I've just come in from our village Act of Remembrance - a rather chilly affair this year, but numbers hold up with Deputy Lord Lieutenant, County Councillors, Air Cadets, British Legion members and the clergy of local Churches in attendance. A number of them would have been at the civic ceremony at the Cenotaph in Consett two miles up the hill. Ours is a more intimate affair - and the best thing is the nature of the Memorial at which it takes place: a short row of houses built after the First World War. The names of those who died in battle are recorded in a panel on the wall of one of the houses, but it's the houses which themselves are the memorial.
And isn't that right? At the Eucharist this morning where we had a separate Act of Remembrance at the two memorials which commemorate the fallen of the whole parish - not just Shotley Bridge village - we ignored the Lectionary's direction that Church of England parishes should read from the prophet Malachi, instead to use RCL's reading from Isaiah. And this is why:
The prophet Isaiah in his vision of a peaceable Kingdom (Isaiah 65.17-25) writes:
They shall build houses and inhabit them;
they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
They shall not build and another inhabit;
they shall not plant and another eat;
for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be,
and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.
Hope is in building, says the prophet. Always we face the challenge, what is it that we wish to build?
More about this in my homily, which you can find by clicking here.
And (since I haven't blogged for so long), here at last is what Rosie Junemann, our Reader, had to say when she preached for the Feast of All Saints, two weeks ago.
The picture is of the Abbey of Monte Cassino from the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery in the town below.
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