Wreaths of Empire

 

Lectionary readings: Hebrews 9.24-28 and Mark 1.14-20

Jesus and his first followers lived under the occupation of the Roman Empire. Indeed, Galilee had been successively occupied, over a period of seven hundred years, by the Assyrian, the Babylonian, the (Persian) Achaemenid, the Ptolemaic, Greek-Seleucid, and Roman Empires.

Around the time of Jesus, the Roman Empire invaded Britain, defeating the indigenous tribes with whom they had previously traded, and whom they had unsuccessfully invaded, twice, a hundred years earlier.

The Romans ruled over us for four hundred years, bringing Christianity with them. Then they were summoned home to defend Rome, though many simply refused to go.

In their wake we had two centuries of Germanic migration – pagan Saxons, Angles, Jutes, and Frisians;

followed by two centuries of consolidation into around a dozen Anglo-Saxon kingdoms competing for dominance (Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex among them) and efforts to convert them to Christianity by both their neo-Celtic British neighbours – the fabled Northern Saints – and by missionaries from Rome;

followed by two centuries of Danish migration.

Then, in the eleventh century, the Norman invasion, the most comprehensive dispossession and replacement of the ruling class.

For the next three hundred years, the boundaries between English and French were blurred and bloody, while England also laid claim to Wales, Scotland and Ireland.

The fourteenth century saw the Black Plague wipe out half the population of England.

The fifteenth century saw the War of the Roses.

The sixteenth century saw Tudor England, and a violently contested break from the Church of Rome, pulling the country back and forth, Catholic and Protestant factions fighting for dominance.

The seventeenth century saw Union with Scotland; Civil War and the state execution of a king; a restoration of the monarchy; and the Glorious Revolution, the deposition of a Catholic king.

The eighteenth century saw the upheaval of the Industrial Revolution;

the nineteenth century saw the Napoleonic Wars and expansion of the British Empire;

the twentieth century saw the First World War – as German expansion in Europe threatened Britain’s global Empire – and a Second World War, followed by rapid decolonization, and new – ongoing – waves of migration from nations we had claimed our own.

What does it mean to be British? What does it mean to be British and Christian? What do these things mean, at any given point in time?

Jesus and his first followers lived under the occupation of the Roman Empire. The emperor in Rome justified his claim to their land, and to their lives, by declaring himself to be the bringer of Good News, the herald of universal peace, the Pax Romana.

And Jesus arrives on the scene proclaiming a different kingdom, the kingdom of God, a divine rule that is not concerned with claims over nations or nationalities but is demonstrated in addressing the needs of those who experience crushing poverty, in healing the sick, feeding the hungry, standing with those marginalized by their communities.

I have a confession. I find Remembrance Sunday the most uncomfortable day of the year, because it is a day on which we are reminded of how utterly addicted we are to violence in defence of a moment in history we cannot hold on to. We have done this every year for the past hundred years, and still we are surrounded by war, and still we see the rise of neo-fascism around the world as strong men declare themselves to be anointed by God to defend Christian values, with bloodshed if necessary.

And I have absolutely no skin in this game. I am not looking for the downfall of this nation, I just know – history shows us – that it will continue to change, as will all the other nations. But as I get on with my life, as best I can, in the moment in history that has been allotted to me, Jesus comes to me and says, Follow me.

Follow me, and together we shall scoop others up into this utterly different kingdom, with this utterly different king, whom Empire put to death but whom God raised again to life.

An early follower of Jesus wrote to Christians scattered by the ebb and flow of Empire, saying the signs and symbols we see now are at best pale imitations of reality. Today we wear poppies, a flower that grew in fields that had been soaked with the blood of a generation. A symbol of life returning again, even after utter and comprehensive destruction. A symbol of the unimaginable goodness of God towards us. But the poppy can become an opiate, numbing us to good as well as pain. So, I shall wear my poppy, but I shall look to Jesus, and choose to follow him, to hold out good news to those on the underside of our society, including those maimed physically and scarred emotionally by war.

