In the half-term break, Rose and I visited London and were able to see the poppies at the Tower of London.
Entitled Blood Swept Lands And Seas Of Red, the installation is the work of ceramic artist Paul Cummins, from Derbyshire.”
There have been critics too. One of whom suggested that:
When we were there, some visitors were taking cheesy selfies with the poppies behind, which suggests that not everyone was looking at the same thing that we were. But the fact that 4m people will have been to see the poppies suggests that it resonates with many.
The point of course, is that it helps you to visualize what 888,246 looks like. Each one of those ceramic poppies represents a life that did not fulfil its potential. Someone once said, “A single death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic”. The poppies remind us that each death in war is a tragedy. The Quakers have produced a map to show how big the installation would have to be to have one poppy for each of the 19.5M deaths resulting from the First World War.
Each one of those who died was someone’s son, someone’s husband, someone’s brother. They were members of families. They had friends and neighbours. They were part of their community. Each death is a loss for a whole network of people.
For many years in my ordained ministry, I have spoken about the difficulty for us of ‘remembering’ events that happened before we were born. Then in December 2009, shortly before Christmas, while I was Rector of Halewood, my phone went. It was an army chaplain giving me the news that Corporal Simon Hornby, from 2nd Battalion The Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment, had been killed in Afghanistan, by a roadside bomb while on foot patrol. Although I didn’t know him, he had been brought up in my parish; he had been to school in Halewood. His family lived in the parish. And so I got to meet his parents, Joe and Julie, his wife, Holly, and other members of the family. Each year, on Remembrance Sunday the Hornby family attend church at St Nicholas’ in Halewood and lay a wreath in memory of Simon. In the years I’ve done christenings for the family; christenings at which uncle Simon should probably have been a godparent. Meeting Simon’s family and friends have helped me to understand what each death in war means.
As Christians we are invited to remember. Jesus, talking about his death, takes bread and wine. He says, “This is my body; this is my blood. Do this in remembrance of me”. 200 years later, Christians take bread and wine to remember him; to remember his death and consider what it means.
Jesus said:
No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. (John 15:13)
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