ANZAC Commemoration Service address

Full text of Archbishop Jensen’s address to the ANZAC Commemoration Service at the Hyde Park Memorial in Sydney.
25th April, 2010

"Where is death's sting? Where grave thy victory?' They are powerful questions, because in the end they confront every human being, whether in the death of another or finally in our own death. They are especially poignant when we think of the death of the young, as we do here today. We can pretend to be indifferent or stoical, but death has a sting to it and the final chapter of every human life is defeat and decay.

Not victory and triumph.

Of course, these questions are in the Bible. They are a quote from the Bible. On our behalf the Bible asks the big question.

And it answers it as well.

It tells us that the sting of death is not merely natural, as in the natural death of an animal. We are not mere animals. We have a moral life; we know right from wrong; we acknowledge our failure to keep the law of God. As a result, human death is not merely an end to life; it is a judgment on life. It expresses the necessary judgment of God himself on human life.

The sting of death is not merely the pain of separation and the horror of loss. The sting of death is the failure of humanity. But of course the Bible is making this point only to make a bigger point. We may be helpless in the face of death and judgment, but we are not beyond help, for God, as we have also just said, is the helper of the helpless.

I visited Jerusalem for the first time in my life in January 2008 just for a few days. You may have thought that I would make straight for the sacred sites of the Christian religion. But they were not for me. Instead, I went to the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery and visited the graves of our war dead, especially the Light Horsemen who took part in the liberation of Palestine and particularly Jerusalem. I wanted to stand amongst them and remember them.

Thank God we are not a war-like nation. Thank God we treasure the things that make for peace. But thank God we are also prepared to sacrifice where necessary even though it leads to loss and grief. It is impossible to calculate the loss not just of those who went and returned having seen things that would haunt them all their lives, not just of those who were disabled in mind, body and spirit, not even those who lost their young lives, but also of those who stayed behind, who then spent the next decades in lonely grief over the son or daughter or friend or husband who did not return and for the most part never returned, even to be buried.

This indeed is the sting and the victory of death.

There were millions of victims of war in the twentieth century and as human beings we are one with them all. But as an Australian, as one coming from the same land, the same national family as those who sacrificed their lives, I stood amongst those lonely graves and was sad for them and proud of them, and acknowledged that in a special sense they will always be ours, that they belong to us.

But what has the helper of the helpless got for them, and for us?

Just down the hill from that cemetery, there was once another grave. We even think we know the spot where it was. Into this grave went the corpse of a man who died as a result of violence. Another victory for death and evil. But, in a stupendous act of God, the process of death and judgment was reversed and he was resurrected from this grave. Jesus Christ rose from the dead by the power of God and unlike all the other graves around him, his grave is empty. He is not here, he is risen.

For the rest of us, there is a delay, a wait. But we do not wait without hope. When we commit our sons and daughters to war, we commit them into the hands of a God who is the helper of the helpless.  Many of those who went forth into war in our name were also personally trusting in God as their helper.  They knew that the fact that God has resurrected this one, means that there is hope for all. That he has taken this man at his most helpless, in death and brought him back to life is the promise that his intends to do so again and again and again. In the greatest war of all, the war against death, as the Bible then says, "But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.'

We cherish ANZAC because it is our chief opportunity to reflect on the abiding things which make us a people, a nation. But our reflection is shallow if we do not see that the whole thing is part of an even bigger narrative, the narrative of God's warfare on sin and evil and death itself. That is why, to this day when we gather like this, we allow ourselves to ask the biggest question, as so many in of our services would have also: "Where is death's sting? Where grave thy victory?'

And like them we answer:  "I triumph still if thou abide with me.'