A QUESTION OF FAITH
With Rev Anthony Thacker Minister at Burbage Congregational Church “LEST we forget”. During half-term, I stopped for a moment in Tunbridge Wells as these words with giant poppies were being fixed to the council building behind the War memorial. Everywhere this year, we will be encouraged to remember.
“Lest we forget”. What is it we must not forget? First, as every November, to remember those who lived and served – or died – through the 1914-18 war. We remember their courage, discipline, sacrifice and the rest. We have family connections too. My grandfather, trying to sign up when underage (and dragged home by his mother!), serving in the trenches, invalided out for a while, then back. They knew, but almost never spoke of the true realities there. We will remember them.
But this year especially, the end of the war, 11 am, 11/11/1918, and afterwards – the time when people wanted to put the horrors of the first truly global war, the horrors of the mechanisation of mass slaughter, behind them – we will remember the overwhelming desire to make this ‘the war to end all wars’. And we will remember this desire was not fulfilled. We will remember the sacrifices of soldiers and civilians – was it 50 million of them? – who died in World War II.
“Lest we forget”. What must we remember? That an age which had long believed Europe had grown too civilised to engage in warfare now was sadly disabused of the illusion that we were well on the way to moral perfection. We must remember our human race has not outgrown its flaws. Remember!
And yet. I am reminded of those evocative words of 19th century poet Walt Whitman in his poem ‘Reconciliation’: “Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be utterly lost.” Whitman sees the other side, the time when we do forget: we forget the enmity, the hatred, the violent vendetta, the blind rage between peoples, ‘that war, and all its deeds of carnage’ engenders. A time when we can begin to forget the hatreds and learn to be reconciled and treat the ‘enemy’ as a fellow human being.
The ‘lessons of history’ are not simple, because history keeps going, and contexts change – which is why we forget the ‘lessons of history’ and must relearn them. But as Jesus said, sometimes we “cannot interpret the signs of the times”, because we don’t want to. His critics rejected the ‘good news’ as ‘fake news’.
Remember our folly, our flawed belief we can tame war! But forget our enmity, forget demonising the other, and learn to forgive! It was a lesson better learned after 1945 than after 1918, the Marshall Plan building reconciliation, where Versailles had stoked resentment. Reconciliation, forgiveness, hope: these are not optional extras, but essential for human survival.