Remembrance Sunday
Preached: 8 November 1998Isaiah 10:33 - 11:9
See, the Lord, the LORD Almighty, will lop off the boughs with great power. The lofty trees will be felled, the tall ones will be brought low. He will cut down the forest thickets with an axe; Lebanon will fall before the Mighty One. A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him- the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of power, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD- and he will delight in the fear of the LORD. He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears; but with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth; with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.
Righteousness will be his belt and faithfulness the sash round his waist. The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them.
The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
The infant will play near the hole of the cobra, and the young child put his hand into the viper's nest.
They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.Psalm 34.11-20
R Come, children, and listen to me:
I will teach you the fear of the Lord.
Come, children, and listen to me;
I will teach you the fear of the Lord.
Who among you loves life
and desires long life to enjoy prosperity? RKeep your tongue from evil-speaking
and your lips from lying words.
Turn from evil and do good;
seek peace and pursue it. RThe eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous,
and his ears are open to their cry.
The face of the Lord is against those who do evil,
to root out the remembrance of them from the earth. RThe righteous cry and the Lord hears them
and delivers them from all their troubles.
The Lord is near to the brokenhearted
and will save those whose spirits are crushed. RMany are the troubles of the righteous,
but the Lord will deliver him out of them all.
He will keep safe all his bones;
not one of them shall be broken. RRevelation 21:1-7
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."He who was seated on the throne said, "I am making everything new!" Then he said, "Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true."
He said to me: "It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life. He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God and he will be my son.John 15:9-17
"As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no-one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit- fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. This is my command: Love each other.
May I speak in the name and to the glory of God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.It's now 80 years since the end of the war to end all wars - and although there's been no great war in Europe since 1945, there have been numerous small wars, but no less terrible for those involved, all around the world. I lived in a war situation for the first 16 years of my life, not like the second world war or the Gulf war - but, rather, a bush war, a terrorist war, a civil war. My mother and I never knew if my brother or father would return, if they were late, we feared the worst. We never knew if the next mortar bomb would hit our house, I never knew if my friends would return to school from their outlying farms on Monday morning or if the flag in the quadrangle would be flying at half mast. Elderly men of 75 and upwards were sitting on mountain tops with rifles and young men of 18 in the forces would see their colleagues, probably someone they'd grown up with, shot by their sides or have to collect injured and dead civilians from farms, some, children the same age as their siblings.
I remember choppers flying overhead with nets suspended from them carrying the dead bodies of freedom fighters, and the victory roll of jets over our house as they returned from a successful mission, the thunder of bombardment, the smell of death, the bomb shelters, the sand bags, the taped up windows, the hospital visits, the funerals, the memorial services in the Boy's High School Chapel and the damaged lives which will never be the same again! I am here today because so many died for me and because of me, and hundreds like me.
Some of you here will have had similar experiences, some here are fortunate enough only to have witnessed such things on television. Whatever the political arguments in any war everyone suffers, in Zimbabwe the freedom fighter saw no other way to gain freedom than to fight for it, the local white population, who hadn't chosen to be born in Africa but happened to have been, felt they had no choice but to defend their property and the lives of their families. Then there were the Religious leaders and liberal politicians who argued the middle ground, seeking peace, who were seen as the enemy by both factions.
Many missions in the area were razed to the ground and the missionaries murdered by terrorists. Many priests were detained without charge because they spoke out against the government.
One often wondered "whose side is God on?"
If we knew, we could perhaps make some sense of it.
Often all sides claim his allegiance, but wars fall within the scope of human liberty and choice.
War isn't like an earthquake or a volcano that make us ask: why did God allow this?
It's the result of a train of events set in motion by human choices, in which no one involved is exempt from guilt.
But the fact that God is on neither side doesn't mean that God is absent from war.
God is on the side of those who suffer, God is in the gore and the grime and the mangled bodies.
War echoes the passion of Christ, the almighty one made vulnerable for us. War continues the passion, it is the passion.
"My God, my God, why have you abandoned Me?" cried Jesus.
But He was not abandoned by God, not even in this moment of desolation. Beyond the dark night of the passion glimmers the dawn of resurrection and a just peace.
If we believe that, we must work towards it.The only way the victim of war or injustice can do this is, in the light of prayer and the grace of God, to be open to forgiveness and forgiving. Forgiveness and remembrance are the beginnings of peace. The poppy is the symbol of remembrance. The poppies of which my grandfather told me, which spread across the war-torn fields of Flanders, red as the blood shed there. Red and black, the colours of war and passion, of blood and death; symbol of the lives lost and wasted there. But also the symbol of hope, green for peace and red for life. Our altar frontal is green today for hope and peace like the green shoots which spring from the charred remains of an African bush fire.
Peace is not natural to us. It's thought that there has been no continued peace from war in any year since the stone-age, but every culture seeks peace as their ultimate aim, even if they aren't prepared to make the sacrifices necessary for it.
In the Jewish tradition there are many Commandments for many different situations. But there's one particular Commandment which is constant and is derived from the mandate:
"seek peace and pursue it."*An 18th century Jewish Rabbi wrote:
"Your first aim here on earth should be to be at peace with all men, Jew and non-Jew alike. Contend with no one. ..... In your dealings with the world you must allow neither money nor ambition to disturb you. Forego your rights in matters of honour, if need be, and above all envy no man. For the main thing is peace, peace with the whole world"The best memorial we can offer to the brave men and women both civilian and military, on all the sides of all the wars of the world, who have lost their lives, and the best memorial we can offer those who are irreparably damaged, is to seek peace and pursue it.
To lay down our lives for others is to love them. The only way to peace is to make ourselves vulnerable to each other and the world, to die to selfishness, to give up our prejudices and put aside our 'attitude' - this is the true shape of love.
It's a daunting task to truly love one another and die to ourselves, but we don't have to go it alone. Before us always is the cross of Christ. As the poppy symbolises the blood shed in the wars, so the cross symbolises the blood of Christ shed for us so that we may be whole. His death for our life; His Cross a sign of Hope; his resurrection a triumph over sin and death. He died to make us free.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen
*With thanks to "Praying for Peace" ed. Michael Hare Duke
For the Fallen They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow,
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning.
We will remember them.
