Anzac Day is April 25. It is a New Zealand and Australian day of remembering those who died fighting in wars .
Imagery of the ANZACs (Australia and New Zealand Army Corps) as voluntary sacrifice has resonance with an atonement theory of the crucifixion as a voluntary sacrifice. ‘Greater love has no man than he gave up his life for his friends’. It’s a problematic image if it’s seen as sancitifying war. However, ANZAC day has found a renewed footing in the New Zealand imagination, and some kind of imaginative engagement with it by the church could be part of the recognition of current indigenous forms of Pakeha spirituality.
Our recognition of this day at Cityside has generally been in the form of visual displays and readings and prayers within the service.
Laurence Binyon’s first world war poem ‘For the Fallen’ has the famous stanza that is used often on ANZAC day:
‘They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them’
It borrows from Psalm 113: 3
‘The Lord’s name is praised from the rising up of the sun
unto the going down of the same.’
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