Sermon for Sunday 13th November 2016
Year C
Third Sunday before Advent
Remembrance Sunday
May I speak in the Name of God, Father, Son & Holy Spirit:
This time of year as the nights draw in earlier in earlier we have a real focus on remembering in our times together. We’ve remembered those we have lost who have gone before us and today we remember the terrible and dark days of war, past, present and pray for a future of peace. I found this very moving poem by John Bailey in which he remembers the friendships he built up with his fellow soldiers and celebrates the memory of those very deep friendships and vows never to forget.
Life and Soul of the Mess
Take some time every now and then
Think back and say ‘I remember when’
You were as brothers you and they
Sent by your country into the fray
To a land of sun, dried dirt and dust
Where dollars may rent loyalty, but you built trust
Where from flowering death they eek out a living
Or take what they can from whoever is giving
You carried all you needed on aching back
Tabbing mile on mile awaiting the crack
As from a mile away a sniper takes you
Or the land beneath erupts to break you
Now you’re at home and carrying on
While others you knew they’re now gone
Their laughter is missed but their faces you spy
When asleep or briefly out the corner of an eye
So growing older don’t let memories soften
Drink to their names, let them cross your lips often
For all the stone and the brass, it counts for ‘ought
If we forget the names of those that fought.
John Bailey
Ted is an old man from my previous Church in Northampton who was a soldier fighting alongside the Royal Anglian Regiment. He is a very elderly, quiet and devout man who attends the weekday Eucharist. You wouldn’t think that Ted was any different to any of the other elderly people there on Wednesday mornings. He’s happy, he’s always got a smile and despite being in his 90s he is independent and as sharp as any of us. Not everyone knows Ted. He never comes on Sunday mornings; except for this Sunday. He comes to the service in all his military regalia, his medals worn with pride, the beret and the badges worn proudly, and he is silent throughout. It’s as if he is in a different place, here but not here. Concerned, I asked him if everything was ok once and we sat down over coffee and he told me about his time in the military. There were parts he was happy to tell me about, the camaraderie with his mates, the girlfriend waiting back at home, and there were parts he quickly glossed over. I sometimes wondered if I should try to get behind those difficult points. But Ted would’ve told me if he could; these were moments that he would rather keep to himself. Ted said there was no glory in what he had witnessed, and he even today so long after the World War 2, he mourned over the loss and destruction, the lives lost and the lives forever changed. Ted is a first hand witness to the horrors of war and they are forever etched into his memory.
My generation can only imagine what the threat of invasion and full out war feels like. Yes, it’s true that bloody and awful conflicts continue around the world, but for us, war is somewhere else, in Afghanistan, or Syria, or Iraq: we see images on the television, we read about them in the newspapers but they are still somewhere else.
Collective Remembering has the power to keep alive the stories of people like Ted, who each had their own names, each had their own stories, their own loves and dreams, their own families back at home, their own towns and cities, their way of life.
Daring to remember these dark days means coming face to face again with the reality of so much brokenness in the world. If we’re really honest we can sometimes ignore this darkness & instead live like our way of life, this peace, is everywhere. Who could have dreamed that in 1939 the world would be plunged into war again for the 2nd time in a century?
Just as those who were with Jesus, admiring the temple in all it’s beauty. Could they have believed that one day not one stone would be left on top of another? The temple, symbolised all the nations hopes, it defined their identity, to even contemplate its destruction would have been unthinkable. Did the survivors of which there were few, look back at the temple mount and remember what had been there? Just as our poet look back and remember the friendships in the mess all those years ago?
Jesus knows what’s in the heart of the world: that wars and rumours of wars are tragically apart of the fabric of our lives, that division is everywhere around us. Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan are evidence of this. But he refuses to leave us to the fears of destruction and violence. Nation will rise against nation, but he promises to be with us, giving us the words, the opportunities to envisage another way of life; there in those difficult days he is particularly close. There is the possibility of a new way. That new life is described so beautifully in our reading from Malachi… where the Sun of Righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings; where we shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. It’s a picture of the closeness, the intimacy of God with us after so much destruction.
As we remember, we are also bold to remember when an innocent man had violence thrown at him, and was nailed to a Cross and died. We remember this and admit that is an awful story but that it is a story we know that is full of hope. That the violence and the torture, the pain, the grief, the mourning would not have the final say but instead be taken by God and transformed and re-created, re-made into something altogether new. That is the hope of new life, of peace and joy even amid the wars and divisions.
As we remember, let our remembering be full of awareness of the cost of war, its ugliness, its destruction; but tempered with the hope that God will work with the mess and promises his presence, his power and his healing for a new way to be.
AMEN.
Thinking Out Loud 