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Reconciliation is two-way
 Forgiving: Canon Adrian Daffern, the Precentor of Coventry Cathedral, with pilgrims at the Altar of Reconciliation
R. MARTIN WILLIAMS
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| HIS CATHEDRAL lay around him in ruins on that Christmas morning in 1940. Almost 1000 children, women, and men had died in a November night six weeks before. The more than 25,000 in Dresden still had five years to live. Death descended from the sky. How many young airmen — over England, over Germany, over Japan — never came home in the end?
There was no roof over his head as the Very Revd Dick Howard, Provost of Coventry, stood at a BBC microphone to preach what the people found very hard to hear: that to love as Jesus loves is to “put away all thoughts of revenge”. This was the counter-culture of God. “With our enemies, when this strife is over, we shall try to build a kinder and more Christ-like sort of world.”
In the midst of war, a prophetic priest spoke of forgiveness. Engraved in the stones behind the cross of charred beams are the words of Jesus at his hour of death: “Father Forgive”; not “Father Forgive Them”, the destroyers of this city, but us, too, for “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”
This story, legendary by now, is
a profoundly simple reminder of
the pity of war — every war — poignantly expressed in Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, composed for Coventry Cathedral and still sung there every five years in remembrance. Penitent remembrance, with forgiveness at its heart, is a commitment to deeds of expiation, of making good. And good was made.
In Germany, a man called Lothar Kreyssig founded an organisation, Aktion Sühnezeichen — Action to Atone — which would enable young Germans to go to places their fathers had destroyed, helping to heal the wounds of war. Some 20 came to Coventry and restored the rooms in the Cathedral’s ruins that were to become the first home of the Centre for International Reconciliation.
It was not a one-way process. Provost Howard’s successor, the Very Revd Bill Williams, commissioned an equal number of British young people to go and live with the people of Dresden to help rebuild a bombed hospital. They are remembered to this day. The friendships they made live on. Out of bitterness made good by deeds of love has grown the Community of the Cross of Nails, a network of centres of reconciliation around the world.
Remembrance is grounded in prayer. The Litany of Reconciliation is prayed each Friday at noon, the time of crucifixion, at the altar of reconciliation. It is prayed with people from near and far, prayed in every corner of the globe, prayed in Japanese and many other languages. It has found its place in the German Lutheran Church’s hymn-book.
The need to forgive and to be forgiven is global. The pity of war is now. Blood flows in Iraq, Afghanistan, and in many parts of Africa. In every death, Jesus is crucified again. And, as vast fortunes are spent on weapons, children die because they have no clean water.
To honour the dead is to help to bring nearer the time when, in the words of Micah, “swords are turned to ploughshares and the nations learn war no more.” It is to sow the seeds of peace, here and now to embrace the counter-culture of the Prince of Peace.
Paul Oestreicher
Canon Emeritus of Coventry Litany of reconciliation All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. The hatred which divides nation from nation, race from race, class from class Father forgive. The covetous desires of people and nations to possess what is not their own Father forgive. The greed which exploits the work of human hands and lays waste the earth Father forgive. Our envy of the welfare and happiness of others Father forgive. Our indifference to the plight of the imprisoned, the homeless, the refugee Father forgive. The lust which dishonours the bodies of men, women and children Father forgive. The pride which leads us to trust in ourselves and not in God Father forgive. Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, Forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. |
