Service of Prayer and Remembrance after the Tsunami Disaster
St Thomas's Cathedral
Sunday 13th February 2005
Readings: Is 33: 2-16 / Eph 3: 14-21
Where were you when you first became aware of the Tsunami disaster? I was having an innocent Boxing Day meal with the family. Even as a viewer of the television programmes, it took me some time to adjust to what appeared to be going on. Everything was happening very fast, and uncontrollably. There was nothing to be done in the short-term, except hope and pray that the number of deaths and casualties would be as small as possible – before we could even begin to think about what would probably be years of work in reconstructing the livelihoods of very many people. Shortly before Christmas, I took the wedding of a couple I know well (I had prepared the husband for confirmation when I was a parish priest). They had gone out to Indonesia for their honeymoon: we all held our breath, and a few days later learned that all was well. But it could have been otherwise, and in standing before you this afternoon, I am very conscious of the fact that I might have been taking their memorial service.
The onlooker needs points of reference, points of comparison. For myself, they are very tame. Two memories came back and began to merge. One was from January 1978, when we lived in Boston, Lincolnshire, and the River Witham burst its banks. The flood alert had gone out, the Borough Council had for some years been wrangling about how and whether to strengthen the walls along that tidal river as it winds its way through the ancient town and out into the Wash, and beyond into the North Sea; but they hadn’t got their act together. Sarah was watching from my first floor study. Suddenly masses of water broke down the inadequate walls. Sandbags were swept aside, and the floodwater was literally everywhere within seconds. Our downstairs was covered in it – and so was everyone else’s, the parish church included. No building is ever the same after a flood, and ours was no exception. When the water subsided, the cleaning went on and on – the dirt reappearing relentlessly, as if by magic. Picking up the pieces was far more complicated, far more lengthy, far more costly, than we could ever have imagined.
And then the second memory. I was a young lad in the Lake District of Jutland, near my grandparents’ summer house. We went out for a row in the old boat. Impulsively, I took the rope in my hands and made a dramatic jump for a pier. But the thrust of my body pushed the boat further back, so that instead of landing on the pier, I fell into the water and plunged straight to the bottom. I can still recall those split-seconds of terror, with air bubbles coming out of my mouth, going up to the surface. But the combination of my large lungs and my parents’ muscle-power got me out, and all was well.
Those two innocent scenarios have kept coming back to me every time I have read bulletins about the international efforts to identify, if at all possible, loved ones, as well as provide food and shelter for those who have lost everything but their lives. The geologist will say that the reason why the Tsunami happened was to prevent the whole of the planet earth, which like us human-beings, is no finished product, from being completely submerged in water. But that is small comfort. Now is not the time to go into explanations and arguments. Instead, it is a time for gentleness, compassion, and re-building ourselves, our sense of trust in each other, and in our environment – which, as we have been tragically reminded, is rather more dangerous and unpredictable than we would like it to be.
So we are left with ourselves, feeling fragile, bemused, not quite ready to trust beyond who and what we can see and know to be reliable. The world has taken a severe jolt, and the international aid organisations are in there doing as much as they can to work together for a new future, including the Church Mission Society project of my Lent Appeal this year. Fortunately, the politicians are, most of them, holding back and not trying to take the credit. None of those directly involved will ever be the same again, and there is no point in pretending that they can. Confidence, trust, faith – these can be rebuilt from the shattered condition in which they find themselves. The best foundation is not fear, or anger, but love – which is why that most poetic of books in the Old Testament, the Song of Solomon, can dare to suggest, in one breath, that ‘many waters cannot quench love’, and in another breath that ‘love is as strong as death’ (Song of Solomon 8: 7,6a). The ‘many waters’ to which it refers are the waters of chaos, the waters that can destroy; and the ‘love’ to which it refers is that abiding, eternal quality, which we have seen in the actions and the facial expressions of both survivors and aid-workers in those unforgettable Television programmes.
Gentleness, compassion – and a slow re-building of confidence, trust, faith. It is about these human and divine qualities that this afternoon’s readings tell us, first with Isaiah’s message about keeping going, and then with the Letter to the Ephesians enumerating the many dimensions of love, breadth, length, height and depth, – all of which might suggest a counterpoint to our anguish, that may become small signs of hope for the future. Neither we nor our world are finished products. There is so much about both that we simply do not understand, and probably will never fully understand. But that does not stop God being God – who gives us the freedom to love, and to rebuild our lives, our confidence, our faith, when all seems lost, or at least seriously diminished. None of this is easy – and it would be churlish to suggest it were so. Life can be, and frequently is, a hard school of faith.
Whatever happens, whatever goes wrong, whatever disaster overtakes us, there is faith, and there is also hope, and there is love. Which means that there is still a future for all of us to look forward to.
+ Kenneth Portsmouth
