Press Releases12 Nov 07

Sermon preached on Remembrance Sunday in St Macartin's Cathedral, Enniskillen

Sermon preached on Remembrance Sunday 2007 in St Macartin’s Cathedral, Enniskillen by the Rt Revd Michael Jackson, Bishop of Clogher

Readings: Isaiah 38:10-20; St John 9:24-34

Isaiah 38:17 Bitterness, not prosperity, has indeed been my lot, but your love saved me from the pit of destruction.

Today is a day which the whole world is remembering and which many people have been dreading. And surely the same world can understand why. Twenty years ago, on Remembrance Sunday 1987, people gathered at the Cenotaph here in Enniskillen to honour the dead of two World Wars as people had done before, as people have done since then and still gather to this day. That spirit of Enniskillen, despite the best efforts of the perpetrators of the particular human atrocity which has gone down in the annals of history as The Enniskillen Bomb, has never been dampened, diminished or destroyed. What happened on that steely November morning cannot be forgotten. Eleven people were killed, and many years later a twelfth person subsequently died; many times that number were injured and their number was to be found across three generations. The name of Enniskillen acquired a currency worldwide which its citizens, then or now, had neither wanted nor sought. The names of those who were killed were the following: Bertha Armstrong, Edward Armstrong, Wesley Armstrong, Samuel Gault, Ronnie Hill, Jessie Johnston, Kit Johnston, Johnny Megaw, Nessie Mullan, William Mullan, Alberta Quinton, Marie Wilson. We remember them in a very special and immediate way today.

For those who were present in Enniskillen on November 8th 1987 and who are here in Enniskillen today, twenty years later, survivors and relatives, words which previously were nothing more than theoretical terms without any immediate relevance – words like trauma, counselling, or phrases like dealing with the past, healing through remembering, telling your own story – these have taken on a meaning and an urgency which are personal and private to those people. But, at the same time, those same experiences and needs require the support and the help of other words like community and trust. These too lie within the same town of Enniskillen and within the people of Fermanagh acting together. As in all things, the future lies ahead of us. That future is new and it presents opportunities which are new. At the same time, that future quite quickly becomes the past as these twenty years have also shown us. Under God we are invited to live it and to share it in our own lives and in the lives of others. It takes time and it is costly. We all know that. But it is the future which will carry us forward.

It is surely to be expected that Christian people go to the Scriptures of Old and New Testament for guidance in many things. We do so in times of happiness and we do so, perhaps even more so, in times of distress. From the Scriptures we learn that things which we are experiencing now have happened before and will happen again. The anger, the tears, the betrayal and the alienation are held together under God within the pages of the Bible every bit as much as are the joy expressed, the laughter shared and the hands held. To say that these things have happened before is not to reduce their current or present impact on anyone, nor again to diminish their power to cause acute and bitter pain. Rather, there is somewhere within those words of experience and words of faith something of God. In all of the complexity God is there. God is not an idea which we invent. God is a person already present to us through our very being, in our life and in our death.

Both today’s readings speak directly to us of healing as something difficult and as something which often happens in the thick of conflict. The word-pictures used by the prophet Isaiah speak of a pain and a torment almost beyond human enduring. As the suffering bites deep, we hear King Hezekiah give voice to the vivid memory of God rolling up his life like a weaver when he cuts the web from the threads which form the loose fringe – a picture both of uselessness and of finality; or the involuntary noises which he makes, his best attempt at coherent speech – the swallow’s twitter or the dove’s moan. From St John’s Gospel the bitter interrogation by his own people of the man born blind whose sight has just been restored to him by Jesus brings us into a world all too familiar to us. It is one of internal sectarianism. It is one where people check their lines, look over their shoulders without looking forward, a world where the good thing which has happened is totally obscured by the entitlement which bystanders take to themselves either to approve or disapprove. This is a world with which Northern Ireland is more than familiar and with which we from time to time have been too comfortable. It neither explains the past nor prepares us for the future. It holds us where we are, in fear rather than in love.

The wonderful thing is that while these critics in St John’s account of the healing squabble and fight about the entitlement of Jesus to do anything whatsoever which goes beyond what they know of Moses, the man whose sight has been restored to him knows only the joy of regaining his sight. His words are telling: All I know is this: I was blind and now I can see. Just as our Old Testament Lesson recognizes that, in a situation of bitterness, love rescues a person from destruction, so, in a situation of conflict, actions speak louder than words. These words of Scripture offer focus and direction to our anxious and often distracted thinking. As the man born blind speaks of his joy in sight restored, so in the same sort of way King Hezekiah speaks of the music of praise resounding all day long in the house of the Lord. In each case, let us remember that such a conclusion is not automatic but stands firmly in the recognition of deep suffering. It takes the person at the heart of it on a journey of both painfulness and faithfulness.

