大象传媒

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This script cannot exactly reflect the transmission, as it was prepared before the service was broadcast. It may include editorial notes prepared by the producer, and minor spelling and other errors that were corrected before the radio broadcast.

It may contain gaps to be filled in at the time so that prayers may reflect the needs of the world, and changes may also be made at the last minute for timing reasons, or to reflect current events.

听

大象传媒 Radio 4. Time check. The Archbishop of Canterbury鈥檚 Director for Reconciliation Canon David Porter is the preacher from Coventry Cathedral now on this morning鈥檚 Sunday worship. The service is led by the Canon Precentor the Revd Dr David Stone. Our service begins with an eye witness account from seventy years ago by Richard Dimbleby:

The programme begins with a recording of Richard Dimbleby

As we went deeper into the camp and further from the main gate we saw more and more of the horrors of the place.听 And I realised that what is so ghastly is not so much the individual acts of barbarism that take place in SS camps, but the gradual breakdown of civilisation that happens when human beings are herded like animals behind barbed wire.

The Canon Precentor, the Reverend David Stone, says

In 1945, broadcaster Richard Dimbleby reported from a newly-liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, revealing to the world the facts of the Holocaust in all their horrific detail.听 Today, seventy years on, we gather to anticipate Holocaust Memorial Day on Tuesday. We mourn the lost and keep their memory alive as we mark the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and death camp.

Welcome to Coventry Cathedral, this centre of peace and reconciliation, to participate with us in our act of worship this morning.听 It鈥檚 a time for us to pause and remember the millions of people who have been murdered or whose lives have been changed beyond recognition during the Holocaust, through Nazi persecution and also in subsequent genocides, such as in Bosnia 鈥� as we mark the 20th anniversary of the Srebrinica massacre 鈥� and in places such as Cambodia, Rwanda, and Darfur.

Helping to lead our worship this morning is the choir of Coventry鈥檚 Blue Coat School. They begin our service by leading us in a glorious hymn of praise. Right from the start, we set ourselves to resist the downward pull of evil and focus instead on the God who invites us to place our confidence in him no matter what 鈥� the God of Abraham, who reigns on high.

听
Everyone sings

Hymn
All听The God of Abraham praise

Thomas Olivers (1725-1799)
based on the Hebrew Yigdal
Tune CP 586 Leoni Hebrew melody noted by Thomas Olivers (1725-1799)

Canon David says

The Coventry Litany of Reconciliation is known all over the world and said here in the Cathedral as part of our pattern of prayer each weekday. Based on the seven deadly sins, it helps us to acknowledge the contribution we each make to the troubles of the world. The response 鈥楩ather forgive鈥� is what the Cathedral鈥檚 Provost, Dick Howard, arranged to be inscribed on the wall of the ruined Cathedral after it was bombed in 1940. Some people at the time were very upset and thought that 鈥楩ather forgive them鈥� might have been more appropriate. But no. 鈥淭here are no innocents,鈥� Provost Howard said. 鈥淲e all stand in need of forgiveness; this understanding is the beginning of reconciliation.鈥� So let us pray together now.

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

George Haynes says

The hatred which divides nation from nation, race from race, class from class.
All听Father forgive.

Abigail Claridge says

The covetous desires of people and nations to possess what is not their own.
All听Father forgive.

Josh Grimwood says

The greed which exploits the work of human hands and lays waste the earth.
All听Father forgive.

Ellisse Dixon says

Our envy of the welfare and happiness of others.
All听Father forgive.

Will Haynes says

Our indifference to the plight of the imprisoned, the homeless, the refugee.
All听Father forgive.

Abi Bailey says

The lust which dishonours the bodies of men, women and children.
All听Father forgive.

Thomas Ermel says

The pride which leads us to trust in ourselves and not in God.
All听Father forgive.

All听Be kind to one another, tender-hearted,
forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

The choir and congregation sing

Hymn
All听Brother, sister, let me serve you,

Choir听I will weep when you are weeping;
upper听when you laugh I鈥檒l laugh with you;
I will share your joy and sorrow
till we鈥檝e seen this journey through;
All听I will share your joy and sorrow
till we鈥檝e seen this journey through.

All听Brother, sister, let me serve you,
let me be as Christ to you;
pray that I may have the grace to
let you be my servant too.

