The following is the sermon I preached on Remembrance Sunday in 2019, using Luke 20.27-38 as my starting point. Five years on, the statistics have sadly increased and the questions remain just as pertinent:
Placing the Bible to one side for just a
moment, Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’ has to be one of the world’s greatest literary
treasures. Written in the 14th century, it provides a medieval
vision of life after death – commencing with fires of hell, before
ascending a ‘seven-story mountain of purgatory’, before reaching the
mystical wonders of celestial paradise and only thence the Beatific
Vision of God.
Whether the afterlife is really like
that, we simply cannot know, but it does seem unlikely.
In Luke’s Gospel, as heard today, Jesus
tells us that it is equally not the case that a woman, in the afterlife, would
need to cope with the idiosyncrasies of seven husbands all at the same time! A
great relief to many, I am sure.
However, lightness aside, today’s
Gospel reading is of importance in respect to those who lost their lives
in the various wars and conflicts we remember today - as Jesus also informs us that:
‘Indeed, they
cannot die any more, because they are like angels and are children of God,
being children of the resurrection.’ (Luke 20.36)
‘He is God not of the dead, but of the
living; for to him all of them are alive.’ (Luke 20.38)
Two very important messages of hope
that I will allow to rest for the moment.
Tomorrow is the 101st
anniversary of the Armistice – the signing of the agreement that signified the
end of World War I, at the 11th hour of the 11th day of
the 11th month of 1918.
Today, is something slightly different.
It is Remembrance Sunday, inaugurated in 1946, initially to commemorate the
contribution of British and Commonwealth military and civilian servicemen and women in
the two World Wars, and subsequently, all later conflicts.
Today is thus the 73rd Remembrance
Sunday; an entire generation’s worth of collective remembrance.
Of course, war
existed long before 1914, but as such events are beyond living memory, they have
been consigned to the annals of history.
The First World War is almost like that – as
there are few people alive today who were alive then, and none who fought in
that war.
Perhaps we should therefore quietly congratulate
ourselves that, as a nation, we have such a good tradition of remembering and honouring
those who have laid down their lives, fighting for the freedoms we enjoy today…
However, what
should also be a cause of absolute shame, is the fact that since the end of the
2nd World War, there have been at least another 250 major wars…
– in a great
many of which, Britain and/or the Commonwealth has been involved
- and in which over 50 million people have
been killed, tens of millions made homeless, and countless millions
injured and bereaved.
So, why ARE we here today?
What IS it that we think we are doing?
Well, remembrance
can be defined as ‘an act of recalling something to mind’, or ‘the
ability to recall past events’…
So, again, I ask…
so what?
why do we do it?
Is it simply because of a ‘Civic Duty’?
Or the desire to anchor our lives to a
well-established national ritual that reduces any sense of guilt and makes us
feel better?
Of
course, the easy answer is ‘Lest We Forget’…
And it
is, indeed, absolutely right, that those millions of men and women who lost
their lives on our behalf should be remembered and honoured by us – regardless
as to whether they were family members, friends, acquaintances or strangers - we
owe them all an enormous collective debt of gratitude for the peace and freedom
we now enjoy.
And we
most certainly should not be slow in standing in awe and paying silent homage
to them; or inscribing their names for posterity on memorials, so that others may
in the future keep the memory of their sacrifice alive.
But is there - underneath all of this - a much deeper
‘something’ that we fear to ‘forget’;
… that we feel intrinsically bound to ‘remember’?
… something that gets to the very heart
of our human existence?
… something that relates to the fact that we chose not only to perform
acts of remembrance outside in front of civic memorials – as we did earlier
this morning - but that we then bring that act of remembrance into this
building, a building that is the House of God – and furthermore, a building
that is dedicated to our Christian understanding of God.
Is it that ‘something’ deep inside each one of us, which is unconsciously
mindful of the knowledge that we are not just human beings, but spiritual
beings?
… that something which reminds us, as Genesis 1.27 does, that we have
all been made in God’s image?
And that, by the very act of going to war, we are committing a sin that
is next to none other than that of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, the Son
of God; for in war, we fail to see that our opponent is also made in God’s
image, and that we thus wage war, again and again, against the echo of God
within us.
And perhaps, deep down inside, we know that – and that is really
why we are here?
We know that we are at variance with that spiritual echo of God’s love
that lives on inside us all – a love that binds us all together – not only now,
as living beings – but connects us to every one of the
names on our memorials…
and - perhaps in a way that is unsettling – also connects us to each
one of those whom we have perceived as our ‘enemy’?
Of course, we often seek to explain our actions in the name of ‘justice’
– our response to the concept that ‘the only thing necessary for the triumph
of evil is for good men to do nothing’.
But ultimately, every excuse, every reason, every political
argument, every so-called justification for war fails when taken against
the two great commandments of Jesus, as told in Matthew 22.37-39:
‘Love the Lord your God with all your
heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and
greatest commandment. And the second is this: ‘Love your neighbour as
yourself.’
And, of course, within a 21st century world that has become a
‘global village’, the concept of ‘neighbour’ is a broad one.
So, how do we square those commandments with the need for ‘good to
triumph over evil’, when it might be your neighbour who is demonstrating evil
intent?
Some might even ask ‘how can we believe in God, let alone a loving God,
when faced with such evils of war and violence?’
But God is not responsible for every human action – just as parents are
not responsible for the actions of their children once they have left home.
However, through Jesus Christ, God does show us the way…
In his letter to the Romans (8.31-39), St Paul reminds us that ‘if
God is for us, who can be against us?’, and to demonstrate that love, he
gave his only Son to die for us. Ultimately, love is stronger than force, and
nothing can overcome the love demonstrated to us by the death of Christ
crucified.
And yes I know that despite that, the world is messy
and full of ambiguities… not least of all because our so-called enemies may also
feel that God is for them…
So, perhaps our act of remembrance of the many who sacrificed their
lives for us, should also be an act of remembrance of our Christian duty to act
as Christ-like Christians, truly loving our neighbours as ourselves, and
thus seeking that peace which the world otherwise fails to give.
For why else did so many die, that we might see today?
It certainly wasn’t just to have their names placed on monuments, to be read
out once per year…
And so, we pray…
that we remember the real reason why we keep Remembrance Sunday:
that we are all dust, and to dust we shall return,
yet through our faith, we are also children of the resurrection, and therefore
have the hope that those who lost their lives through war are still alive to
God;
and we also pray to remember…
that their sacrifice was for our peace;
a peace we are all duty bound in gratitude, and in the love of our
neighbour, to preserve, nurture and grow.
Lest we forget.
