I remember the sad occasion earlier this year helping my sister clear out the home where we grew up after my dad died on Shrove Tuesday.  For anyone who has ever had to clear up the home of a loved one you will know how it pulls on the heart strings as all the memories of times past come flooding back and the emotions are raised.  When it came to looking through his selection of DVDs the vast majority of the movies were on one subject - War films.  Dad, until he was into his eighties hardly ever talked about his time in the Royal Navy during the Second World War but he obviously thought a great deal about it and relived those wartime days by watching many films devoted to the 1939-45 war.

One of the most memorable war films that I can bring to mind is "Saving Private Ryan".

Writing as one who loves the films I can reluctantly recommend it.  I recommend it mainly because of its opening scenes.  What you are shown for the first 20 minutes of the film is a graphic account of war.  So graphic it strips away all the sanitising glorifying disguises we sometimes put on war.

For twenty unrelenting minutes you are shown, with close camera work, ordinary men in the first landing crafts to arrive on the Normandy beaches on D Day.  You see their faces and into their eyes as they steel themselves for what's ahead, obviously psyching themselves up as best they can to contain their fear.  Then the craft hit the beaches, the front ramps are lowered and you watch with disbelief as you see them being cut down by the waves of machine gun fire that ravage them, even before they get off the landing craft.  Some make it further but only because someone in front has shielded them from the bullets; but then many of them die or are horribly injured as they scuttle up the beach that is by now littered with bodies.  It is only through sheer numbers that this armada successfully lands and these brave men eventually gain the first toe-hold in occupied Europe.

The power of the film is not just that it horrifies you but that through the way in which it depicts the flesh and blood reality of warfare it draws you in and involves you emotionally.  It is shocking, horrific, leaves no room for denying or not seeing the horror of war.  As I witnessed this carnage I found myself thinking simply "thank God that wasn't me.  Or anyone I know."

In short, the film successfully makes the experience of those men then present to you NOW in a way you cannot but be shocked by - to the very core of your being.  Those scenes of the film are, in short, a vivid act of remembrance.  As such, films like this should surely be compulsory viewing in Downing Street, the White House - in caves in Afghanistan - or wherever else war is plotted.

Remembrance is a kind of intercession. It is about standing before God with a deep gut awareness of the suffering of others and there is an added responsibility on us for whose benefit these people suffered.  And remembrance is about much more than just remembering, which can be too cerebral, too historical, too much about looking back.  It is much more about feeling, about being affected in your guts by the lot that has been dealt to others - and holding them before God, who, we believe also feels a gut-wrenching pain at human suffering.  The trouble is, perhaps, that not enough of us do feel this gut level effect for the world to be different.

The real presence of God; and the real presence of human suffering: that's what we are here to do, to bring these together. Our communion meal is a remembrance meal - not just an historical re-enactment - and it is meant to make Christ and the experience of Christ really present to us.  Our intercessions are also a remembrance of people before God, and before the community.

Why does this matter?  Because, speaking personally there is only one thing worse than the fact that people are caught up in the horror of war or in tides of violence greater than themselves.  And that worse thing would be that such death, such experience, should be forgotten.  How insulting to them if we were to be oblivious to these terrible experiences - especially if it has been for our benefit in the first place!  How terrible to have this happen to you, and to be forgotten.  Down that road lies more horror, more war.  More Auschwitzes, more Gallipolis or Guernicas, more Normandy beaches, more Iraqs or Afganistans.  We should remember.  And repent in sackcloth and ashes that war is ever necessary.

The 18th century philosopher and theologian George Berkeley spoke of us all being held in existence moment by the moment by the very fact that - in the heart of God, we are named, known individually and held in remembrance.  In the same way that God intends that there should be light - and there is light - so God intends that you should be - and you are.  If for any moment God should forget, we would slip into non-being.

As the Bible assures us God "sustains in being all that is" - at every moment.  Our offering here is to work with God, holding in remembrance all those whose lives have been annihilated in wars past and present - to reclaim them from annihilation, to hold a different reality, a different kingdom, where we are all remembered by God and neighbour, we are not forgotten or lost, no matter what befalls us in this life.  Not one sparrow falls to the ground without God knowing - and the hairs on our heads are counted.

So we ought to have proper remembrance as part of the co-creating work which God calls us to so that we understand that our life here and hereafter is one life under God and that life, here and hereafter, is an eternal life.

Every Blessing,

Father David