Richard Gillard (b. 1953)
Tune CP 393 Servant Song Richard Gillard

Canon David says

Our Bible reading this morning comes from the Gospel according to Matthew, chapter 5. It鈥檚 the beginning of what is often described as the Sermon on the Mount and is read for us by Abi Bailey.

Bible Reading
Abi Bailey reads

1When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. 2Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:
3鈥橞lessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4鈥橞lessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
5鈥橞lessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
6鈥橞lessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
7鈥橞lessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
8鈥橞lessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
9鈥橞lessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
10鈥橞lessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness鈥� sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11鈥橞lessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

This is the word of the Lord.
All听Thanks be to God.

Canon David says

The choir will now sing Gerald Cohen鈥檚 setting of the twenty-third psalm. I was talking to a shepherd the other day who had no doubt that real experience of looking after sheep lies behind this powerful and evocative psalm, which is sung in Hebrew. He described it as easily his favourite passage from the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament: The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want... Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.
Psalm 23

The choir sings

Adonai roi, lo echsar.

Canon David says

We鈥檙e delighted to be joined this morning by Ros Johnson from the Coventry Reform Jewish Community. We鈥檝e asked her to share something of her perspective on keeping alive the memory of the Holocaust, which is this year鈥檚 national theme.

Ros Johnson says

My Great grandfather and great grandmother were called Mendel and Jocha Ariel and they lived in Lodz in Poland. Lodz is the 3rd largest city in Poland and before WW2 had a Jewish population of 230,000, the second largest Jewish Community in Europe. My great grandparents used to run a restaurant there which was popular with actors and this drew several of their children into the acting/performing community. I imagine that restaurant as a noisy bustling place with a lot of laughter and shouting!

One of their sons Chayim, my great uncle, his wife Rachel and his sister Sonia travelled very widely across Eastern Europe, performing, acting, and singing in the Yiddish theatre. In 1915 Chayim and Rachel had a baby boy, Harry. He was born in Lodz and then Rachel returned to join the tour. They must have loved their work very much.

In 1939 when the Nazis invaded Lodz they began forcing all the Jews into a ghetto, a fenced sealed area with no water or sanitation. Some Jews had fled but still 163,000 lived there in terrible conditions. Food was scarce and life was very hard.听 Many died of disease in the appalling conditions.

Later the Nazis began deporting thousands of Jews to concentration camps. Chayim and Rachel died in Auschwitz in 1942; Sonia also died in 1942, possibly in the ghetto.
Harry managed to escape, eventually reaching Britain. I saw him perform in a play when I was 14, we went backstage to see him afterwards, I remember him as a kind man and very friendly, with a big smiley face. I also remember feeling sad when my parents told me that his family 鈥� who were my family - had all perished in the Holocaust.

Millions of families were devastated by the loss of family members in the Holocaust, millions of people killed, a tragic loss that we must never forget.

Canon David says

There are few people in the Jewish community whose lives have NOT been affected by the Holocaust: Thank you, Ros, for sharing with us some of the painful memories you hold in your heart today. Before David Porter, the Archbishop of Canterbury鈥檚 Director of Reconciliation, speaks to us, we listen to the choir as they sing Johnny Lange and Jimmy Duncan鈥檚 song, 鈥業 asked the Lord to comfort me鈥�.

The choir sings

Song
鈥淚 asked the Lord to comfort me when things weren鈥檛 going my way.

Sermon

preached by the Archbishop of Canterbury鈥檚 Director of Reconciliation, Canon David Porter

