Sermon at Holy Trinity Church, East
Grimstead, Wiltshire
– Sunday 13 November 2016
Remembrance Day Address
May I speak in the name
of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen
I have always had a great love of English
Cathedrals and so far have visited all but, I think, three of them – Bradford,
Derby and Leicester. Indeed it was always my secret wish to live in or near a
cathedral city – and here I am.
I
recently re-visited Coventry Cathedral, after an absence of many years,
following a request by my partner, as we journeyed up for a family visit in the
north of England. We both remarked that
we could each remember visiting Coventry with our respective parents, as
children in the sixties and that in each case our visits at such a young age
had made a lasting impression. We
therefore decided to spend a couple of hours in mindful contemplation visiting
Coventry and, especially, the ruins of the old cathedral.
On the night of 14th/15th
November 1940, the city of Coventry was hit by one of the heaviest raids by the
German Luftwaffe on any English city.
The beautiful medieval centre was so destroyed that a new German verb
was invented “To coventrate” or to totally obliterate by bombing. Ironically, most German towns and cities were
themselves “coventrated” before that great war ended.
Visiting on the morning of 10th
August 2016, the same scene depicted in so many books on the Coventry Blitz is
now an oasis of peace and reflection as well as a garden of remembrance within
the centre of the new busy city.
On the exposed wall close to the 295 –foot
spire, (the third tallest in the UK after our own Salisbury and Norwich) which
survived the bombing, can be found a plaque bearing the words, in the King
James Version, from Haggi 2:9. A more
modern version will be found in the NIV as
“The latter splendour
of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts; and in this place I
will give prosperity, says the Lord of
hosts.”
This is a
direct parallel of the rebuilding of Coventry Cathedral with the re-building of
the Temple at Jerusalem after the Babylonian Exile.
On that
terrible morning after the raid in 1940, the Provost of the Cathedral, The Revd.
Richard Howard, arranged for the charred timbers from the roof of the destroyed
cathedral to be made into a cross and placed on an altar at the east end of the
cathedral. The first symbol of Christian
love after the terrible destruction. He
also scrawled the words “Father Forgive”
on the wall just below though skeletal remains of the former fine east
window. Those words today form the basis
of the Litany of Reconciliation which is prayed in the new
Cathedral every weekday at noon (in the Ruins on Fridays), and is used
throughout the world by the Community of the Cross of Nails of which more a
little later.
On the south
side of the main nave of the former Cathedral will also be found a most
poignant tablet made from lead which, following the conflagration of the
cathedral, is badly scared. It is a very
simple memorial to those who died in The Great War of 1914-1918 as it is
described. It reads simply
1914-1918
“To the
Glorious Memory of the Officers and Men of the 7th Battalions, The
Royal Warwickshire Regiment, who fell in the Great War. This Tablet was erected by their Comrades.”
As I stood and
read that tablet, with all its scars and holes created by the massive
destruction created by the German incendiary bombs, I could not help but
reflect that those fallen soldiers had been commemorated by comrades for whom
the Great War had been sold to them as a “War
to end all Wars” – and here their memorial was now also a memorial and
reminder that despite all their hopes, a further and in some respects even
deadlier war had followed. It made me
realise that humankind, even today, is capable of such destructive powers even
after this devastation on the home front and that wars continue all over our
planet’s surface.
The new
cathedral is dovetailed into the ruins of the old, which remains consecrated
and continues to be a place of worship from time to time, and especially on
Fridays. The architect, Sir Basil
Spence, wished to incorporate the old as a constant and deliberate reminder
that new life and goodness can spring from old destruction.On the north side of the ruined cathedral’s nave will be found a sculpture called “Reconciliation”, originally created in 1977 by Josefina De Vasconcellos and entitled “Reunion” who said:
"The sculpture was originally conceived in the aftermath of the War. Europe was in shock, people were stunned. I read in a newspaper about a woman who crossed Europe on foot to find her husband, and I was so moved that I made the sculpture. Then I thought that it wasn't only about the reunion of two people but hopefully a reunion of nations which had been fighting."
