In Remembrance

                                      A Reflection for Remembrance 

                        by   Right Reverend Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani, Bishop of Chelmsford.

 I’m conscious, in this season of Remembrance, that many of us have been touched, one way or another, by the loss and tragedy which grows out of conflict and war.

  A Christian understanding of remembrance doesn’t look back to past events just for the sake of renewing old, faded memories. Rather it draws those events into the present, giving shape and meaning to our experiences now, whilst also propelling us into a future that’s full of hope.

 That’s what Christians do week in and week out when we celebrate Holy Communion. We pull the past events of Jesus’ death and resurrection into the here and now, where they influence our present reality and give us strength to build a better future in light of the hope we have in the promise of eternal life.

 While we recognise that war is sometimes unavoidable, we can choose not to be defined by it, but to be shaped instead by our determination to work for peace, striving always to bring good even out of the most evil of situations. We can recognise the ever-present reality of pain and suffering in our world – of evil and brutality, in Christian terms of sin, and yet know that amidst it all the offer of a fragile hope is held out. Hope that we need not be overcome by the power of darkness nor allow it the final word, but that we can choose to respond to hatred with love, to continue striving towards reconciliation, and working for a lasting peace.

 So, we remember with thanksgiving the sacrifice of those who gave so much for the freedoms and the life that we enjoy, and we hold before God those who continue today to put themselves in danger for the sake of our safety. And as we remember and give thanks, so we lean into the hope of a better, more peaceful future, and we commit ourselves to continue working ceaselessly for a time where our many differences become a source of celebration rather than division.

      Prayers: 

   For those who have died.

 Almighty and eternal God, from whose love   in Christ we cannot be parted, either by   death or life:
 hear our prayers and thanksgivings for all   whom we remember this day;
 fulfil in them the purpose of your love; and   bring us all, with them, to your eternal joy;
 through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

 For those who have died on active service.

 O God of truth and justice, we hold before   you those men and women who have died   in active service:
 in Iraq, in Afghanistan and elsewhere. As   we honour their courage and cherish their   memory, may we put our faith in your   future; for you are the source of life and   hope, now and for ever. Amen.

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                                     The story behind the Hymn

                     O God, our help in ages past

 At many services of Remembrance, the hymn O God, our Help in Ages Past is sung. The well-know tune ‘St. Anne’ is often played at the same occasions. How did this become such a popular hymn?

 The author was Isaac Watts (1674 – 1748) and is often called the ‘Father of English hymnody’. Certainly before his hymns came along, congregational singing was a tedious business. 

 Watts was born in July 1674 in Southampton.  At the time of his birth, his father, an educated deacon in a dissenting Congregational church, was briefly in prison for his non-conformist beliefs. As a boy, Watts showed outstanding ability with language (learning Greek, Hebrew, Latin and French).  He also had an unusual ability for easy rhyming in English.  At the age of five, he was scolded for giggling in family prayers. He had seen a mouse on the bell-rope, and instantly composed the line:  ‘There was a mouse, for want of stairs, ran up a rope to say his prayers!’ 

 Watts’ literary ability, combined with his interest in theology, made him very unhappy with the congregational singing of the day, which focused almost entirely on strict metrical versions of the psalms.  One Sunday after church, Isaac complained to his father about this.  His father challenged him to write something better.  Though only 18, Watts accepted the challenge, and produced his first hymn - O God, our Help in Ages Past – which was duly sung the following Sunday. It had nine verses—although today we usually only sing five of them.

 It was such a success that he wrote new hymn texts every Sunday for the next two years.  In all, he went on to write more than 600 hymns.  Some of them are still well-loved today: from this one, O God, Our Help in Ages Past’  which is a paraphrase of Psalm 90, to When I Survey the Wondrous Cross, and the Christmas carol Joy to the World.

 The hymn tune ‘St. Anne’ was composed by William Croft in 1708 whilst he was the organist of the church of St. Anne, Soho - hence the name of the tune.

 O God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal home!

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      When the Boys came Home

 by Canon David Winter

 By Autumn 1918 it was obvious that the war was coming to an end, Germany was clearly beaten, but no one had actually won. The front line was more or less as it had been for years, but after Amiens the Germans knew that this was a conflict they could never win.

 High level discussions took place, while in Britain the public mood was surprisingly optimistic. ‘There’s a silver lining’, the songs said. ‘Keep the home fires burning till the boys come home’. When an ‘Armistice’ was announced, there was euphoria. No more killing, the guns silenced. Peace at last!

 ‘Armistice' was a new word for most people – not a peace treaty or settlement (that would follow a conference in Paris the following January), but simply a laying down of arms, but for many that was enough for now. ‘No more killing’, they declared. Most of the boys did come home, but tens of thousands didn’t.

 We have tended to judge the first World War by the numbers involved – and they are appalling, but each casualty was also someone’s personal loss, as I learnt in my first parish.

It was a rural village near Oxford. Each month I took Communion to an elderly woman known to everyone as Kim. She was in her nineties and had been a teenager during the Great War. Her two brothers were serving on the Western Front. A few days before the Armistice the post office motor-cyclist delivered the telegram they had been dreading, one of the boys had been killed in action.  A week or so later, after the fighting had stopped, the same messenger returned, with the same message about her other brother.

 As she told me of it, 70 years after the event, her eyes filled with tears.  That was the true price of war, and when I share the silence on Remembrance Day it is her and those two young men I think of, not the million others from many nations who fell in that terrible conflict.

My father enlisted to join in ‘the war to end all wars’. It didn’t, of course. Twenty-one years later it all started again. War doesn’t end wars. True peace does.  

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             Siegfried Sassoon (1886 – 1967): War Poet  

 One of the leading poets of the First World War was Siegfried Sassoon. His intense, dramatic verses highlighted the futility of war and attacked those who in his view sought to prolong it.

 Sassoon was also known for his prose, particularly the semi-autobiographical Memoirs of a Foxhunting Man and its sequels, published in the 1920s and 30s.

 He was the product of a wealthy Kent family: his father was a notable Jewish merchant and his mother came from a family of artists and sculptors. He went to Marlborough School and Cambridge University but did not obtain a degree. He served with distinction in the First World War, earning the Military Cross in 1916 for bringing wounded soldiers to safety.

He was discharged after being injured but remained deeply affected by the horrors of war, writing the anti-war “Soldiers’ Declaration” and flinging his MC into the Mersey – at least, that is what everyone thought, until it turned up at his ex-wife’s former home on the Isle of Mull in 2007.

 Instead of being court-martialled, he was sent to Craiglockhart Military Hospital in Edinburgh for treatment. Here he met Wilfred Owen, several years younger than him, who was inspired to write Great War poetry himself. He was killed a week before the war ended after returning unnecessarily to the front – despite Sassoon trying to prevent him from doing so. In his later years Sassoon became a devout Roman Catholic, and his final poems reflected that.

 You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.” 

Seigfried Sassoon: The War Poems

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