Sermon preached at the Anzac Day Service 2024

We meet on 25^th April, and of course we do that for a reason. A little over a hundred years ago, just before dawn on 25^th April, troops from Australia, New Zealand and Britain landed at Gallipoli. One New Zealander who was there, wrote

It looked like a huge boating picnic, in ideal picnic weather, ships boats and all sorts of vessels going to and fro… those coming out waving hats and cheering

There is some understatement there, to put it mildly. It is not an accurate memory. The boats coming back were full of wounded soldiers. From the first, this was a bitter battle with astonishing bravery on both sides of the conflict. Bravery and bloodshed, that’s part of the story we tell today - and we must notice that remembering accurately is difficult.

Remembering matters, but it is not easy. Let me tell you, briefly, about my grandfather, Harry Whitehead Ashworth. He fought in the First World War. When I was growing up my mother had the bible he carried in his battledress at Passchendaele. It had a bullet hole right through it. The story we told was that a bullet had hit him in the chest, but whilst the bible took the impact, it was the cigarette case behind it that had saved his life. Grandad, we said, had been rescued, not by virtue, but by vice. Only very recently did I find out we had it wrong. A cousin wrote to me and enclosed a slip of paper that his side of the family had kept safe. It was a short, hand-written message, in blue pencil. Harry, who was captured at Passchendaele, told the family he was safe and explained that he had, in fact, been shot twice, bullets had hit two different pockets. One was stopped by the cigarette case, the other by the bible. We had misremembered and not done him justice. Grandad himself would never speak of the war and, as he grew old, he became an isolated figure. We did not know him as we should; he did not feel known, I suspect.

We have to work at remembrance and we should do that. Today, of course, the remembrance is rich and complex. ANZAC is not just about 25^th April. Events at Gallipoli are only part of that story. This is a day when we remember those who died then, but also those who died in so many conflicts since. The Australian historian of ANZAC, Patsy Adam Smith, a woman committed to remembrance, wrote how the business of memory of conflict shaped a people and shaped a culture,

The fingerpost of our youth was that lexicon of names, that rosary that began with Gallipoli, Sari Bair, Lone Pine… and went on with Fromelles, Amiens… Passchendaele…

Her rosary, that list of names is now longer still. What High Commissioners and so many others, did this morning, at memorial and cenotaph, was to remember, not just bravery and bloodshed, and not just the long litany of battle honours, but also the way young nations took their place on the world stage in 1915. They remembered how men and women came to understand loyalty as something more than family, friends, village or town. Patsy Adam Smith remembered the map on the schoolroom wall – the dominions of the British Empire painted over in red. She remembered her sense of belonging in that community of nations. So, she called the Gallipoli Peninsula as ‘the forging place of a nation’.

It was Australia’s Shrine, her Westminster, the cradle of her traditions and the tomb of her princes

That’s quite a claim, it is what makes this day so special. Coming here, coming to the Abbey, you enter a house of memory, you stand in a long story, around you are memorials some of which you recognise and some of which you don’t, but you come here to say that you are part of this story too – and so am I. That is what happened for the ANZACS. After Gallipoli the story they told was the long story, not the one about their home and their parents, but about the wide world and its joys and its terrors. Here in Westminster, amongst all this tradition, surrounded by the tombs of princes and long history, we try to remember and try to imagine the loyalties that can take us into war or summon us towards peace. We know remembering is difficult, but we know remembering reminds us who we are and who we should be.

To help us today, we have the Book of Revelation, chapter 21

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth… And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven

It is wonderful stuff – I saw a new heaven and a new earth – what a vision that is. But honestly, Revelation is a complicated book. It is a glimpse of the future painted in primary colours, it has nightmare scenes and you can feel as though the writer barely has the words he needs. It can be so hard to remember, it can be so hard to describe what we hope for.

There are perhaps two big ideas that the Book of Revelation wants to offer us. We should be known not forgotten. We belong together not apart.

We should be known not forgotten. We belong together not apart.

The Book of Revelation is a glimpse of the future. It is an attempt find words for hope – I saw a new heaven and a new earth. And the really interesting thing about this new heaven and new earth is that it looks familiar. It is already known – I saw the holy city, I saw Jerusalem. You get to the future, and you find, to your surprise that you know it. You find that you belong.

That is why all this remembrance matters - why it matters that I tell the truth about Harry Ashworth - why we tell the truth about Gallipoli, or Gaza, or Ukraine. We do it because we build our future out of our past. We find our place. All of us find our place. We do it because we hope to be known, not forgotten. Under God nothing is lost, nothing wasted, all is gathered in and we come to a place that we know and where are known. All of us known not forgotten.

Then we must accept that we belong together not apart. The place we come to is Jerusalem - a city, a place where we live together. Honestly, I struggle a bit with that idea sometimes. I am an only child, when I get to heaven, I want a room to myself, a study and some books, and an ensuite. But that is not the vision, just as it was not the vision in Australia and New Zealand in 1915. Our future and our hope lies with others. Our future lies in others. We are saved together or not all. ANZACS knew that and so did Mustafa Kemal Ataturk who found the words for the memorial at Ari Burnu. We belong together not apart.

Our salvation, our redemption in a world riven with violence, in a discourse riddled with hate and in the midst by sundered relationships is to remember and to hope. We believe we should be known not forgotten; we believe we belong together not apart. We learned it, all of us, at Gallipoli, we keep being reminded. And we look to that city where we will know and be known, that new haven and new earth where God will dwell with us and we will be his peoples.