By Corporal Jason Reeve
Jason Reeve is a trumpeter in the Royal Australian Air Force Band, whom St Mark’s parishioners will remember from the brass band at our most recent Lessons and Carols Service. Jason wrote this moving theological reflection on Anzac Day for his own church and has allowed us to share it with you here.
One of the most poignant moments in Handel’s famous oratorio The Messiah of 1741 occurs in the third act when the singer declares:
‘Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.’
A joyous aria for trumpet and bass then ensues that revels in the glorious hope of resurrection found in 1 Corinthians 15:51-52:
‘For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.’
This ANZAC Day we will hear again the haunting sounds and silences of the Last Post that constitute the most recognizable democratic anthem of our time. In those moments of reflection when the sounds of the Last Post are navigated, people will be drawn into a special space to remember lives lost and sacrifices made.
This traditional military call, that once signaled the end of a soldier’s day in camp, emerged over time as a fitting call to signify the end of a soldier’s earthly life as part of funeral rites. Similarly, the call that follows the Last Post, the Reveille, was once sounded to begin a soldier’s day in camp and later emerged as an apt call to usher the fallen soldier to their eternal spiritual abode.
Initially, these military calls formed part of a deeply religious ceremony that was saturated with gospel meaning and hope. But, over time, with the rise of democracy over empire, the rise of the cenotaph over the church, and with bugler pitted against padre, the Last Post was claimed by secular society over the religious establishment. Its significance in sounding a clear gospel call of hope and resurrection out to the nations became increasingly muted. And its richer connection with the Last Trumpet of scripture became increasingly tenuous.
As a military trumpeter, and as your brother in Christ, I live the inherent tensions created by this call’s spiritual origins versus its secular application daily. Sometimes, within the domain of public remembrance, it can feel like this call contributes towards an elevated idolization of secular heroism. And yet, on other occasions, it remains possible to remember this call’s connection to the innate transformative power of the gospel and connect our remembrance of the fallen with the fact that death has ultimately been swallowed up in victory.
Often, as I sound this call across the course of a year in many varying contexts, both the lament and praise that we often see complimented within the Psalms is evoked in my own heart. I am often forced to lament the passing of a lost sinner at a service funeral who has not known God. But sometimes I am able to sound this call as a prayer of hope and praise when I know a fallen comrade knew the Lord! Then, I can humbly pre-empt as it were, the Last Trumpet of scripture as I play and declare to my brother or sister ‘you will not sleep, you will be changed, you will be raised incorruptible!’
Brothers and sisters, this ANZAC Day we can rightly remember all of our service men and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice to preserve our democratic freedoms. We can lament the loss, and particularly the eternal loss. And yet at dawn, as the Last Post is sounded, we can also remember that this humble call once attuned its tones to those glorious overtones of the Last Trumpet which we so long to hear. Lest we forget.