This Sunday we commemorate ANZAC Day, the day that our Prime Minister Scott Morrison calls ‘the most sacred day of the year’. The government is so keen to promote this day that it has sent a coloured flyer to every household in the country using the above image. In the flyer we are told to remember the courage and sacrifice of those who have served in the Australian Defence Force and how we can commemorate the day at home.

While it is helpful to remember this part of our history – including the large personal cost to individuals, families and communities – the approach taken by the government appears quite hypocritical, parochial and sexist. The photo used, for instance, is supposed to prompt our thinking about the soldiers who have fought and died but features only white males. The flag shown is the Union Jack and is a reminder that the wars Australia has fought in have been instigated by empires on the other side of the world – whether British, American, German or Japanese – and have had little to do with our country (e.g. recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan). We seem to enter these conflicts at the behest of others and without clear goals of what we are actually trying to achieve.

We are told in the ANZAC Day flyer that these wars have been fought to protect our freedom and democracy. Yet when people flee from conflicts and wars overseas and seek freedom and safety within our democracy, we lock them up like criminals for years and years and deny them the very freedom that we say we value so highly. Likewise we choose to ignore the wars fought on our own soil by indigenous people who died trying to protect their country and way of life from the invading British, our ancestors. So why are some soldiers held up as heroes to be worshipped and others completely overlooked? Perhaps it’s because history is very messy and doesn’t fit easily into the simplistic ANZAC myth.

As Christians our values are shaped by a very different story. While the heart of the gospel story includes the service, suffering and death of Jesus – to which the ANZAC myth is often linked – the wider gospel story condemns violence (as Jesus notes in Matthew 26:52 ‘all who take up the sword will die by the sword’) and calls us instead to be peacemakers (Matt 5:9). The prophetic scriptures of Israel such as Micah 4:1-4 look forward to the nations learning the ways of God – the ways of peace and justice – and turning their spears into pruning hooks and swords into ploughs.

So on ANZAC Day, let us indeed remember the service and courage of those who have fought in the Australian Defence Force, but let us also remember the subversive call of Jesus to be peacemakers rather than to engage in conflict and war. Let us be careful to distinguish between a government supported propagation of a national myth and the reality that our history is far more ambiguous and dark.