Remembering on Remembrance Day

Remembering on Remembrance Day is becoming contentious. In Britain, the role of the Church of England in officiating at London’s Cenotaph is being challenged by the National Secular Society. They point out that the cenotaph is an entirely secular monument and the CofE no longer has a role or a right.

In Australia Remembrance Day is overshadowed somewhat by ANZAC Day. For some, any of this commemoration has an ambivalence. Remembrance Day is essentially an English event and Australia’s participation, although steeped in a tradition of observance, is really only as a reflection of how we once thought of ourselves as English. Well, some of us. ANZAC Day is much more directly pertinent but its memory is conflicted by the nature of the event it remembers and the way the day is be coming a secular religious festival and visiting Gallipoli a ‘rite of passage’.

Remembrance Day in the Church has difficulties. Not least of these is the way in which the Eucharist can be co-opted for a military parade but also for the way in which the Gospel is co-opted to reaffirm patriotic sensibility or worse, to glorify war. The readings suggested are usually from the Gospel of John and select those parts which refer to the sacrificial laying down of life for others. The Australian Prayer Book does not offer lections but defenceanglicans.org.au suggests John 10.1-21 - Jesus’ allegory of the good shepherd with all its beautifully colourful pastoral imagery - the good shepherd, the sheep protected in the sheepfold from the wolves.

What this selection misses is that Jn 10.1-21 is a commentary on the preceding Ch 9 which contains the parable of the man born blind and the subsequent persecution of Jesus by the Pharisees. Jn 10.1-21 is an allegorical attack on the Pharisees and a commentary on the responsibility for leadership and stewardship.

On Remembrance Day, it speaks to me not of the need for a strong defence force (the sheepfold) or for strong military leaders (good shepherds) to protect us against the enemies of the nation (wolves, thieves, bandits and hired hands). Rather, is says to me we need in our national leaders - one species of contemporary good shepherds - integrity that we may trust them to lead the people - the sheep - into good pasture. That means not into danger, not into war.

Jesus demands of us all, transformation of our lives and the societies in which we live. Reading the good shepherd on Remembrance Day highlights to me that we, through our leaders, have not responded to our experience of war and transformed our national society or our international society in response to the horror, the waste ad the destruction. Rather, we tend to glorify the horror and the death of the people. We are at risk of becoming dependent on war (or conflict, such as the refugee ‘emergency’) as a means of defining our national identity.