 

Letting go

 

Ecclesiastes (Qohelet, in Hebrew) is one of my favourite books of the Bible, a beautiful and at times disturbing work, hard to translate in places. It opens by setting the scene, beginning with the great cry often rendered ‘vanity,’ or ‘all is in vain,’ but perhaps better rendered ‘ephemeral and fleeting as breath.’ From the moment of birth until the moment of death, every breath is but momentary; insubstantial; cannot be seen, except when the air is cold; cannot be held in the hand. Having breathed in, you cannot breathe in again without first breathing out: every breath must be surrendered. And yet, every breath is a gift, upon which everything else we do depends.

The scene setting continues, with observational insight into the world God has given us to experience and enjoy. The dependability of day following night, the sun rising and setting and rising again. The security of knowing that the sun will rise again tomorrow. The water cycle: clouds dropping rain on the land, water, flowing in streams to the sea, from where it evaporates to form new clouds, and begin again.

The earth is so full of things to experience, in time we are wearied, overwhelmed: it is too much for us to hold on to, however hard we may try.

And, in the end, we are told, there will be no remembrance. This was deeply disturbing to an ancient people for whom not forgetting was so important; and it is disturbing for us today, who fear the erasure of memory to dementia more viscerally than cancer. And yet, to let go of memory, like letting go of breath, is both necessary and a gift.

There are different forms of memory. There is semantic memory: facts and figures, which have no personal impact. The Battle of Hastings took place in 1066. You have already, long ago, let go of almost every semantic memory, the many things you were taught at school. There is simply so much that can be known that, were we not able to let go, we would be utterly overwhelmed.

Then there is procedural memory: skills you have learnt, such as being able to play the piano, or drive a car. Some of these will remain with you forever. Others, again, we let go, as they are no longer required, or must be replaced with new procedures.

And then there is episodic memory: our memories of things we have experienced. Episodic memory is not factual recall. Episodic memory creates stories, in search of wholeness, and the stories we tell ourselves we edit and re-write repeatedly, in search of that wholeness. Hence siblings will remember the same event very differently, one recalling and another responding, ‘That never happened!’ The goal of episodic memory is wholeness, and this requires that we let go of certain things, whole narratives of the story we have told ourselves. This is the reason why we need forgiveness, to forgive others and to forgive ourselves. The ultimate goal of episodic memory is to let go, and surrender ourselves; trusting (as we do every time we breathe out) that we are known and held and loved by God, from before our birth and beyond our death, through every change, in the eternal moment.

Ecclesiastes 1:2-11

Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher,
vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
What do people gain from all the toil
at which they toil under the sun?
A generation goes, and a generation comes,
but the earth remains for ever.
The sun rises and the sun goes down,
and hurries to the place where it rises.
The wind blows to the south,
and goes round to the north;
round and round goes the wind,
and on its circuits the wind returns.
All streams run to the sea,
but the sea is not full;
to the place where the streams flow,
there they continue to flow.
All things are wearisome;
more than one can express;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
or the ear filled with hearing.
What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done;
there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there a thing of which it is said,
‘See, this is new’?
It has already been,
in the ages before us.
The people of long ago are not remembered,
nor will there be any remembrance
of people yet to come
by those who come after them.

 

Growing old

 

As a teacher of an ancient and, to many, a sacred library, I am very aware of the relationship between us and those texts we privilege. And—dare I say it—I find myself troubled by a text you will come across repeatedly around the Eleventh of November:

“They shall grow not old,

as we that are left grow old;

age shall not weary them,

nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun

and in the morning,

we will remember them.”

This is a text that starts out as a lament over the utterly tragic loss of a generation of young men, and rightly so. Even so, it flirts with the age-old glorification of youth, and is readily co-opted by our obsessive revulsion with aging. Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. The lament over needless dying young becomes a lament over necessary growing old.

The youngest Titan, Cronos, castrated his father Uranus (the Sky; this is why the sky bleeds red every at every dusk). In early tellings of the story, he did so with his teeth; later, the tale was gentrified, providing him with a scythe—which is why Old Father Time (Cronos = chronological time) carries a scythe. Later, Cronos devoured his own children in order to prevent them from doing the same to him, though he was deceived into swallowing a rock rather than his sixth child Zeus, who grew up to rescue his siblings from their father’s stomach. So you can see that we have had a fear of aging and a love of youth for a long time.

