Faith in the community: King’s vital message on 80th anniversary of VJ-Day
By the Very Rev Anthony Cane, Dean of Portsmouth
OUR King delivered an important message for our times in what he said on the 80th anniversary of Victory over Japan (VJ-Day), which ended the Second World War.
Reflecting on how many very different countries and communities worked together to achieve the first VJ Day, King Charles said: “Together they proved that, in times of war and in times of peace, the greatest weapons of all are the not the arms your bear, but the arms you link.”
’Not the arms you bear, but the arms you link’. This is a powerful image for interpreting our times, and helpful to those with responsibility to preach and pray in the city’s churches at a time of continued worldwide conflict.
For a powerful example of what the King meant, we need look no further than the 104-year-old veteran who went off script to pay tribute to ‘my brave King’ for being present at the VJ Day Commemoration while being treated for cancer.
He was Captain Yavar Abbas, who as a young man found himself choosing between fighting against the British for Indian independence, or for the British against the military threat of Japan.
So it was that he became one of around two and a half million Indians who joined the British Indian Army, linking arms across potential barriers of nationality, race and faith.
There is much in Bible about those who suffered in the past. The letter to the Hebrews, for example, has a whole list of those who were killed, mocked, chained and flogged, in living out their faith.
Now, however, the same letter tells us, the responsibility falls to us to ‘”run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.”
“What kind of race is this?”, I asked at the cathedral’s informal Pompey Sundays act of worship (which happens at 9.30am each Sunday) and I received a whole series of answers.
I loved the suggestion of a relay race, in which we are handed on the baton of faith for our leg, so that we can pass it on to others. And indeed there are many races in which team work is crucial, as in cycling and rowing.
Perhaps the ultimate way to finish the race would be for everyone to cross the line together, arms linked, rejoicing in those who have encouraged us in these testing times.
PORTSMOUTH CATHEDRAL, High Street, Old Portsmouth, PO1 2HA
www.portsmouthcathedral.org.uk