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SELAH 6
That the name of the dead be remembered
` . . that the name of the dead be remembered . . .': Our opening words come from the Book of Ruth, wherein Boaz takes Ruth, the widowed daughter-in-law of Naomi, for his wife, `to perpetuate the name of the dead (Mahlon) through his inheritance that the name of the dead (Mahlon) may not be cut off from amongst his brothers and from his position at the gate'. It will be noticed that in our opening words we have written `be remembered' instead of `not be cut off', and this does not change the actual meaning of the Scripture. In this `In Brief' we are not much interested in the theological reason for Boaz acting as kinsman redeemer for our purpose is to illustrate this deeply ingrained need for remembrance. In Hebrew the meaning of remembrance is more of a `reminding the mind of past instances of people or places', whereas remembering is a spiritual action of the heart where the remembered person becomes alive, real and personal again. The Hebrew and Greek words have this same meaning. In a spiritual meaning the words of Jesus in Revelation 22 `surely I am coming soon' would read `Surely I have come', as we `remember' His words.
Many times we have used the expression `Prophecy is a sturdy rung on the ladder of history', which is truly His-Story. To illustrate this try to imagine (or even draw) an arc, a curving line with no beginning and no end. This is His-Story. Beneath this arc imagine (or draw) a straight line, which represents the history of the world which does have a beginning and an end and which at some points in man's time touches the arcing line of His-Story. `In the past God spoke through the prophets at many times and in many ways', said the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews. If they were true prophets of God, then although they spoke in an historical time, their spirits reached up and spoke of His-Story. Many contemporary prophets stand and speak into their present time, not reaching beyond into His-Story, and therefore their words become earthbound. If we read the prophets with this in mind we will see the Heart of God reaching beyond man's history, with all the error and idolatry in His people and understand His intention to bring His people Israel to Himself. That is a sturdy rung on the ladder of history. Psalm 105 records: He, the LORD God, remembers `His Covenant for ever, the Word He comnmanded for a thousand generations'. That is `remembrance', alive and vital!
Many years ago we attended a meeting in Harwich, which was convened after a prophetic word was spoken in a church in Harwich that the Lord would prepare `a Highway' across the North Sea from Holland to Harwich to provide a way for His persecuted Jewish people to come to safety in the British Isles. (In 1938 the first two hundred Kindertransportees had arrived in Harwich and a memorial to the Kindertransport stands outside Liverpool Street railway station in London, along with many others in various parts of the country. There is also a plaque commemorating their arrival in the Harwich Ferry Terminal.) The convention was supported and attended by many highly-respected Christian ministers connected with Jewish Aliyah and by a church in the Hook of Holland. It had been agreed that the Dutch church members would journey on a Day Ferry across the North Sea to Harwich, praying for this spiritual Highway to be opened for the Lord's purpose to be fulfilled in accordance with the prophetic word. That evening they, together with the Christian ministers, the Harwich church members and many other supportive Christians met for a glorious time of praise and prayer and encouragement. The next day the Dutch church members retuned to Holland on a Day Ferry accompanied by the Harwich church members in order to pray as they crossed the North Sea for the Lord to open up His `Highway'. That night they all met for more praise and prayer before the Harwich church members returned home the next day.
Two years later we made contact with the English Convener of that meeting to ask for news, only to be told that memory of it had faded as more urgent things had come along. It seemed that all memory of the Convention and the prophetic word had been forgotten! And so later that year we travelled to Holland to meet with the Dutch leader and his congregation, only to be told that `as it hadn't happened it could not have been true prophecy'! However the prophetic word was carried in the hearts of the writer and his wife, and the next year we again travelled to Harwich, this time to meet some people off the Ferry who would be holidaying with us. We had travelled through an enormous thunder storm but as we approached Harwich it began to move away. As we waited for the arrival of our people, `remembering' the prophetic word, the clouds suddenly parted and the sun made a `golden pathway' across the sea. The Lord spoke, and He said: `There will be a Highway across the North Sea for My people'. On returning to our car with the arrivals the writer and his wife realised the Lord had confirmed in our hearts that the prophetic word given at that Convention had truly come from the Lord and its fulfillment was certain on the `arc of His-story' as we continued to `remember' it before Him. In 2014 we felt led to make a return journey to Harwich to pray in the reception area of the Ferry terminal. Of course everything had changed, and on asking a receptionist where the the small memorial plaque to the arrival of the Kindertransport in 1938 was, we were directed to a quiet corner on the outskirts of the arrival area (all those years ago it had a prominent place in the arrival area!) We make no further comment, other than `the LORD God remembers His Covenant for ever' - and with anti-semitism and right-wing governments on the rise throughout Europe again our trust is in His remembering His Covenant, which is just as living and active as when it was first given in an historical `line' of time.
Today, prophets in the Church rarely leave the `straight line' of history and touch the `Arc of His-Story' for they have not remembered His Eternal Covenant! Clearly, in this `In Brief' we are concerned with remembrance, and with prophecy in so far as it concerns remembrance. It is generally accepted that all animal life has needs that are concerned with survival, such as food and shelter, and above all the need for protection and self-preservation. Only in human life is there a paramount need to be recognised in self-worth, and deeper than that there is the need to be remembered at the end of natural life. We see this in our opening words from the Book of Ruth where widowed Naomi and her widowed daughter-in-law sought Boaz, a kinsman-redeemer, to take Ruth into his family as his wife so that the name of her dead husband, Mahlon, would be remembered within the twelve tribes of Israel. This same urgent need to be remembered runs through the whole of mankind, and over the centuries many philosophers have pondered over this quest to be remembered even in death. It permeates the whole of the world's cultures, and certainly it is seen in the work of Greek philosophers such as Plato. He saw mankind in three parts, one of which was the desire to seek `life' beyond death so as to live beyond this natural life-span. There is an innate longing for life in remembrance - a self-worth which cannot and must not die.