I am not yet old, but I am a middle-aged man, and a man who as a younger man had a vasectomy (I do not fear the scythe). And I do not see aging as a curse, but a blessing, a privilege denied to many. It is also true that middle-age comes with a great deal of sadness and not a little confusion, and can be tiring—I sometimes feel weary, but not condemned—along with moments of breath-taking grace and beauty. But I am not convinced that our—rightful—remembering those whose lives were cut short should be conflated with the awesome burden of growing old.

 

Blessed are the peacemakers

 

It is said that at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, 1918, the sound of shelling fell silent at the End of the War to End All Wars. I think we can safely say by now that recalling that moment is not, in itself, adequate. We must commit ourselves to the ongoing—every hour of every day of every month—work of re-membering our common but divided humanity. Our future—our children’s and grandchildren’s future—depends on it. Our world—their world—depends on it.

I spent yesterday with friends from the Nordkirche, the Church of the North, Germany. Every two years, we meet together, from Durham Diocese and the Nordkirche. In 2017, I was part of the Durham delegation at the consultation in Hamburg; in 2019, I venue-hosted the consultation at Sunderland Minster; and in 2021, we met online. It is always humbling, because the German participants conduct the entire proceedings in English. Not because “we won the War!” but as sheer grace, a gift, freely given, born of love.

Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons and daughters of God.” (Matthew 5:9)

How will you actively strengthen peace, today?

 

Corpus Christi

Today is Corpus Christi, the day the Church gives thanks for the institution of Holy Communion. That institution took place on the day we call Maundy Thursday, on the night of Jesus’ arrest, illegal trial by night, hours before his murder. We mark that too, but as a sombre occasion. This day, Corpus Christi, is a celebration of the gift, of the benefits of this tangible expression of an intangible reality, Jesus with us, nourishing is with his presence.

As a faith tradition, we remember by enacting. Our memory, our belonging, our identity is embodied. Our being drawn into the body of Christ is embodied. As a faith community, the local congregation of which I am a part enacts Holy Communion every Thursday and Sunday. But this year, we have been unable to enact Holy Communion, on Maundy Thursday or Corpus Christi, or any of the days since we went into lockdown. So, what does that do to our remembering? What impact does it have on our memory, our belonging, our identity?

For most of my life, I have been a writer. From perhaps the age of four, I wrote, first with a pencil and then with a pen, until the age of eighteen. A pencil and a pen are not the same, exactly, for it is easier to erase what you write with a pencil; but they both involve the physical shaping of characters with a tool.

From the age of eighteen, my writing experienced a shift to a keyboard. The muscle-memory of writing started to be over-written. As it happens, I have dyspraxia, a spatial and memory impairment, and one that has impacted me more as I have grown older. I have never been able to keep hold of the layout of a keyboard. I go looking for every letter every time.

More recently, my writing has experienced another shift. Now, most of my writing is done on a virtual keyboard. Now I write with my two thumbs, rather than the index and middle fingers of my right hand. Now, the gap between locating the letters is shorter, though I still have to locate them.

I am a writer, and yet I have forgotten the art of using a pen. That is to say, I can still make marks on a page—indeed, I do so as a deliberate, intentional discipline, keeping a paper journal of my days—but they are scrawls. As a lover of words, and a lover of letters, as a lover of crafting these things and of the physicality of paper over a screen, these inky scratchings rarely give me pleasure.

When we gather together in a church building and share in a common liturgy that draws us once again to Jesus, standing around the Lord’s table or kneeling before it side by side at the rail; when I take bread in my hand and press it down onto the outstretched hand of another member of the body of Christ; this is a precious thing.

But it is far from what Jesus did. As fundamentally connected, and as fundamentally removed, as writing this on my smartphone is from writing it with a pen. We have lost the embodiment of a meal eaten together, watered it down to elements of wafer and wine, followed by a chocolate-coated biscuit and a cup of tea.

