Rectory Ramblings…

Thus says the Lord of hosts: Old men and old women shall again sit in the streets of Jerusalem, each with staff in hand because of their great age.  And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in its streets. (Zechariah 8:4-5)

Just before COVID hit us in 2020, and just before the planned 75^th VE-Day celebrations were all cancelled, I talked to my father about the planned street parties in the villages where I lived. His reply was “I did the street party in 1948, I don’t need to do it again”. Five years later I am vicar of parishes whose commemoration of the event ranges from nothing to a three-week multi-event celebration. So should it be a celebration of a commemoration? The answer is probably a bit of both. We should celebrate the end of a war in which millions died, and we should celebrate 80 years of relative peace in our own nation and in the world. But we also need to remember that VE-Day did not bring world peace. My father also told me his biggest memory of the day was “being so happy that my father would be coming home”. 80 years ago, there would have been many at those street parties whose fathers, sons, brothers and husbands would not be coming home. Many had given their lives in the European war, and the war in the Pacific was not over.

I have heard it said whilst history does not exactly repeat itself it certainly does rhyme. and we stand precariously close to another global conflict. Ukraine and Russia seem as far from peace and reconciliation as ever; The fighting between Israel and its neighbours may have faded from our TV screens but it has not gone away; neither has the tension between China and Taiwan; and President Trump’s tariff and trade war is doing nothing to help world stability. 

This year saw the passing of the last pilot to fight in the Battle of Britain, and with each passing the memory of the past horrors of war fades just a little bit more. Across the UK there will be a national peal of church bells, nationwide services church services giving thanks to God, remembering the dead and praying for peace, and the recreation of the VE-Day street parties are a good thing. On the surface an excuse to bring the community together. But if they also give the old men and women sitting in the streets the opportunity to remind the boys and girls playing there that God made us and wants us to live in love, peace and harmony with one another, and that the only thing we should fight for is peace, then remembering the 80^th anniversary in this way will be a good thing.   

Revd Eddie