In 1995 (to mark the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II) bronze casts of this sculpture (as Reconciliation) were placed in the ruins of Coventry Cathedral and in the Hiroshima Peace Park in Japan. An additional cast can be found on the grounds of Stormont Castle in Belfast. To mark the opening of the rebuilt German Reichstag (parliament building) in 1999, another cast was placed as part of the Berlin Wall memorial.
Resolved to
live out the Christian message of forgiveness and running counter to the
feelings of most people in Coventry at the time, the Cathedral Community took
steps in 1945 to follow the biblical imperative to love our enemies and become
friends with those with who we had been at war. Firm and lasting relationships
were symbolised by the building of the new cathedral which was completed in 1962.
The friendships and story continue to be an inspiration and an example to
hundreds of communities as they emerge from their own situations of
conflict.
Three
mediaeval nails, which were rescued from the rubble of the ruined cathedral,
were welded together as a “Cross of Nails”. As soon as the war was over similar
crosses were sent to the German cities of Dresden, Kiel and Berlin whose people
had also suffered and where major churches had been destroyed. By the 1970s a Cross was to be found in many
of the world’s major conflict areas and the Community of the Cross of nails was
established. Today CCM partners include
churches, voluntary and community groups, as well as peace and reconciliation
agencies. I have been proud to be a
member of one such – Glencree Centre for Reconciliation in Ireland. Together they share a common commitment to
Jesus’s command to love our enemies by addressing community division, the
personal and social and economic wounds of violent conflict and alienation that
arises from differences of religion, ethnicity and nationality. So far 130 such Crosses have been sent out
from Coventry.
Provost Howard
scrawled Father Forgive on the walls
of the destroyed Coventry Cathedral on the morning of 15th November
1940. Many in the city reviled him for
doing so. How could the citizens of the
city forgive such wholesale destruction and death wreaked on this medieval
English Midlands city. Some 568 people
are reported to have been killed that night with another 900 injured; 4,300
homes destroyed and two-thirds of the city’s buildings damaged.
In his Book of Forgiveness, Emeritus Archbishop
Desmond Tutu tells us that forgiveness is hard but that when we forgive we
release ourselves from much pain and bitterness which could destroy us – further
destruction beyond the original hurt.
Forgiveness,
though is not about forgetting. Recently
I attended the evening “Last Post” at the Menin Gate in Ypres. Even today, 100
years later it remains a moving and very important ceremony. We must always remember. It is important not to forget – we must
constantly be reminded of the terrible things which humans can do to each
other. As Christians it is our duty, as
Christ’s disciples, to remember his teaching about loving ones enemies. It is a difficult thing to do but something
which from this simple action has resulted in the Cross of Nails Community
extending the hand of love and reconciliation.
The ruins of
the old Coventry Cathedral stand as a symbol of both Remembrance and
Reconcilation. I mentioned earlier that Provost Howard’s words inspired the
Litany of Reconciliation and so as we remember those who gave their lives in
not only the two World Wars but in conflicts elsewhere across the globe so that
people might be free from tyranny, let us say together the words of that
Litany. At the end of each phrase which
I speak you say those two words of Provost Howard - “Father Forgive”:
All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of
God.
The hatred which divides nation from nation, race
from race, class from class,
Father, forgive.
Father, forgive.
The covetous desires of people and nations to
possess what is not their own,
Father, forgive.
Father, forgive.
The greed which exploits the work of human hands
and lays waste the earth,
Father, forgive.
Father, forgive.
Father, forgive.
Our indifference to the plight of the imprisoned,
the homeless, the refugee,
Father, forgive.
Father, forgive.
The lust which dishonours the bodies of men, women
and children,
Father, forgive.
Father, forgive.
The pride which leads us to trust in ourselves and
not in God,
Father, forgive.
Father, forgive.
Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving
one another, as God in Christ forgave you.
MFB/86/12.11.2016
