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The most sacred secular day in the Australian calendar was yesterday. Anzac Day commemorates an infamous First World War landing of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, ANZACs, at Gallipoli on the northwest coast of Turkey on the 25th of April 1915.
Anzac Day isn't really like the UK's Trafalgar Day or the US's Independence Day because the original Anzac campaign that this day commemorates was a military failure. British commanders ordered the Aussies and New Zealanders to storm the beaches at Gallipoli and then move inland. The eventual goal was apparently to take Constantinople. They ended up being sitting ducks.
They should have been evacuated almost immediately, but the higher-ups said they had to stay and fight. So they did, for months, until there was nothing more that could be done. About 10,000 Anzacs were lost. They proved themselves that day to be, at the very least, ridiculously brave and stubborn.
And that's the day Australians have chosen as their most sacred secular commemoration. Australia virtually stands still each April 25th as it marks the Gallipoli campaign and all other conflicts with unusual solemnity. Australians don't normally do solemnity, but they really do on Anzac Day.
At least until about 11am when it suddenly becomes like any other public holiday. A few years ago, I got to visit the Anzac graves at the Allied War Cemetery in Jerusalem. Anzacs had pressed up through Palestine, eventually getting all the way to Damascus in 1917 and 18.
I was in Jerusalem on more ancient historical business, but I really wanted to see these famous rows of dead Australians and New Zealanders from World War I who somehow found themselves fighting, killed and buried in the Holy Land of all places. The gravestones are perfectly kept and haunting.
I love a good graveyard, I must admit. When I'm in England, I'm always on the lookout for a really old one, and I try and find the oldest legible tombstone. I think my best so far goes back to the 1500s. At the Jerusalem War Cemetery, there are the usual inscriptions. I came across Private Lullock, Machine Gun Corps, aged 24.
Trooper Alfred John Smith, Australian Light Horse Regiment, age 22. And on and on it goes. And then every now and then, I came across gravestones with no name. They just say, a soldier of the Great War. There's a cross underneath it, and beneath that, these strange words to our modern ear. Known unto God.
It's a quaint phrase. I mean, even unto is an obsolete word now. I guess most passers-by will think it just means something like, we've no idea who this guy is, but God must. But that's not what it means. Not really.
The phrase known unto God is taken straight out of the New Testament, from Galatians 4 actually. The Apostle Paul says to Christians, the first Christians of Turkey actually, you are no longer a slave, but God's child. You know God, or rather, are known unto God.
In part, the expression speaks of God's familiarity with us. It has a simple parallel in our best friendships. If I'm honest, the older I get, the more important to me it is that I have a few friends, not many, just a few, who know my history almost completely. They know me so well, there's no pretending with them. I don't feel any sense of performance in their presence.
I'm completely myself because these people know me and love me anyway. We are known by God in this sense. To be known unto God is to be completely bare before him and still be loved. There's another part of being known unto God.
And it explains why Paul almost corrects himself in this passage. He says, you know God, or rather are known unto God, suggesting that to be known by God is more significant than to know God. Everyone in Paul's day could say they knew the emperor, but only a few could say, I am known by the emperor.
It's one thing for me to say, I know the band U2, and it would be another thing completely to be able to say, U2 knows me. I wish. To be known unto God is to enjoy the privilege of intimacy with God, and that must be part of the longing expressed in this inscription on these soldiers' gravestones.
It's the opposite of one of Jesus' parables about the coming judgment. He once described himself as the house owner, and people came knocking on the door one day to be let in to safety and comfort, which is a picture of the afterlife, and they call out, "'We ate and drank with you. You taught in our streets.'"
They knew him, in other words. But the house owner in the parable just says the terrible words, I don't know you. It's possible to know God and yet not be known by God in this privileged sense. There's one last aspect to this phrase, known unto God. It's a picture of a child's relation to her parents.
Paul's reference to being known unto God begins with the words, You are no longer a slave, but God's child. You know God, or rather, are known unto God. A baby knows almost nothing of the world, has very little knowledge even of her parents, but the parents know her. And it's in this knowledge that the child finds protection, comfort, and nourishment.
A child on her own can't describe her identity. She can't tell you who she is and what her value is. But that doesn't leave her without an identity, without value, because her parents know her and love her. She means the world to them. There is something deeply tragic about these anonymous gravestones I saw in Jerusalem. These whole human lives, not just lost and forgotten,
But they're unmarked and unmemorialized. In a sense, they're deleted from the human registry. Inscribing the words "known unto God" is more than just a reminder that God must know this soldier buried here, even if we don't. It's a hope, a kind of prayer, that this individual, forgotten to history, is an intimate with God in eternity.
His significance and even identity are lost to us, but they are not lost to God. God is the guarantee of this soldier's ongoing significance and identity. This soldier of the Great War, so the inscription hopes, is known unto God.
I hope you've enjoyed these singles over the last month or so. This is the last one for a while because we're back with full episodes for season four. And we start with a topic that I reckon is relevant to just about everyone over this last year, mental health. See ya. You've been listening to the Eternity Podcast Network, eternitypodcasts.com.au.