We will remember them
This month of November opens and continues with a time of remembering. The Christian Church keeps the first day as the festival of All Saints. We honour those heroes of the faith whose deep faith and bold courage has won the ‘victor’s crown’.
Before the 11th November, the nation as a whole remembers. The 11th itself is publicly observed as Armistice Day, when the guns fell silent at the end of the First World War. The two minutes silence is observed in this country, and people of all ages still make the journey to Belgium, to Ypres, and stand before the Commonwealth War Memorial. The numbers of the fallen are overwhelming: 54,896 Commonwealth combatants whose bodies were never found. Their names are engraved in the white stone of the Menin Gate.
Their names are engraved. People matter individually, even among vast numbers of the fallen, which is why the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey bears solitary witness to the terrible cost of war.
People matter, but so does history. The 1914-18 War did not fulfil the hope that it would be ‘the war to end all wars,’ as the world of 2025 painfully reminds us. If I study the decades leading up to 1914, I find a time of growing tension, mounting fear and big-power rivalry alongside the relentless build-up of military preparation. Repeated efforts to avoid war and keep the peace were often attempted, but in the end failed.
Where may genuine hope be found? At the heart of Christian worship lies an act of remembrance. It began among a group of Jews observing the Passover Festival in Jerusalem. The host was Jesus. He shared bread and wine with his disciples on the evening before his death. He broke the bread with these astounding words: “This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” He did not eat the bread himself, telling his friends that this ‘Passover’ would only find its fulfilment in the kingdom of God (Luke 22, verses 16 and 19).
Death was not the end of Jesus. Easter tells us that. In Holy Communion, which Christians observe throughout the world, we look forward to that new age which human beings, unaided, have never succeeded in entering. Meanwhile we seek to bear our witness to the living Jesus, the prince of peace, and the kingdom he comes to bring.
As we remember this month, may we do so with hope: found in the courage of human suffering, the dignity of love, and the promise of Christ.
By Revd Trevor Thomas, supernumerary minister in the Methodist Church.