Many of you will remember vividly what it was like on Sunday November 8^th 1987. A number of people had arrived early and stood with their back to the bridge waiting for the laying of wreaths. As is the way of things, a group of people somehow grows from being a handful to a crowd. For my own part, I had no poppy and along with my wife I went off to Veitch’s Shop to get one. Turning to go back to the Cenotaph, suddenly there was a noise, piercing and deadening all in one. For a split second, everything was the same and sight and sound did not connect. For a split second nothing was seen to change. However that split second did not last. Masonry, human cries, dust, devastation and destruction all fell in on top of one another and on top of people standing waiting patiently and reflectively for Remembrance. Next, there was a surge of people forward to see what they could do. With their bare hands they sought to dislodge rubble in order to free those trapped underneath it. Emergency services were at the scene as soon as they possibly could. This concern continued in the Erne Hospital where medical and nursing personnel, relatives, friends and clergy worked tirelessly to give comfort and hope to those whose lives and loves had been shattered completely. One week later, on the following Sunday, I had the opportunity to return to Enniskillen to attend the service in this very cathedral church. The service officially began at 11.30 am but from 8.30 am seats were already filling up. Other churches, organizations, and institutions as well as countless unsung individuals played their part then and still play their part today in supporting those most acutely affected by this horrific and unforgettable event of Remembrance Sunday 1987.

The late Raymond McCartney, known to everyone throughout County Fermanagh, captured what was happening on video camera and his images recorded for posterity the callous destruction and obliteration of human life which is and which remains The Enniskillen Bomb. I use the word: remains because this event is still dogged by a genuine failure on the part of the perpetrators to accept any sense of reality about what they did; by the total and abject absence of any meaningful gesture of apology; by an unrealistic expectation that the very people whose lives and family securities were shattered on that day could somehow simply ‘move on.’ The quiet dignity of the people of Enniskillen and of County Fermanagh generally in the face of this cynical attempt to dismantle an entire community in the service of an abstract ideology which took no cognizance of the right of people to life itself, is equalled only by the reality that Enniskillen today boasts a vibrant life tempered and perforce subdued by what happened twenty years ago but nonetheless active and tangible.

It would be remiss of me not to call, once again, for a meaningful apology and admission of wrongdoing on the part of those who did what they did. It would be equally remiss of me not to acknowledge with gratitude the many ways in which people young and old have responded to the invitation of those locally and internationally who have sought to help and to bring all of us forward. This has been a challenge and a test of our maturity as human beings. But we can hold our heads high. Twenty years later, the memories are still there. The experiences are vivid and all too clear. At the same time, there have been developments which no-one might have expected or predicted. Enniskillen has regained a confidence in itself which is glorious to see. The spirit of those who would not be battered into non-entity by The Enniskillen Bomb has borne fruit in many initiatives, some of them up front, some of them more private. But this is the way we are here. This is the way we tend to do things. At our best we are practical and understated. As people of Fermanagh we tend to prefer to ‘get on with it’ rather than seek to perform under the spotlight.

One of these initiatives is aptly entitled The Spirit of Enniskillen. Growing out of the experience of Enniskillen people on that fateful day, the Spirit of Enniskillen seeks year after year to enable young people of Enniskillen and Fermanagh to bring together and to harness for the future in the best way possible, that is through personal encounter and meeting one another, the following qualities: integrity, optimism and commitment combined with dialogue, learning and change. I am reminded again of the words of Isaiah the prophet:

Bitterness, not prosperity, had indeed been my lot, but your love saved me from the pit of destruction.

and of the words of St John:

Whether or not he is a sinner, I do not know, the man replied. All I know is this: I was blind and now I can see.

Transformation, love in action – these are important challenges to take to heart from the words of Holy Scripture. The Spirit of Enniskillen, among many other initiatives, offers tried and tested ways in which a new type of life can be envisioned and enacted. One of its important principles is that of agreeing to disagree. And The Spirit of Enniskillen Trust is realistic enough to suggest that adults often find this more difficult than do young people. To date over one thousand young people from across the community of Enniskillen have participated in the programme and there are over fifty experienced youth facilitators who have emerged through it. The hope for all of us is that as people become more secure and confident in knowing who they are, they will also come to understand more the hopes and concerns of those from whom they differ. This type of learning is something which we sorely need.

We must also remember that we are gathered here to remember the fallen of two World Wars. This enables us to be true to the memory of those whose lives were cynically ended and whose lives were cruelly disfigured and reduced by their being present at the Cenotaph to do just that on Sunday November 8th 1987. Many have thought that as time moves forward we are in danger of forgetting, rather than remembering, those who gave their lives for the cause of freedom in two World Wars. Respectfully, I beg to differ. The twentieth century was indeed a century of savage brutality in warfare. It was a century of relentless upheaval in Europe as we know it and today’s European Union itself is in part a response to this. We have seen little of this twenty-first century but already, in its seven short years, war is still firmly fixed on the map of humanity. Perhaps it is because we know more through sophisticated communications systems but Iraq, Afghanistan, many parts of Africa and the Middle East are all firmly and convincingly at war. We need to remember to remember. We must not forget through carelessness or neglect.

On a sober and sobering Remembrance Sunday which falls on November 11^th in this year 2007 I ask you to remember all that Enniskillen and Enniskillen’s people have suffered on November 8^th 1987 and since. I ask you to remember the hearts which are still broken, the souls which are still tortured and the eyes which have run dry of tears. I ask you to remember the freedom to live which you and I have and to treasure it, for it is denied to so many worldwide. I ask you to remember those who in the armed forces have served in sacrificial ways to preserve freedom and to drive back evil, those of today as well as those of yesterday. I ask you to remember the twelve people and their families for whom Remembrance Sunday 1987 brought death and destruction when they had come to give thanks and to remember. I ask you to remember the people who will live in Enniskillen in the future and who will themselves remember the value and the dignity of human life and the urgency of healing at the heart of pain and sorrow.

St John 9:25 All I know is this: I was blind and now I can see.