At this moment in time, we cannot meet together to participate in Holy Communion as we have been familiar. But we still need to eat and drink. And in so doing, we may remember or forget Jesus.

It isn’t the same, and I’m not dismissing the practices of my church tradition that have evolved over time. But here is an opportunity to pick up something that has been lost long before novel coronavirus, rather than wring our hands at something that has been suspended because of it.

So, eat and drink boldly, with thanksgiving. A broken blessing, and a blessed breaking.

Seed

At Morning Prayer at present, we’ve been reading through the story of Joseph, he of technicolour dream coat fame, who interpreted Pharaoh’s nightmares as predicting seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine. Joseph found himself prime minister of Egypt, storing seven years’ surplus, to sell over the following seven years of austerity. In this way, he saved his own family from starvation, bringing them from their home Canaan — for the famine was across the entire region — to settle in Egypt.

Today, we reached chapter 47. Deep into the famine years comes a point where the Egyptians run out of money to buy back grain; so, Joseph sells it to them in exchange for their livestock. A year later, and with the end of famine not yet in sight, they have nothing to give in exchange for grain except their land and their very selves, as slaves.

And so, in this way, all the livestock, the land, and the population of Egypt come into Pharaoh’s possession. The entire population are now slaves; with the exception of the priests of the gods of Egypt, of whom Joseph’s own father-in-law was pre-eminent.

Turn over a few pages, and past living memory, from Genesis into Exodus, and the scene is set for the particular persecution of the Israelites — a subset of slaves within the slave population; the Pharaoh turning one group of his slaves against another — and the stand-off between Yahweh, god of the Israelites, and the pantheon of Egyptian gods, fought over ten epic plague battles.

In other words, Joseph’s actions, which in the short- and medium-term saved both his birth- and adopted-nations, sowed the seeds for the misery of both.

An awareness of history (by which I mean the subjective stories we tell of the past, with all their interpretation and counter-interpretation) enables us to see that our actions always have impact, seen and unseen, intended and unintended, for good and evil — impact that will fall on others long after we are gone.

This should not paralyse us into inaction, but should cause us to act with greater humility.

From time to time

Ecclesiastes 3 tells us that there is a time for war, and a time for peace.

Isaiah 2 speaks of beating swords into ploughshares and spears into pruning-hooks.

Joel 3 gives a call to beat ploughshares into swords and pruning-hooks into spears.

Micah 4 echoes Isaiah’s vision of beating swords into ploughshares and spears into pruning-hooks.

There is something in this that is concerned with transitions, from peace-time to war, and from war service to civilian life.

Today I think of my grandfather who was involved in the liberation of Belsen and suffered what today we would call PTSD. And, also, the reality that today’s veterans are disproportionally represented in our prisons and living on our streets.

To be peace-makers must surely involve commitment to those who have served in war, who have been trained/shaped for that time and need to be retrained/shaped for life after war, who need peace and healing.

The fortunate ones

“And I thought the dead, who have already died, more fortunate than the living, who are still alive; but better than both is the one who has not yet been, and has not seen the evil deeds that are done under the sun.”

Ecclesiastes 4:2, 3

There is a wonderful book in the Old Testament called Ecclesiastes (the Preacher). One of the Preacher’s key insights is that life is made up of moments, events, or seasons that are fleeting, like breath or smoke (often translated, with a negative spin, as ‘vanity’ or ‘meaningless’ in English Bibles) and that, whatever our goals in life, trying to hold them tightly is as ineffective as attempting to grasp hold of the wind. Winter gives way to spring, spring to summer, summer to autumn, and autumn to winter again, each season in turn needing to be refreshed. Every season is beautiful in its time, but becomes wearisome and in need of rest if extended too long. Moreover, grace can be found in the seasons we might fear or try (but inevitably fail) to avoid, as well as in the seasons we might welcome or seek. Grace may be found, even in times of war, and in the time of our dying.

In one of his sermons, the Preacher suggests that the dead are more fortunate than the living, and that those who have not been born are most fortunate of all. These are not dark thoughts, nor a glorification of dying. But they challenge us to reconsider our stance in relation to our predecessors and our descendants.

