Steps Towards Reconciliation

The meditation presented at Chirbury Church last night, using material made available by the C of E for use this year, with some additions and adaptations.

‘Steps towards Reconciliation’:

A monologue interspersed with words and music

SCRIPT

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Music  - Welcome and Introduction:                 

[Opening Music  -  "Call of Wisdom" Will Todd]

Welcome. Tonight we mark the centenary of the war that many hoped would end all wars, with a meditation on the theme of reconciliation. Reconciliation requires an honest ‘truth telling’, and the text we use tonight honours the fact that we may only be able to take steps towards that goal. There are seven steps :

Firstly, the need to remember and to look back honestly;

then the voicing of regret and loss;

thirdly that we recognise the humanity of the other, the enemy;

fourthly, that we admit the need first to change our own viewpoint;

then, fifthly, accepting our differences,

sixthly, agreeing to walk together;

and finally, the seventh step, that we come to share a vision.

Each of the ‘steps’ is linked by an imagined monologue, in which, perhaps, a British soldier is speaking to his opposite number in the German army.

An opening prayer:                                                                                   SLIDE 2

O Lord, our maker and our strength,

from whose love in Christ we can never be parted

either by death or defeat:

May our remembrance this day deepen our sorrow

for the loss and wastes of war,

make us more grateful to those who courageously gave their lives

to defend this land and commonwealth;

and may all who bear the scars and memories

of conflicts, past and present, know your healing love

for the sake of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace.

Amen.

The first step: the need to remember and to look back honestly.

Monologue:                                                                                                 SLIDE 3

‘The petals fall and we walk away…But if there is to be any reconciliation, then we must circle back, return to that place where the mud clung to our boots and we shivered, afraid, with enemy fire deafening our ears. We had each other in our sights, you and me, and we cursed to mask the stench of death as we lobbed the grenades and canisters of gas. I could not, would not, picture your face. But, yes, I knew, all right. I’d seen the wounds, raw and bloody red.’

Reading: Wilfrid Owen, Strange Meeting                                          SLIDE 4

Earth’s wheels run oiled with blood. Forget we that.

Let us lie down and dig ourselves in thought.

Beauty is yours and you have mastery,

wisdom is mine, and I have mystery.

We two will stay behind and keep our troth.

Let us forego men’s minds that are brute’s natures,

let us not sup the blood which some say nurtures,

be we not swift with swiftness of the tigress.

Let us break ranks from those who trek from progress.

Miss we the march of this retreating world

into old citadels that are not walled.

Let us lie out and gold the open truth.

Then when their blood hath clogged the chariot wheels

we will go up and wash them from deep wells.

What though we sink from men as pitchers falling

many will raise us up to be their filling

even from wells we sunk too deep for war

and filled by brows that bled where no wounds are.

 The second step: lament – the voicing of regret and loss

Monologue:                                                                                                 SLIDE 5

‘There will be a time, a little distant from now, before the memory totally fades, when we must face the ugliness and disfiguring brutality of war. ‘Oh God!’ we cry, but the sound of our voice is lost in an empty sky…. But evil will be faced, words will wither on the tongue, and we will feel a silent scream deep inside. Such waste, such horror! ‘How did this happen! Why, oh, just why was it allowed to go on and on in its industrial madness – shattering the landscape, razing the town to rubble, and cruelly tossing broken lives aside. The silent cry is irrepressible, and we search here and there for words to voice our complaint: “How lonely sits the city . . . How like a widow she has become  . . . She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks; Jerusalem is a wilderness . . . Arise, cry out . . . Pour out your heart like water before the presence of the Lord.”

[Lamentations, words from Chapter 1 and 2]

Music:                                                                                          SLIDES 6,  7,  & 8

 ["Agnus Dei" from "The Armed Man" Karl Jenkins]

The third step: recognising the humanity of the enemy

Monologue:                                                                                                 SLIDE 9

‘Is it possible for us to meet? Do we have the courage to face each other, to look each other in the eye…Can we meet, as those twins who were enemies from the days when they were in the womb? Can we recognise our kinship, the bond of our shared humanity? With trepidation we take a step towards each other, not knowing what resentments, what recrimination remain in the dying embers of the residual guilt, the anger and the hurt that linger in our hearts. Like Jacob, we walk towards our brother, not knowing just how it will be when we meet. But we will meet, and when we do I will see myself in you, and you will see yourself in me.’

Biblical Reading: Genesis 33, reading from the first verse:

Jacob looked up and there was Esau coming with four hundred men. He divided the children between Leah and Rachel and the two slave-girls. He put the slave-girls and their children in front, Leah with her children next, and Rachel and Joseph in the rear. He himself went on ahead of them, bowing low to the ground seven times as he approached his brother.

Esau ran to meet him and embraced him; he threw his arms round him and kissed him, and they both wept. When Esau caught sight of the women and children, he asked, ‘Who are these with you?’ Jacob replied, ‘The children whom God has graciously given to your servant.’ The slave-girls came near, each with her children, and they bowed low; then Leah with her children came near and bowed low, and lastly Joseph and Rachel came and bowed low also.

