27.04.2015
Calls for Recognition of Armenian Genocide at Moving Remembrance Service
A poignant and dignified service of remembrance marking the 100th anniversary of the of the Armenian genocide took place in Taney Parish Church on Sunday afternoon (April 26). Members of the Armenian Apostolic Church in Ireland gathered to recall the 1.5 million Armenians who were killed by the Ottoman Turks, from 1915 to 1923.
Representatives of seven Christian denominations, including Archbishop Michael Jackson and Bishop Raymond Field (Auxiliary Bishop in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin) and representatives from the Greek Orthodox, Methodist, Salvation Army and Quakers as well as the Jewish community were in attendance at the service during which calls were made for the recognition of the genocide.
The congregation was welcomed by the Rector of Taney, Canon Robert Warren, who said it was a privilege to welcome members of the Dublin Parish of the Armenian Apostolic Church who use Taney for their regular place of worship.
During the service members of the Armenian parish read poems, sang songs and told stories of their relatives who were effected by the genocide. Dr Kristina Begoyan spoke of the life of her grandmother, who survived by fleeing Turkey, and said she was sure that every Armenian in Ireland had similar stories. Canon Patrick Thomas of the Church of Wales gave a history of the genocide. One hundred candles were lit to represent each of the 100 years since the genocide.
While the Turks have denied that what happened to the Armenians was genocide, Bishop Field recalled the words of Pope Francis two weeks ago who described the killing of the Armenians as the first genocide of the 20th century. In recognising the genocide, the Pope said it was his duty to honour the men, women and children who were massacred.
Leonard Abrahamson, President of the Jewish Representative Council, said the events being commemorated by the Armenian community resonated with the Jewish community as just a quarter of a century later, it was repeated in Europe. He said it was incomprehensible that people made in the image of God could commit such acts against other human beings.
The Armenian Consul, Mr Hayk Khemchyan, said it was time to recognise what happened 100 years ago as genocide. He added that it was the spirit of survival that enabled Armenians to continue. “It is with our lives and achievements that we truly honour the memory of those who died in the genocide,” he stated.
Archbishop Jackson paid tribute to Dr Paul Manook, chairman of the Dublin Parish Council, and his wife for their tireless work for the Armenian community in Ireland. “I respect and admire the Armenian people and I stand today in prayerful solidarity with you in this centenary year of commemoration of The Armenian Genocide,” he added.
The Archbishop said that in the eyes of the world the question remained between recognition and response to the events of 1915. “We hope and pray that the world in its entirety will see the need for the addressing of unanswered questions and that the same world will also see the fact that there is still time for the recognition of the truth to be stated and shared,” he stated.[The text of the Archbishop’s address is reproduced in full below]
Vice chairperson of the Dublin Parish Council, Mrs Aida Sarafian–Lundon, thanked everyone who had assisted the Armenian community in Ireland and supported the setting up of the parish council in the last five years. She looked forward to a memorial Khachkar (Armenian stone cross) being placed in Christ Church Cathedral later in the year to mark the centenary of the genocide and thanked the Archbishop for making this possible. She also thanked Dr Manook and his wife Isobel for the effort they put into the parish.
The Fourth Sunday of Easter; April 26th 2015
Service to commemorate the Armenian Genocide; Taney Parish Church
Address by Archbishop Michael Jackson
Reading: St Matthew 25.31–40
St Matthew 25.40: And the king will answer, Truly I tell you, anything you did for my brothers and sisters here, however insignificant, you did for me.
The words: however insignificant may themselves seem inconsequential; they may even sound as if they ought to be incidental. However, they lie directly at the heart of the matter for any of us who are listening to these words from St Matthew’s Gospel in our own time and in our own context. And I can guarantee that for other people at other times in history the same holds. The other little word that could elude us is the word: here. Here makes both time and space significant and specific. The invitation of Holy Scripture to us is to embrace history by encountering history; the most effective way for this to be done is by engaging with history honestly, objectively and compassionately. It is for this reason that God came to earth in human form, however insignificant the child of Bethlehem may have seemed to anyone in those days. The connection between what men and women on earth and God in heaven do is made truly significant by the identification with human history that became the urgent priority of God for others and for God’s expanding fulfilment of everyone and everything, here and then, here and now, here and in the future for the creation. God did this in what we call the incarnation. It is through this grace that we gather to remember one and a half million Armenians who, in that bloodcurdling phrase, ‘joined the disappeared’ in 1915, one hundred years ago. And we gather as people of faith, people of hope, people of love, people devoid of bitterness, yet people of truth, people of here, however insignificant.
