Anzac Remembrance

By Carol Wollaston

The sun has gone down on yet another ANZAC Day and once again people have been surprised at the great upsurge of interest in this occasion, especially by the young.  The “babyboomers” and their offspring have not known a world war or a depression and seem to be looking for something upon which to focus for national identity.  The lucky or clever country has seen the rise of a generation whom many feel have lost the personal values that gave rise to the character of the digger.

When we quote the much repeated phrase, “Lest we Forget”, what are we pledging to remember?  Certainly not the horrors of war and waste of life.  Even soldiers themselves, no matter what war they fought in, would rather forget these tragedies.  The oldest of diggers have spent a life time not speaking of such things, even to those closest to them.  Of course they choose to remember mates who lost their lives, the camaraderie, the courage under fire, and the character forged in great adversity.  The remembrance of such things is noble, and though it does not glorify war, it makes the residual emotional and mental collateral damage more bearable.

It is God who ultimately remembers.  He remembers each one who is joined to Him.  When we remember Him, He forgets our sin.  We are brought back from the land of forgetfulness (Psalm 88:12) to be remembered as His sons and daughters.  Even the one repentant thief on the cross next to Christ said, “Lord, remember me when you come into Your Kingdom.” He was not forgotten!  The key here is that when we join Christ in His offering at the cross, to participate with Him in lives that are totally given to God, then we are remembered eternally by God.

When handing out the bread and wine at the Last Supper, Jesus said, ‘Do this in remembrance of Me.’  Was He suggesting that we need the Communion to remind us of His great sacrifice?  I don’t think so.  With God, remembrance involves much more than recalling past experiences and memories.  When God remembers someone, He knows that person utterly from the inside out, from the womb to the grave, and then beyond into an eternal inheritance that is already prepared.  Also He remembers that person’s place in His Church – who he or she is called to be as part of the whole, as well as an individual.  This is the way God remembers someone’s ‘name’.

Surely, this kind or ‘remembering’ is implied in Christ’s call to us, ‘Do this in remembrance of me’?  He wants us to know Him, to understand what it means to live IN Him, sharing His Name, remembering that His destiny is our destiny as we lay our lives down for one another.  We are called to remember Him as the ‘Word of God’, the One who knows the end from the beginning, the Alpha and the Omega, Who sits at the right hand of God the Father.  He wants us to remember that He is the Head of His Body, the Church, and He determines our place in it.

In every generation and nation those who have  not  forgotten  God are remembered  by Him to live and carry on in His Name - not forgotten and not forgetting.  God’s remembrance of us relates to our essential person, which is defined by God’s design of us and His life within us.  When we surrender ourselves to God He brings our true identity back to life, so that even though we are not perfect, we are no longer defined by our faults and foibles. 

He loves and remembers His own, the children He has named!  So we can say in the words of the psalmist, very similar words to that great ANZAC poem, “from the rising of the sun, to the going down of the same, the Lord’s Name is to be praised.”