Page 19 - Luce 2021

P oint of View

mainly white, entirely masculine, and often as far from progression from destruction – from violence – into stillness.
reality as it is remote from our own experience...
He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth.
And at the break of dawn on ANZAC Day I remember the He breaks the bow and shatters the spear;
fallen, including some of my friends, as they were – brave, He burns the shields with fire.
violent, frightened, flawed. He says, ‘Be still, and know that I am God’.****
We will remember them. But remember them how? There is surely a place for less noise, more stillness, on Anzac
Day. A place for silence – beyond the God of the British
In August 1914 through to November 1918, in all the pulpits Empire, or Australian patriotism.
of the British, or German, or Russian, or Austro-Hungarian
Empires, God was English, Australian, Russian, Austrian, This Anzac Day I hope and pray, rather, for the God who is
German – God was the God of our brave cause, of our moral love; who will fill the broken spaces, fill the silences. With the
righteousness, as we went into the trenches. We were told, in love that overcomes, and heals, and knits together all that is
all our nations, that God – our God, the God of Jacob – is on taken away in the violence of war. A God who lovingly strips
our side. We were told that that Jesus, the ‘Good Shepherd’, is us bare of our fear, and cant, and gently wraps us all, and
the ultimate, eternal embodiment of service and sacrifice. holds us, in the cloak of true forgiveness.
From that first Anzac Day commemoration, we Australians *For the Fallen by Laurence Binyon
were told that we had received ‘that first baptism of blood’ in
deeds ‘that will be remembered evermore’ and ‘in future ages **Extract from school song for Melbourne High School.
the sons of the Empire will seek to emulate the imperishable Words: A.G. Daws; Music: Charles Breen
renown of their daring bravery.’
*** J.A. Allen, Sex and Secrets: Crimes Involving Australian
I feel sometimes that this God is returning. I fear where Women Since 1880 (1990), p. 131.
this God will lead us. As the Psalmist in today’s reading
imagined this future and redeemed world, he also imagined a **** From Psalm 46 v9–10

Image of street life in Urgun Province taken by Lt Col Christopher Johnston in Afghanistan.
For most, Australian engagement in this long war remains out of sight and out of mind.

J anet Clarke Hall 19