It is with this `remembrance' in mind that we were concerned at the National Day of Remembrance in 2018, for it seemed to be writ larger in the minds of the people than in previous years. Of course it was the one hundred year anniversary of the 1914-1918 war Armitice - this was merely a pause in hostilties that were finally ended at the close of the second Thirty Years War in Europe. It is worth a pause here for reflection to consider the consequences of the first European Thirty Years War, which culminated in The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 when the warring nations agreed to recognise and accept the sovereignty of one another. This led to a (temporary) peace in Europe whilst they turned their warlike intentions beyond Europe! The second Thirty Year War in Europe ended in The Treaty of Paris, signed in 1990, which recognised the sovereignty of the European powers and led to the re-unification of Germany and the emerging fulness of the European Union - and so European history continues! But even in this `pause' we can see in another context the word `remembrance', for in an earlier Church Letter we used the words: `I said what is past shall be no more, but lo, they have begun to stir again'.
And so to continue with `Remembrance': Yes, the 1918 Armitice was central to that Day of Remembrance in 2018, but still there lay the underlying unease of `the people' which went beyond the 1918 Armitice. The `Second World War', the wars in Korea, Vietnam, the Balkans, and more recently in the Middle East, were but a continuation of wars following the 1918 Armitice. In the events of the 2018 anniversary there was an overwhelming sense of anxiousness to remember the living in the dead. What was it that caused so many in the 1914-1918 conflict to volunteer for battle? What was the driving motivation that enabled men to give `the ultimate sacrifice'? Was it patriotism (national identity) or even peer pressure? Or was it something deeper within the soul of the men who went to war with the almost certainty of death or disabling wounds, who nevertheless, whatever the outcome, would be recognised as fighting men and remembered, not only for their own self-worth, but also for the self-worth of National Identity that refused to be trampled on by another power or agressive nation which sought to enslave them - for slaves have no self-worth?
In the natural sense, and in a primeval way, battles were once fought between two Champions, each one the embodiment of the tribe or even nation they represented, seeking self-worth through dominance over the other on a personal level. Each person was willing to risk his life, not only for self- recognition but as the Champion of his nation's superior worth and he would be remembered thereafter in the hearts of his people in National Days of Remembrance - some of you may remember the old imperial song: `Some talk of Alexander, of Hector and Lysander, and such great men as these'. That was evident in the 2018 National Remembrance Day, coupled with what we sensed was a deep anxiety within the gathered people. To give meaning to this feeling during the 2018 Remembrance Day ceremonies, and as part of that Remembrance, on several Norfolk beaches of this country events took place entitled `Pages of the Sea', during which figures of soldiers were traced in the sand so that when the tide came in those figures were washed away, and as the organiser said, `people gathered to say goodbye'. Was this anxiety being unwittingly expressed, for as the tide receeded it left a flat beach with no remembrance of the figures but only a `goodbye' to unknown people? Is it possible that in those anniversary events of 2018 there was a deep feeling of despair that there would be no-one to remember those gathered in 2018 for they live in a broken society with no national collective interests and only a chaotic future?
Today there is a growing individual self-interest with little concern for National self-worth. Where is the Champion, the embodiment of the collective whole? But in a broken society there can be no collective whole - there can be no past, or present leading to the future. The very basic primeval need of remembrance in continuity is endangered and will lead to instability in a nation. The philosophers, the secular thinkers of ages past, recognised this deep desire for remembrance! The Church today seems more concerned with what we described earlier as the basic needs of food and shelter! In a past `Letter to the Church' we have drawn upon some words from the work of T.S.Eliot, an American who became naturalised British in 1927, who would have been very much aware of this innate need of remembrance. We quote from `The Quartet', the last of his poetic works: `We die with the dying. See, they depart and we go with them. See, they return and bring us with them'.
In that `Church Letter' we merely paraphrased those words into one line: `Here come the dead; they bring us with them'.
The whole work was entitled `The Little Gidding', a building which was restored in 17th century England for a monastic community which was known for its devotional life. Eliot was attempting to express the unity of the past, present and future which, he said, gives meaning to salvation: `We are, and continue to be remembered in a continuing community or belief in itself'. Scripturally we have seen this in the Book of Ruth, but this cry permeates the Psalms. It is also seen in the Letter to the Hebrews in the closing verses of chapter 11:
" God had planned something better for us (salvation in Jesus) so that
only together with us would they (the dead in Jesus) be made perfect. "
This understanding of Remembrance, both as individuals and as a collective people, continues into chapter 12:
" Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses . . .
let us run with patience the race set before us. "
That is the purpose of this `In Brief', and our closing concern is this: Will the `broken society of the Church' make herself ready to proclaim to the `broken society of the nation' the lasting Eternal Remembrance to be found in Christ Jesus alone? Or will the Church continue, as in 2018, and previously, to join with the Nation to remember the National Champions of its past wars rather than proclaiming God's Champion, His Son Jesus, Who has overcome the world and offers Salvation and Eternal Remembrance in Himself alone?
Selah!
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