Christmas Eve Reflection Debra Bowman, Ryerson United Sainsbury Video https://youtube/watch?v=NWF2JBb1bvM On this night one hundred years ago, the Prince of Peace settled gently over the Western front. For just a day, as a hen gathers in her chicks, the Christ Child extended a loving embrace over the land, offering warmth and respite and peace. Men from both sides of the First World War gathered together; Allies and Germans crossed over the no-man’s land and the politics and the ideologies that divided them, and were united in a common yearning for peace. For a sweet, brief time they were able to overcome all that thwarts the fulfillment of that yearning. It was early days in the First World War. Fighting had been long and hard enough for the troops to realize that the conflict was not going to be over as quickly or as easily as first envisioned, but the war had not yet become impersonal. The poison gas and the mechanization of the massacre had not yet been initiated. Both armies were stuck in an extended siege in trenches that stretched all along the 750 km front. The enemy soldiers could hear each other, they could smell each other’s breakfast cooking. They were, in a twisted kind of way, aware of each other in the same way that old fashioned neighbours are conscious of what the people up the street are doing. But they couldn’t see each other. To be seen was to be taken out by a sniper’s bullet. On Christmas Eve, 1914, peace began to stir over the mucky, muddy land. Not just at one site, not just in a small corner of the war, but all along the front there were patches of peace; of men laying down their arms and moving out of their hovels to greet each other. It started slowly… initially the Allies could hear the Germans singing Christmas carols, in particular Silent Night. In some places they began to see Christmas trees with candles and paper lanterns erected along the German parapets. And then, all along the front, men began to take a chance on peace. Through diaries, letters home, regimental histories there are many stories of an individual raising a hand or a lantern, then perhaps a cap, then showing their face, then emerging unarmed from the sodden trench and into the land that divided them. Gradually more men appeared, conversations began, pictures of loved ones were displayed, treats from home exchanged. There are stories of soccer games happening, and of a barber setting up a station ready to cut anyone’s hair who needed it. And each side took advantage of the respite to collect up their dead and bury them and so were able to restore some dignity to their fallen comrades. It’s not like commanders didn’t see this coming, although they saw it as a treasonous act rather than an inbreaking of the realm of God. One account reports that as early as Dec. 5, “…the Corps Commander … direct[ed] Divisional Commanders to impress on subordinate commanders the absolute necessity of encouraging offensive spirit... friendly intercourse with the enemy, unofficial armistices, however tempting and amusing they may be, are absolutely prohibited (1918.net/truce.htm) The men emerging from the trenches faced danger from two fronts – from the enemy before them, and from the commanders in back. They could be shot as combatants, or as traitors. When we think of God coming to humanity in flesh, in human form, we can imagine the same vulnerability. To risk peace, to make ones self vulnerable in love, to reach out to the other, is at times an almost unspeakably difficult thing to do. And yet tonight we celebrate that God did and does just this every moment of time, offering Godself to all creation, in all creation. Offering peace. And hope. And love. And joy. In the most vulnerable form possible – a wee baby. God constantly reaches out, In the eternal hope that we will pop our head above the parapet of the busy, distracted lives we live, and allow ourselves to be embraced by the Prince of Peace. BC author Frederick Niven, has written this poem about the Christmas truce. In Flanders on the Christmas morn the trench in foment lay the German and the Britain born and it was Christmas Day. The red sun rose on fields accursed, the grey fog fled away. But neither cared to fire the first for it was Christmas Day. They called from each to each across the hideous disarray. For terrible has been their loss, though this is Christmas Day. The rifles all they set aside one impulse to obey. ‘Twas just the men on either side, just men, and Christmas Day. They dug the graves for all their dead, and over them did pray. And English men and German said how strange a Christmas day. Between the trenches then they met, shook hands and ed’n did play at games at which their hearts were set. Oh happy Christmas Day! Not all the emperors and kings and financiers and they who rule us could prevent these things, for it was Christmas Day. Oh ye who read this truthful rhyme from Flanders kneel and say: “God speed the time when every day shall be a Christmas day.” (Mark Forsythe and Greg Dickson, From the West Coast to the Western Front; British Columbians in the First World War) In the spirit of the Prince of Peace, let us greet each other with a Merry Christmas. Amen
Posted on: Wed, 24 Dec 2014 23:28:15 +0000
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