Pilgrim's Progress column with Erik Peeters: Remembrance
We are at the end of what sometimes is called remembrance season. It isn’t, as far as I am aware, an official title. But in the Church of England, from All Saints Day on November 1 to All Souls and Remembrance Day, we spend time thinking about and remembering those who we knew and loved who have died, as well as those who lost their lives in war and conflict across the world.
And while it is a sombre season, it is also a season tinged with hope. Because our remembering happens in the light of the hope that the dead already enjoy the future that awaits all of us – to be resurrected to new life in the coming Kingdom of God, where death and mourning are no more.
That hope changes what we see. For example, the reason many Christians oppose the use of force – whether military or judiciary – against those who think they are our enemies has less to do with the idea that violence is bad and more with the fact that it is pointless. After all, if our destiny is to be resurrected in the Kingdom of God, what is the point of killing anyone? All that violence achieves is to get some of us to resurrection sooner.
Resurrection also means that all people are our sisters and brothers, because that is who they will be in the coming Kingdom. The Bible, when it describes this future, points out that the City of God will have no gates because there will be no more enemies. Not because all enemies have been slain, but because enmity itself – the desire to harm one another – will have been defeated. Therefore, remembrance also encourages us to begin to live and work now in the light of what will be true in time, to answer hatred and violence with love. Because in the end, love will win.
Erik Peeters, Wakefield Cathedral