Esau asked, ‘What was all that company of yours that I met?’ ‘It was meant to win favour with you, my lord,’ was the answer. Esau said, ‘I have more than enough. Keep what you have, my brother.’ But Jacob replied, ‘No, please! If I have won your favour, then accept, I pray, this gift from me; for, as you see, I come into your presence as into that of a god, and yet you receive me favourably. Accept this gift which I bring you; for God has been gracious to me, and I have all I want.’ Thus urged, Esau accepted it.

Music ["Thou Knowest, Lord" Bob Chilcott]                                            SLIDE 10

 The fourth step: the first resolve, ‘we must change’

‘This is the imperative of remembrance, the outcome of honestly facing our former enemy. We might protest, and say that it is for them to change. But it isn’t just them. It’s too easy to speak of us and them, to pass the buck and to duck our responsibility. We can’t just load the guilt onto someone else. No, honesty makes its demands. And If I truly recognise myself in you, and you can see yourself in me, then we must both change. For Christ’s sake, I say, I should no longer see, or feel, or think in the way that I did. If I could, just for a moment, see things as you see them, then perhaps, and only perhaps, I could come to act differently.’

Music ["Adagio for Strings" Samuel Barber]                                              SLIDE 11

Biblical Reading: 2 Corinthians 5, verses 16 to 20:

With us, worldly standards have ceased to count in our estimate of anyone; even if once they counted in our understanding of Christ, they do so now no longer. For anyone united to Christ, there is a new creation: the old order has gone; a new order has already begun.

All this has been the work of God. He has reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has enlisted us in this ministry of reconciliation: God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, no longer holding people’s misdeeds against them, and has entrusted us with the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors. It is as if God were appealing to you through us: we implore you in Christ’s name, be reconciled to God!

The fifth step: accepting our differences

Monologue:                                                                                         SLIDE 12

‘There is much we share, but in the end, you are not me, and I am not you. This much I now see. So how should I respond? My first word has to be ‘sorry’. But it’s such a heavy, weighted word. It rolls so effortlessly off the tongue, but what a freight of meaning it has to carry! How can it be said? The word just carries too much. But perhaps if we were both to say it, and say it together, then perhaps the word will be heard, the apology will be spoken, received and reciprocated. ‘I am sorry, so sorry’, we cry, ‘sorry for it all.’ There! It is said, and by being sincerely said, the crushing weight is lifted, and we can start to move on.’

Music: ["Lacrimosa" W.A.Mozart]                                                       SLIDE 13

The sixth step: resolving to walk together

Monologue:                                                                                                 SLIDE 14

‘You promised to help me, and now I must reciprocate… there will be tasks to share, but first let’s share the stories. Tell me again, where were you from? Where, again, was home for you? Where would you like to travel now? Could we, you and I, journey together, could we keep our feet in step and step out together? Let this be our resolve.’ 

Poem: German Prisoners - Joseph Lee:                                               SLIDE 15

When I first saw you in the curious street,

like some platoon of soldier ghosts in grey,

my mad impulse was all to smite and slay,

to spit upon you, tread you ‘neath my feet.

But when I saw how each sad soul did greet

my gaze with no sign of defiant frown,

how from tired eyes looked spirits broken down,

how each face showed the pale flag of defeat,

and doubt, despair and disillusionment,

and how were grievous wounds on many a head,

and on your garb red-faced was other red;

and how you stooped as men whose strength was spent,

I knew that we had suffered each as other,

and could have grasped your hand and cried, “My brother!”

The seventh step: shared vision - ‘a new heaven and a new earth.’

Monologue:                                                                                                 SLIDE 16

‘In what you said I heard another voice, and what I tried to say in a faltering way was to give voice to that other voice. The voice calling us to see. “Open your eyes, cries the voice, open your eyes to see who you could be; open your eyes to see what the world could be. Look out and see, look out and see a world rightly ordered by the mercy, the peace and justice of the eternal Word. The Word that was in the beginning, and that Word that, in the end, will call us home together.’

Biblical Reading: Revelation 21, reading from the first verse:     SLIDE 17

I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had vanished, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready like a bride adorned for her husband. I heard a loud voice proclaiming from the throne: ‘Now God has his dwelling with mankind! He will dwell among them and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There shall be an end to death, and to mourning and crying and pain, for the old order has passed away!’

The one who sat on the throne said, ‘I am making all things new!’ (‘Write this down,’ he said, ‘for these words are trustworthy and true.’) Then he said to me, ‘It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water from the spring of life as a gift. This is the victors’ heritage; and I will be their God and they will be my children.

Prayer:                                                                                                          SLIDE 18

Lead us, good Lord, from death to life, from falsehood to truth.

Lead us from despair to hope, and from fear to trust.

Lead us from hate to love, and from war to peace.

And so let peace fill our hearts, our world, our universe.  Amen.                                                                                                           

[Music - "For the Fallen" Douglas Guest]