St Matthew 25 takes us to the other end of the rainbow, so to speak, from the manger in Bethlehem to the court of heaven. We are face to face with one of the parables of The End Time, an iconic parable of judgement – one that is told in the Gospel architecture, in that urgent and oppressive time ahead of the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We are given a picture in two parts. The first is a simple picture derived from an observed local context well known to any of us: a shepherd separates sheep and goats, for whatever good reason. And in the second the writer of the Gospel sees in this picture a slip–road to understanding the relationship between recognition and response on a much wider canvas.
Both of these words: recognition and response are beyond insignificant if we are to be mature and altruistic human beings and faithful disciples of Jesus Christ. I say this because the particular combination of recognition and response takes us to the heart of lived history in our own time and in the time of earlier generations of people like ourselves who are, of course, our own people. Failure to recognize the dignity of the other person and the parallel failure to respond to the degradation and the loss of dignity of the other person that comes about as human values inevitably disintegrate through war and destruction, through disappearance and annihilation, dehumanize every human being known or unknown to us here and now or there and then.
The observed picture of the shepherd organizing his flock leads into the picture of the king laying out before the people gathered as his particular flock – let us always remember that it is a parable – something they probably expect very little: the moments of recognition and response to others in the lives they have been living brought back before them in vivid technicolour. If they had known or understood ‘the king’ at all, they should have predicted that his focus would always be on the insignificant people. And surely, if we and others have any sense of living Scripture this is the point at which we are connected through the person of Jesus Christ with history of past and present, the history of the person and of the community – and where its continuing questions remain inescapable. It is for us to identify those who are: the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the ill and those in prison. It is for others, as well as for God, to tell us how we treated them when we had the chance to treat them well: feeding them, giving them water to drink, taking them into our home, clothing them, coming to their help, visiting them. In this way history, leaps into the present and brings us face to face – objectively – with the past in the present. Both the good and the bad may in some cases be largely uncontrived. In other cases they are totally pre–meditated. Whatever the case may be, the good and the bad together make happen the things that touch people and that people remember. The least thing done to the most insignificant of individuals affects the lives of everyone sooner or later and in a way that is not forgotten. It is remembered in a dynamic and an historic way because it is brought directly into their culture and therefore becomes international in its reach.
My own respect and affection for the Armenian people derives from the first opportunity I was given to visit Armenia in 2002. It was as a Member of the Anglican Oriental Orthodox International Commission. We gathered in Holy Etchmiadzin and were granted an audience with the Catholikos during our time living in the monastery. Since those early days of meeting, I have had the opportunity to invite Archbishop Nathan, when he was bishop in London, to Ireland while I was bishop of Clogher and I have had the honour to visit on two occasions successive Patriarchs in the Patriarchate in Jerusalem. I also had the joy of being present at the dedication of the Armenian Cathedral in London and in tasking part in that service. I now have the even greater pleasure of having members of the Armenian community in Ireland worship here in Taney Parish in these United Dioceses of Dublin and Glendalough and of worshipping from time to time with you. And you have in many tangible ways become my firm friends; this I greatly appreciate together with the untiring work of that great friend of us all Dr Paul Manook and his wife who give so very generously of themselves to the generous witness of the Armenian people to Ireland. I respect and admire the Armenian people and I stand today in prayerful solidarity with you in this centenary year of commemoration of The Armenian Genocide.
The Scripture speaks to us of the insignificant as in no way insignificant. The Scripture offers a new and different understanding of significance itself as the dignity of the human person as made in the image and likeness of God and furthermore presented to the world in the person of Jesus Christ and by us as disciples in the strength of The Holy Trinity. This is a perspective that we ought to keep uppermost in our minds on a day such as this when we remember every one of those people who died in those unforgettable years around 1915 as in no way insignificant. In the eyes of the world, we are still faced with the question of the relationship between recognition and response in regard to these events. We hope and pray that the world in its entirety will see the need for the addressing of unanswered questions and that the same world will also see the fact that there is still time for the recognition of the truth to be stated and shared.
The gift of Easter – the good news of salvation in the resurrection of Jesus Christ – is the presence of God free to be present in the lives of people everywhere. As we pause today to reflect on the most devastating event in the life of the Armenian people, we give thanks for that gift of Christmas in the Season of Easter: Emmanuel, God–with–us.
St Matthew 2.17, 18: So the words spoken through Jeremiah the prophet were fulfilled: a voice was heard in Rama, sobbing in bitter grief; it was Rachel weeping for her children, and refusing to be comforted, because they were no more.