It has only been in the last six years through my work at Coventry Cathedral that I have been able to visit for the first time some of the camps whose names are synonymous with the horrendous events of the Shoah - the Holocaust. They echo across the decades听 -听 Gross-Rosen, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Buchenwald and Dachau.
Nothing prepares you for the tangible terrifying sense of place that each conveys. Nor for the quiet yet stark beauty of the surrounding countryside. This was all the more striking as the final stages of my journey to each camp brought me through some remarkable towns and cities - Breslau, Krakow, Wiemar and Munich. Each in their own way symbolic of high European culture.
It is in this context that the deep and disturbing inhumanity of the holocaust is set. Hidden away, the dark side of a culture that presumed to civilise the world.
In Dachau it was profoundly moving to stay overnight at a small convent on the perimeter of the site and to share with the joint Lutheran - Catholic chaplaincy as they became part of Coventry Cathedral鈥檚 international reconciliation network, the Community of the Cross of Nails.
Woven throughout this journey over the last six years has been another jarring and seemingly contradictory path. Places whose names have a different resonance - Lubeck, Wurzburg, Pfrozheim and Dresden. German cities I visited on the anniversary of allied heavy bomber raids. In each our partners in the Community the Cross of Nails have taken a lead and sensitively enabled a hard remembering. Citizens of these cities now allow themselves to publicly remember. Heavy hearted, sometimes tentatively and with acknowledgment of the shame which brought such death and destruction to their city.
In Wurzburg for instance there is now a walk of witness from the once neglected memorial site to the last remains of the train platform from which the city鈥檚 Jews were deported. There the names of all the Jewish children sent to the camps are read out as today鈥檚 children lay a stone for each to form a rocky mound of acknowledgement and tribute.
Keeping the memory alive - memory of a time of unspeakable violence and profound suffering. Whose memory do we keep alive to make sense of the nature and scale of the violence? How do we remember in a way that bears true witness to the cause of such human loss and pain?
As Croatian theologian Miroslav Volf challenges us 鈥淭o remember wrongdoing untruthfully is to act unjustly.鈥�
I would add that to remember selectively is to diminish our common humanity and suffering. How many of us took time last year to remember it was twenty years since the Rwanda genocide? Or know that this April it is the centenary of the Armenian genocide begun in 1915? This summer it will also be the 20th anniversary of the massacre at Srebrenica.
Today the world shudders as fresh memories of tragedy and suffering are made out of our anger and hate. From Bagra in Nigeria, to Bor in South Sudan, in Aleppo and Mosul, Peshawar and Paris - the list is far too long to recite - people of many faiths and none live with the fresh grief, bodily wounds and emotional scars of inhumanity and brutality.
At the heart of Christian worship is a simple act of keeping memory alive. In the sharing of bread and wine we keep the memory of Jesus alive among us. Even as I say this, I must press pause. Keeping the memory of Jesus alive in the wrong way could have cost you your life in the religious wars of the past. And the contested nature of this act of worship still prevents Protestant and Catholic from sharing together in full communion. A thought not to be lost as we end the annual week of prayer for Christian unity. Keeping memory alive is always problematic!
Yet this is the essence of the worship and witness of the church. The Jesus Christians remember and know by faith, is God who is with us. God who becomes a human being - flesh and blood like us. He inhabits the intimacy of the human story. When we consider others as less than human and not one of 鈥榰s鈥�, whatever our 鈥榰s鈥� may be, Jesus stands with them.
This Jesus offers humanity hope and the possibility of healing the deep wounds we carry from the past. In doing so he invites us to the seemingly impossible. In teaching his disciples to pray Jesus demands much - forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.
Forgiveness does not mean that the hurt of the past doesn't matter nor should it be forgotten. For Christians it is to deal with past hurt in a way that breaks the enmity and hostility that defines our relationships resulting in ongoing violence and war. This is exactly what Jesus does for us Christians in our relationship with God. Jesus makes peace and reconciles us to God and forgiveness is the key ingredient.
Having witnessed the systematic dehumanisation of his people in the horrendous events of the Holocaust, Elie Weisel reflects the angst at the heart of his experience when he pleads; 鈥淕od of forgiveness, do not forgive those murderers of Jewish children here.鈥�
It is the God of Forgiveness whom Jesus invites us to know and remember. To keep the memory of such a God alive when so much makes it impossible to believe such a God exists.
The daily use of the litany of reconciliation, as in this service, helps us here at Coventry Cathedral to keep the memory of a forgiving God alive - Father Forgive. Sitting resolutely with all who suffer unspeakable horror. Yet finding the grace which allows us to even begin to contemplate the pain borne by other human beings, whatever guilt they may carry for the atrocities of our world.
This is not an easy place to inhabit. However for Christians it is the place that Jesus inhabits and invites us to follow.

The choir sings

Song

Go down, Moses, way down in a Egypt land,

Canon David says

When several students from Blue Coat School met to talk about this morning鈥檚 service, we reflected on how important it is to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive, aware of how easy it was back then for ordinary people to be gently and gradually drawn into what now we see as the unimaginable horror of what happened.

