aeroplanes. She knew that her Grandad Bert, a farmer, had fought in the Great War, ‘and yet,’ she writes, ‘I knew it was something we did not, as a family, talk about. Or if we did, we did not do so in his company.’
Even as child, then, Rachel recognised that when it came to this territory, the family were tiptoeing carefully on holy ground.
‘Yet,’ she continues, ‘I remember once asking him about his experience in the war. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t seem angry. He spoke quietly about being wounded on the Somme. I was excited. I’d heard of this place. I’d read about it in magazines and books. It made me think of heroes and courage and glory. I asked where else he’d fought, with the childish and insensitive passion of the child who thinks only of glory and doesn’t yet appreciate the pain. He mumbled some places I’d not heard of, finally mentioning another familiar place, Passchendaele. I asked him what it was like to have been a soldier. He looked at me sadly, and, with a finality I could not challenge, said, simply, “Passchendaele was the worst.”.
There are those we too-easily call ‘heroes’ who would never describe themselves that way. For those like Bert it was sufficient to have survived being in that war and remained a functioning human being. [2]
And likewise there are others we too-easily call ‘monsters’. At any time this is the case, but especially in wartime: the need to demonize one’s enemies is a great priority, because it is in that way that nations hold ourselves together. Historian Keith Lowe writes that
During the Second World War all sides demonized their enemies. Studies of wartime propaganda show how strikingly similar this demonization was, almost regardless of which country it came from. At the very least, the 'enemy' - whomever that enemy might be - was depicted as somehow warped, depraved or racially ‘inferior’. Thus German and Italian propaganda often portrayed the Americans as gangsters, negroes and Jews; the Japanese characterized the British as callous imperialists who had enslaved south Asia; while the Soviets were portrayed as a new incarnation of the Barbarian hordes. Meanwhile, the Allies portrayed the Germans as godless, emotionless killers, and thieves in the night, and the Japanese as the ‘yellow hordes of Asia’. All sides depicted their enemies as power-hungry, duplicitous, exploitative, manipulative, violent, psychopathic and particularly fond of attacking women and children. [3]
We know that in the world wars of the twentieth century all sides committed atrocities. No-one is exempt from the need for circumspection and reflection on that. We also acknowledge that of the men who returned from those wars silent, some were silent perhaps not just because of the terrible things which had been done to them, but also of the terrible things which they found themselves doing to others, which would haunt them all their days. Extreme acts - in extreme circumstances. Where these men subhuman, as their enemy propaganda would portray them? Or were they just being fully human, flawed and floundering in the terrifying theatre of war? When we traverse such territory, we are deeply conscious that are treading on holy ground.
Our second Bible reading today invited us to seek wisdom; to desire her, to fix our thoughts on her, to be vigilant in our thought-life so as to be wise and understanding.
And our first reading has the prophet Amos speaking of God’s dissatisfaction with acts of worship and religious ceremonies which are empty of wisdom and shallow of understanding; emphasising God’s desire for us to instead show our devotion to him and to others through acts of justice and righteousness.
What brings us together today? What unites us? Our Remembrance Sunday worship helps us decline the temptation to unite around harmful stereotypes of people as heroes or monsters - but to unite instead around memories of real people, ordinary people who found themselves wrapped up in extraordinary situations, some who emerged with honour, some in shame, those who told their stories to help and inspire others, and those who spent the remainder of their days in ambiguous silence. And we wisely remember them, to quote Rowan Williams, ‘not as stereotyped victims but as people with agency, emotion, sceptical humour and passionate mutual trust’. [4]
And as we name and honour the dead, ‘the largely voiceless and powerless dead,’ as Williams puts it, our worship invites us to unite around the search for peace and justice which was surely their search too.
As we think also of the survivors of World Wars and those engaged in conflicts today, our worship invites us to commit to creating a world where our common humanity is valued above all.
In words which echo those of Amos which we have heard, and the actions of General Allenby we have brought to mind today, another Old Testament prophet Micah once wrote:
He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? [5]
Some may think we are at a crossroads today - it never seems to take too long for humanity to reach a crossroads, does it - for the great hopeful unifying projects which followed the end of the Second World War, are starting to fall apart and ‘the frustrations that are gripping the world today will be familiar to anyone who has studied the rise to war in the 1930s,’ as Keith Lowe puts it:
Some may think we are at a crossroads today - it never seems to take too long for humanity to reach a crossroads, does it - for the great hopeful unifying projects which followed the end of the Second World War, are starting to fall apart and ‘the frustrations that are gripping the world today will be familiar to anyone who has studied the rise to war in the 1930s,’ as Keith Lowe puts it:
Now, as then, large parts of the world are subject to high levels of unemployment, growing poverty and economic stagnation. There is a growing anger at the gap between rich and poor, a growing distrust of outsiders and, above all, a growing fear of what used to be called modernity, but which today has become globalization. In 1945, these were problems we believed we could solve. Unless we begin to solve them again, the demagogues and revolutionaries will step in to solve them for us, just as they once did in the middle of the twentieth century. [5]
Our worship invites us to take up this challenge, in hope that we may find ways to break the stereotypes and distance ourselves from the myths of heroes and monsters, out of deep respect for all those valued, ordinary, human beings who took up this same challenge on our behalf in times past. In so doing, we tread carefully, for we know that wherever human life is valued and loved, we walk on holy ground.
Notes
[1] The Allenby passage here is based on Jenkins, Philip, The Great and Holy War: How World War I Changed Religion For Ever, p.176-181.
[2] Rachel Mann, Fierce Imaginings: The Great War, Ritual, Memory and God. p.12-13.
[3] Keith Lowe, The Fear and the Freedom: How the Second World War Changed Us. p.37.
[4] Rowan Williams, Foreword in Rachel Mann, Fierce Imaginings: The Great War, Ritual, Memory and God. p.xii.
[5] Micah 6.8.
[6] Keith Lowe, The Fear and the Freedom: How the Second World War Changed Us. p.421.
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