16th November 2025
I didn’t think about it as I left the UK and flew to Germany. I was wearing a poppy. I wore it when I wore my jumper. (It was cold for me most days.) No one at the Wittenberg conference commented on it. I also had an opportunity to catch up with an ecumenical colleague who had worked in London and who is German. In the rambling, wide ranging, catch-up, set-the-world-to-rights, how’s-the family-doing conversation I was surprised by the comment that the poppy was seen as triumphalism, a mark of the victor (in two world wars). If my country had lost the wars, would I wear a poppy? That’s an historical ‘what if?’ I would find hard to answer. Of course it depends on what the poppy means to me.
In my Remembrance Day brief address I said to the school children (the adults were listening in), “Symbols can be used in many ways. The same symbols can have different meanings. If you use a symbol always know what it means for you.” For me the poppy is not about triumphalism but about sacrifice – red – blood sacrifice – and as an Australian who grew up going to ANZAC Day services with Gallipoli as the focus – a disastrous campaign – I don’t think I ever thought of the poppy as about ‘winning’. It only takes a moment to realise that the ‘other side’ also had many sacrifices too. The poppy is a registered trademark so that the funds raised go to veterans but what meaning people assign to it – and to the range of colours appearing – is testimony to our desire to find and make meaning – and a symbol does it well – and a good symbol does it better.
When the St George cross was appearing around England – painted on buildings, flags hung, seen in marches – the big white wall that surrounds Redeemer Church, Harlow, received a good treatment (as did the white strips of the nearby pedestrian crossing!). The congregation was shocked but took it in their stride. What did it mean? We didn’t know. The police and the local MP contacted me. Was this a hate crime against us? Did someone register that ‘Lutheran’ mightn’t be English but foreign? I said simply that I didn’t know! Symbols can send mixed messages. I said that I thought it was more vandalism-esque than hate-esque and if you’ve got red paint and you’re wanting to paint red crosses everywhere then Redeemer has the biggest ‘canvas’ in Harlow!
The Romans 2,000 years ago used the cross to terrify. It is a brutal form of execution. Today after 2,000 years the cross is now jewellery and a key component of Christian art and architecture and holds an additional message to the death one – that through the death of Jesus, the Christian God demonstrates his grace and mercy – and so one particular cross, Jesus’ cross, can become a symbol of forgiveness, reconciliation, peace, and hope.
On Remembrance Sunday the Mildenhall RBL wanted to honour the fallen and had the names of all those listed on the cenotaph written on individual … crosses! Now the cross was the mark of death and the grave and on the Saturday I conducted brief ceremony when the Sea and Royal Marine Cadets placed the crosses in the garden beds at the memorial. Like the poppy, the cross is the mark of death. Can it be used for other purposes? Of course. It can be used to intimidate. Should it? ‘Please no’ is the first answer. But … if it is Jesus’ cross showing me my sin, intimidating my pride and my arrogance then the Law is doing its job – the wages of sins is death, after all. I suspect that the artist(s) at Redeemer didn’t have that in mind!
In our world of visual communication, AI generated imagery, and 2,000 years of Christian art, let us be careful how we use symbols and seek to be clear about the message we wish to communicate.
GS