Holding our Peace
Preacher: Revd Dr Donald MacEwan, University Chaplain
Readings: Micah 5:2-5a; Luke 1:68-79
It’s been suggested there have been 26 days of peace since the end of the Second World War. What that really means is 26 days when there were no explicit conflicts between nations. It’s harder to estimate the number of days without injury or death around the world from skirmishes, terrorism, insurgency or war. Maybe way more than 26. Or maybe even fewer. And we are certainly aware that this is a time of war – in Ukraine, of course. But also violent conflicts in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Yemen, Burma, Mexico and Iran.
When I came to choose further texts to complement scripture for this service of readings and music, my mind turned to peace. Micah hopes the Messiah will be one of peace. In Luke, Zechariah hopes that his son John will guide our feet into the way of peace. Both readings could be seen as desires for peace which Jesus, in some way, fulfils. How have later writers reflected on peace at Christmas, at the peace promised by the angels?
Well, a number of poets begin with an unflinching depiction at the reality of violence and fear. The Poet Laureate Simon Armitage begins his response to Ukraine with three words, It’s war again, which recur like a litany throughout. And then images of weaponry, of fleeing, of destruction. Kenneth Patchen, a 20th Century American poet, reminds us that “The cold, swollen face of war leans in the / window.” Julia Hartwig from Poland draws on Herod’s Massacre of the Innocents to depict contemporary events – soldiers’ cruelty to women and children. There are echoes in these poems of older wars – the American Civil War perhaps, the Second World War and the movement of victims by train in the Holocaust.
But what these poets also suggest – and what they seem to hold on to for dear life – is hope. For Patchen, the child seems awfully like the Christ-child – his mother is Mary after all. And “He is a kingdom in the hearts of men.” Hartwig recalls that the holy family escapes the Massacre of the Innocents by fleeing to Egypt, “carrying the world’s hope to a safer place.” And U. A. Fanthorpe describes the birth of Jesus as “the moment when nothing / Happened. Only dull peace / Spread boringly over the earth.” Peace may be boring – our 24 hour newsfeeds do not lead with the breaking news that there were no casualties of war in any country today. But it is what people deeply wish for – in first and twenty-first Century Palestine, and in the Donbass today.
These poems don’t stop with hope – they articulate their longing in prayer. Halyna Kruk, a Ukrainian poet, puts words into the mouth of a mother whose son is fighting in the war. And who would not pray as she does?
I beg you: oh God, don’t place him at the front,
please don’t rain rockets down on him, oh God
Perhaps Halyna Kruk knows the icon on our order of service, the Virgin of Kyiv, another mother fearful of losing her son.
Simon Armitage arguably hints at prayer in his use twice of godspeed:
godspeed the columns
of winter coats and fur-lined hoods,
the high-wire walk
over buckled bridges
managing cases and bags,
balancing west and east – godspeed
Or what of the way his poem ends:
an air-raid siren can’t fully mute
the cathedral bells –
let’s call that hope.
I hear those church bells as prayer, a musical prayer of hope, echoed by our own bellringers, echoed by our choir today singing the Ukrainian Carol of the Bells.
Louise Glück strikes a different note, more weary. Her poem called The Magi is conscious that the wise ones have come before, that it has all happened before, and perhaps that the promised transformation did not come.
How many winters have we seen it happen,
watched the same sign…
come to see at the accustomed hour
nothing changed.
Her narrator says – as watchers of the Magi we held our peace.
It’s a profound ambiguity. Did we keep silent as again the Magi came? Or did we hold on to peace despite the impetus for war, for conflict, for cruelty? Maybe the miracle of the past 2000 years with every passing Christmas is that there has been so much peace, that there have been places and times for so much life to flourish. For most of us, born across the world in 20th and 21st Centuries, have lived in places and times of blessed peace, not least in St Andrews.
These poets then – as scripture also does – look at the worst human beings can do to each other, and convey it without covering it up, but they are not content to rest there. These writers have not given up on the world. They do not hold their peace in the face of war, but hold on to peace as worth living for. They find hope in the story of the child, and farm-workers, and an obscure Persian sect, and a frightened family. And they leave us, their readers and listeners, with a challenge. What will we do to follow the one of peace and let our feet find the way of peace?
Last week I was in London for the Alumni Carol Service there. One of the readers was Dr David Nott, who did Medicine in St Andrews and received an honorary degree five years ago. I spoke to him before the service started. Over the past decade, he has gone to the world’s war-zones, performed trauma surgery, and taught doctors, surgeons and nurses how to treat people with injuries caused by war – service personnel and civilians. He has done this in Bosnia, Libya, Iraq and Syria, and he is just back from the Donbas in Ukraine. His work is so inspirational, Time Magazine pictured him last week alongside Volodymyr Zelensky on their Person of the Year cover. David Nott, a man of faith, looks straight at the reality of what war can do, of what people can do to each other in war – and he holds on to hope – that the injured will recover to live again in a time of peace.
We may not all be able to contribute in the way that David Nott does. But we too can hold on to hope, and foster peace in countless ways in our lives, among our families, friends and communities. Standing together in a vigil. Giving our time to the vulnerable. Listening to a friend in trouble.
Godspeed the work of Dr David Nott.
Godspeed the soldiers in Ukraine back to their mothers, their lovers, their boring peace.
Godspeed our feet into the way of peace.
Godspeed the little child in the arms of his mother,
the child for us all.
END