Laying Down Life

At the heart of Edinburgh Castle is an extensive and ornate war memorial. Within its vaulted gothic walls are large stone inscriptions commemorating Scots who died in the armed forces since the First World War (The Great War) down to today. On stone shelves are books—so heavy we might call them tomes—listing all the known names of these deceased and often their home towns and dates of death. All in all, the list of names amounts to hundreds of thousands of people. Alcoves set in the walls are dedicated to specific conflicts and those who died in them. Between and within the alcoves bronze relief sculptures depict emotive scenes from the conflicts to which those coves are devoted. In the words and sculptures you can remember soldiers, engineers, nurses, and civilians. A slow walk through the monument moves the heart.

At the centre of the memorial, in a room designed to look like the altar-space of a sanctuary, stands a large green marble monolith. Upon this monolith sits a bronze sculpture formed to imitate the ark of the covenant from the Old Testament. On the four corners of the monolith kneel four angels, their wings pointed high, their hands folded in a posture of prayer, and their faces lowered in submission. The ark itself, a chest with riveted bands and a lid, has on its face a relief of Saint Margaret (the patron saint of the castle, whose chapel from the 11th century still stands on the castle’s highest point) and on its back a relief of Saint Andrew, the patron saint of Scotland. On the half-circular wall of this sacred space is a relief showing every variety of Scottish soldier. Beneath that is an inscription declaring that those of the fallen whose names are unknown to us are certainly written in the book of God.

After walking through heaps of Roman Catholic Church buildings all over Europe, I have become somewhat attuned to the pattern and meaning of the architecture and artwork. There is a place for the altar in the sanctuary, the place where the real body and blood of Christ are found and experienced in the Eucharist. Around the space of the sanctuary are little chapels with smaller altars, each of which commemorates the life of a saint. The saints are usually depicted in paint or sculpture, their names inscribed, and often their stories told on plaques. The saints are clearly the heroes of the Roman Catholic faith, who followed the life of Christ to their deaths (natural or otherwise) just as their shrines and altars follow the procession of the twelve stations of the cross up to the high altar where the Spirit of Christ seems somehow to be more present.

The war memorial in Edinburgh Castle is a sanctification of those who have died in war. It makes a powerful declaration that these deceased war heroes are holy, set apart, with their lives surrounding, perhaps embracing, and leading to a holy of holies. In the holy of holies sits an ark of covenant to Edinburgh and Scotland that shall remain perpetually sealed and therefore forever mysterious.

I did not realize quite what was going on until I noticed a pattern in the inscriptions. Each little alcove, or chapel, contained a declaration of remembrance of those who had “given their lives,” or “laid down their lives,” usually “for king and country.” This language about “giving one’s life” or “laying down one’s life” struck a familiar chord with me. The chord was first sounded in the Gospel According to John:

“I lay down my life for the sheep,” (John 10.15); “No one has greater love than this: to lay down his life for his friends” (John 13.15); it is re-iterated in the First Letter of John: “We know love by this, that he lay down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another” (3.16).

Here we have the same language of laying down life. There are more similarities in the language I have heard about those who die in the military. We often speak of the “sacrifice” made by those in the armed forces, especially in times of conflict; the same term applies to the life and death of Jesus. We usually say that a person “serves” in the armed forces (whereas someone who works in corporate marketing simply “works”); Jesus likewise, in life and death, did so in service. Those who designed this war memorial wanted it to be known that these deceased citizens had laid down their lives; Jesus does the same.

The form of the declaration made by the war memorial struck me as much as the content. The architecture, including window shape, stonework, floor plan, and desire for silence showed that the memorial is meant to be a religious structure and experience. To all those who come from Christian traditions descended from the Roman Catholic tradition, the signs and symbols are clear. This unabashed equation of death in the military and religious status stunned me. For it seems to me that such an equation, whatever the truth in it, makes an important silent omission.

Most of the sculptures in the memorial depicted people with weapons. Weapons—everything from the bare bodkin to the howitzer to the bomb—are standard issue for those in the military; it might be argued that the military does not exist without weapons. Their presence was no surprise. But their ubiquitous presence in this quasi-Christian religious format brought a problem into sharp relief.

The language used to speak of dead soldiers parallels—I think may originate in—the writings about Jesus’ life. Yet in the same breath these writings (the Gospels) that speak of laying down life, sacrifice, and service explicitly reject weapons. When his zealous followers attempt to fight for his freedom on the night of his arrest, Jesus tells them to put up their swords: “do you think I could not call twelve legions of angels to fight for me if I wanted?” he says. “Laying down life,” “sacrifice,” and “service” in the life of Jesus mean death without resistance to human power. The meaning is made grotesquely clear in the just King’s execution on a cross.

In this war memorial, where the same terms are being used and individuals being elevated in a religious framework, “laying down life,” “sacrifice,” and “service” mean submitting to the risk of being killed by an armed enemy. Herein there is certainly great sacrifice, and most civilians certainly feel that they are being served by those who make the sacrifice. But this giving of life is precisely for the purpose of resisting human power: it is a promise to make the enemy give up his life before the soldier will give up hers. In the soldierly understanding of “giving up of life” is an implicit expectation and promise to keep life (one’s own) and to take life (the enemy’s) if necessary. It is a distinctly different kind of sacrifice and service.

The juxtaposition of the religious ethos in the memorial with a different kind of sacrifice left the distinction between Christ-like sacrifice and soldierly sacrifice hidden. In that obscurity I think there is great danger: they are not simple lies that have power, rather they are lies that masquerade as truth.

Let us be clear: the war memorial in Edinburgh Castle is not the first time such an equation has been made. Every obelisk that marks and every cross that adorns a monument to fallen soldiers makes a similar comparison, if not in such complete architectural terms. Many cultures through time seem to have made battle sacred. Even the Roman Catholic Church in the time of the Crusades directly equated military service with service to the Lord; throughout the church buildings of Europe you can see many a window depicting saints with swords and shields with the sign of the cross. But let us not dream that our forebears were without mistake or sin; let us learn from them instead.

Let us also not dream that those who enter the military have an easy task. There must be great fear involved in preparing for and going into armed conflict; there is even greater pain and loss in enduring armed conflict and yes, even surviving it. We must never underestimate the courage and the effort put forth by anyone who faces an armed enemy.

Those who have died should be remembered; for its successful work in doing this thing I applaud the creators of the war memorial. Their artwork is exquisite and the architecture stunning. The poetry of the inscriptions and the presence of the books moved me to tears at times, tears which need to be shed after the horror of war by which most of these dead were afflicted. And the silence requested of us as we entered the memorial was right, meet, and proper. But there was another silence left by the monument itself that I think must be filled by a word of living and peace-full truth. When such a word is spoken there comes the possibility of finding the very thing this memorial cries out for but itself cannot achieve: peace.

This peace will be found neither in weapons nor ideas, neither trade nor treaties. This peace will not be found in such things, or in any thing. It will only be found in a person, the Prince of Peace, the one who laid down life in the perfect way and took it up again that we may do the same. It will be found in Jesus Christ. Let us not attempt to substitute anything for him and his presence, at very least because those who have died in war and now sit at the feet of his throne would be shamed to see us doing so.

~emrys