We thought too about how hard it is to forgive someone who has done something dreadful to you and about the need to pray with humility and hope for those in distress in our world today. As we pray, several students will begin to light seventy candles placed on the altar, including a Jewish Memorial Candle or 鈥榊izkor鈥�.听 That鈥檚 one candle for each year since the liberation of Auschwitz. We will also hear the main theme from the film 鈥楽chindler鈥檚 List鈥�, written by John Williams and played on the clarinet by Laurence Trowsdale-Stannard, another Blue-coat student.

Prayers

Josh Grimwood says

It鈥檚 a tradition within the Jewish Faith for those who are mourning to say 鈥楰addish鈥�, an ancient prayer which expresses a determination to praise God even in the midst of suffering and loss.

Ros Johnson says

A few lines from the Mourner鈥檚 Kaddish鈥�

Yitgadal v'yitkadash sh'mei raba.
B'alma di v'ra chirutei,
v'yamlich malchutei,
b'chayeichon uv'yomeichon
uv'chayei d'chol beit Yisrael,
baagala uviz'man kariv. V'im'ru: Amen.

Let us magnify and let us sanctify in this world the great name of God,
whose will created it.听 May God's reign come in your lifetime and in your days,
and in the lifetime of the family of Israel - quickly and speedily may it come
Amen

---------------------------------
Oseh shalom bimromav,
Hu yaaseh shalom aleinu,
v'al kol Yisrael.v'al kol Olam, V'imru: Amen.

May the Maker of peace in the highest bring this peace
upon us and upon all Israel
and upon all the world
Amen

Josh Grimwood says

The following words were found scribbled on a piece of wrapping paper near the body of a dead child at Ravensbruck concentration camp.

Abigail Claridge says

鈥淥 Lord, remember not only the men and women of good will but also those of evil will. But do not remember all the suffering they have inflicted upon us; remember the fruits we have borne thanks to this suffering: our comradeship, our loyalty, our humility, our courage, our generosity, the greatness of heart which has grown out of all this. And when they come to the judgement let all the fruits that we have borne be their forgiveness.鈥� Amen.

Josh Grimwood says

These words come from a litany by Desmond Tutu.

Will Haynes says

鈥淥h when will we ever learn that you intended us for shalom, for wholeness, for peace, for fellowship, for togetherness, for brotherhood, for sisterhood, for family? When will we ever learn that you created us as your children, as members of one family, your family, the human family 鈥� that you created us for linking arms to express our common humanity.鈥� Amen.

The Lord鈥檚 Prayer
Canon David says

As Jesus taught us, so we pray:

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins
as we forgive those who sin against us.
Lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power,
and the glory are yours
now and for ever.
Amen.

Canon David says

Born in Haarlem in the Netherlands, Fred Kaan鈥檚 teenage experience of Nazi occupation never left him. His parents were deeply involved in the resistance movement, with weapons hidden under their floor. Three of Fred鈥檚 grandparents died from starvation shortly before the war鈥檚 end. 鈥淓merging from the war a committed pacifist, I became interested in the faith and began the study of theology and psychology at Utrecht University,鈥� he remembered. He went on to become an ordained minister in what is now the United Reformed Church and was also a prolific hymn writer. Which brings us to our final hymn, which was specially written by Fred for Coventry Cathedral: God! As with silent hearts we bring to mind how hate and war diminish humankind, we pause - and seek in worship to increase our knowledge of the things that make for peace. It鈥檚 sung to the tune 鈥楾he Supreme Sacrifice.鈥�

Everyone sings

Hymn

God! As with silent hearts we bring to mind
Fred Kaan (1929-2009)
commissioned by Coventry Cathedral
Tune The Supreme Sacrifice Charles Harris (1865-1936)

Blessing
Canon David and Ros Johnson say

DS听The Lord bless you and watch over you,

RH听the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you,

DS听the Lord look kindly on you and give you peace.

RH听My brothers,

DS听my sisters,

Both听may the Lord bless you. Amen.

Canon David says

Thank you for joining with us in our service today. We leave you with a song from South Africa arranged by Alexander L鈥橢strange. It proclaims a confident faith in God and solid hope for the future 鈥� 鈥榃e are who we are through the power of prayer.鈥�

The choir sings
Song
Si njay njay njay ngeme thanda zoh.
Woh mama bagu dalay babay thanda zah.