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The Rural Dean Writes…

The brilliant historian Antony Beevor, in his history of the Second World War, drops into his huge, overarching story of that world shattering event, much smaller stories – like this one…

In June 1944, a young soldier surrendered to American paratroopers in the Allied invasion of Normandy. At first his captors thought he was Japanese, but he was in fact Korean. His name was Yang Kyoungjong.

In 1938, at the age of eighteen, Yang had been forcibly conscripted by the Japanese into their Kwantung Army in Manchuria. A year later, he was captured by the Red Army after the Battle of Khalkhin Gol and sent to a labour camp. The Soviet military authorities, at a moment of crisis in 1942, drafted him along with thousands of other prisoners into their forces. Then, in 1943 he was taken prisoner by the German army at the Battle of Kharkov in Ukraine.

In 1944, now in German uniform, he was sent to France to serve inland from Utah Beach. After time in a prison camp in Britain, he went to the United States where he said nothing of his past. He settled there and finally died in Illinois in 1992.

In a war which killed over sixty million people and had stretched around the globe, this reluctant veteran of the Japanese, Soviet and German armies had been comparatively fortunate. Yet Yang remains perhaps the most striking illustration of the helplessness of most ordinary mortals in the face of what appeared to be overwhelming historical forces.

At Remembrance Tide every year, we hear told again stories of war –small stories and big stories.

Stories of victory and defeat, triumph and disaster, of heroism and cowardice, sacrifice and cruelty. Stories of compassion and inhumanity, joy and tragedy, greed, fear, loss, terror, courage, faith, hatred and love. Stories which encompass every emotion and behaviour of which human beings are capable. Some of these stories shock us. Some inspire us. Some make us turn away in horror and revulsion. Some fill us with pride and admiration and challenge us and change us for the better.

But they’re all important. Stories of the past are a vital part of our present.

In the Old Testament book that bears his name, the Prophet Isaiah tells another story – of a future time when all nations will be united under the just and gentle rule of God and will seek ways of peace together.

Then they will beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks, and they will neither take up arms against each other, nor even train for war any more.

It’s a wonderful dream of a very different, much better story that Isaiah hopes will one day be told all over the world…a story, a dream, a hope for all those who are caught up in today’s wars to cling to…a story, a dream, a hope for we helpless, ordinary mortals in the face of overwhelming historical forces

(as Antony Beevor put it) to aspire to, work towards and pray for…

Stephen

The Rural Dean Writes…

As the weather finally begins to change and the trees start to dress for Autumn, it’s time for me to dig out the Harvest Thanksgiving Services.

I love Harvest, and I love the great traditional Harvest hymns too –

Come, Ye Thankful People Come, Praise, O Praise Our God and King,

To Thee, O Lord, Our Hearts We Raise, We Plough the Fields and Scatter.

But in recent years a newer, gentler, Harvest hymn has taken its place alongside these great old “tub-thumpers”. We often sing it to the old tune of Ar hyd y nos – All Through the Night - but the words were written in 1970 by a hymn writer for whom I have a great admiration called Fred Pratt Green. The first verse sounds a fairly traditional Harvest Thanksgiving note, but the second verse brings a pointed new theme to our Harvest observance.

In the just reward of labour, God’s will is done;

In the help we give our neighbour, God’s will is done;

In our world-wide task of caring

For the hungry and despairing,

In the harvests we are sharing,

God’s will is done.

Here Fred gently reminds us that the Harvest God gives us is ours to share, and that we all have a responsibility to care and provide for those less fortunate than ourselves. Of course, this injunction is nothing new. We can trace it way back to the Old Testament where, under the Law of Moses, aliens, strangers, travellers, sojourners - modern versions call them refugees – were to be made welcome, given help and hospitality, cared for and provided for, afforded respect and justice by God’s people. This was so all the time, but especially so, in that agrarian society, at Harvest time.

The Harvest was to be shared – partly as an expression of gratitude to God for his generous provision, but also in recognition of the fact that God’s people the Hebrews were themselves once aliens, strangers, refugees in foreign lands.

Every time we turn on the TV or radio or read the newspapers at the moment, we are bombarded with pictures and articles about hungry, homeless, despairing refugees seeking safety and a better life in Britain. Are we ready and willing to share our harvest – to share all the good things we enjoy - with them?

If so, how? Well, we can give food, clothing, money – but that’s the easy bit. The hard bit is holding out the hand of welcome and of generous hospitality. The hard bit is pressing for justice for those refugees. The hard bit is changing our own attitudes and challenging the attitudes of those around us when they say that these people are someone else’s problem - that they should go back home, and that we shouldn’t let them in to Britain. The hard bit is daring to be obedient to God’s continuing command to care for the alien, the stranger, the refugee and to love them as we love ourselves. Those are the hard yards. That’s the toughest challenge…

Stephen