What a week to be writing this:
This week a man shoots randomly at people in the vicinity of the Synagogue in Vienna.  In March 1938 my Mother and her family were driven from that city for fear of violence or worse directed at them as a result of their Jewish ancestry.
My friends in the USA and here are deeply saddened and fearful in the wake of the actions of a populist demagogue in the White House.
The nation enters its second lockdown. I recall writing this newsletter on the eve of the last one and saying, referring to the cancelling of public worship:   ‘We are not giving up church.  We are finding a new way of being church.’ 

It is Remembrance Sunday.  There will be no march past in Whitehall a few hundred yards from Church – No gathering of ageing veterans or their descendants this year.  No cups of tea served in the crypt to brave men and women in uniform proudly displaying their medals.

So which of these things matters most?  And what is there to say that is new?  It is an unfair question but I suggest that it is remembrance. Its value stretches beyond all times and contexts. In the simple acts of remembrance we gather up our grief at all that has been lost and our hope for years to come.  We recall all those who stood up against tyranny and we give thanks for their sacrifice.

Today it is worth focussing on Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s words:
‘Goodness is stronger than evil; Love is stronger than hate; Light is stronger than darkness; Life is stronger than death; Victory is ours through Him who loves us.’

This is true, though I confess I find it hard to believe it at present, but:
My mother lived a remarkable life in England and Vienna is a great, peaceful, cultural city.
No politician can extinguish the love I have for my very many American friends and they are not changed whoever becomes their president.
The sacrifices of the few on behalf of the many won our freedom just as the bravery, skill and sacrifices of our health workers ease the suffering of so many in the pandemic.

So remembrance matters . . .To remember is to Re – Member which means literally to ‘Put back together’.  This is what will happen in our society and in the world.

As for worship.  If you do it online, on the phone or in silence, it is not ‘virtual church’, it is real.  It does not rely on a building (though we all long to be there) but it builds on a relationship with Christ that we remember and renew constantly and which exists, always, wherever we are.

 

Andrew Caspari