On this day of Remembrance, how might the Preacher’s insight help shape how we remember those who died in war, and how we re-commit ourselves to those who will experience war and peace after we are gone?

Further thoughts on All Saints & All Souls

All Christians have hope in the promise of the resurrection of those who have died in—or known by—Christ. But we hold a range of views concerning the time-line of eternity, so-to-speak. As I understand it, the Roman Church remembers those who have reached the joy of heaven on All Saints; and those who are in the intermediary state of purgatory, or purification, on All Souls. Anglicans don’t subscribe to the doctrine of purgatory, but are open to an intermediary state (indeed, heaven itself is temporary, awaiting the new heaven and new earth).

Nonetheless, the idea of purgatory is a helpful analogy for the process and purpose of remembering.

The human being is a storied creature. The act of remembering is not so much about living in the past as about curating the stories which have shaped us in regularly-refreshed arrangements to inform the continually changing present. Just as the best museums and art galleries do.

All Souls creates room to remember those we have known personally, and lost. These memories are in a state of purification: alongside thankfulness, we also experience numbness, sorrow, regret, anger, a need to extend forgiveness either/or both/and to the deceased and to ourselves—a whole range of memories with emotional attachments that need to be worked through, over an indeterminate but lengthy period of time.

All Saints creates room to remember those who have passed beyond that initial stage, for whom we are able to lay to rest the hurt and pain human lives inevitably cause, and gladly give thanks for the good that endures. This is not to pretend that our ancestors were saints in the popular sense of ‘did no wrong’ but rather to receive the gift of forgiveness of sins and the redeeming work of God to bring good even out of evil.

Of course, how we curate those stories can still help us address the ongoing challenges of our own time.

So, for example, there is much in the history of Europe (a history that has shaped me), inseparable from Church history, that is lamentable; but there comes a time to focus on the good, the amazing riches of that cultural inheritance.

That we observe All Saints first, and only then All Souls, reminds us of the end goal of memory: the ongoing passing from death into life.

All Saints & All Souls

We are about to enter a Season of Remembrance. Today is All Saints’ Day, when we remember all those who have gone before us, and whose deposit of faith we have inherited. In our locality, the congregation stretches back to 930AD, so that is a lot of saints, or saints-who-were-also-sinners. Tomorrow is All Souls’ Day, when we remember those who we ourselves have known and loved, who have passed through death to life ahead of us. Soon after, we come to Armistice Day, when we remember the cessation of hostility of the First World War; and Remembrance Sunday, when we remember those who have died in conflict in that and all subsequent wars.

The First World War changed the way we think about death and the dead. For many families, there was no possibility of a funeral, or a grave. Mass monuments for the whole parish in a sense took us back to the mass ‘parish grave’—for a long time, people, other than the very rich, were buried together, with marker stones indicating that they were buried ‘nearby’ rather than actually marking their grave. The Service of Remembrance in a sense took the place of a funeral service. And often, both the monument and the act of remembering took place in the market square, rather than the church building.

The Service of Remembrance has become a ‘holy cow’ that cannot be questioned. But I wonder, at what point do we need to let ghosts lie, and allow people to pass from this form of Remembrance to the remembrance of All Souls’ Day and then All Saints’ Day?

I wonder, for example, whether after next year, after 100 years has passed, we need to stop marking Armistice Day, the end of WWI; and allow Remembrance Sunday to mark those wars that have been fought since that War? And if 100 years is not enough—we don't mark any wars that pre-date WWI in this way—then when might be? 150? 200? Never?

It is not that remembrance is not important; but that it comes in more than one form.

I still remember my grandfathers, who fought in the Second World War (so, an All Souls’ connection) but know no-one who fought in the First World War (they have become to me an All Saints’ connection).

Remembrance involves a letting go—not a perpetual holding on—an entrusting to God, and a move from grief at loss to thankfulness for all that was good. It is a process, as much for communities as for individuals.

Perhaps we need to remember what remembrance is truly for?