REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY

9^TH November 2014

Revd Andrew Bain

Readings:

Amos 5: 18-24

Matthew 25: 1-13

When you go home, tell them of us and say: For your tomorrow, we gave our today.

When I was a boy at school, Remembrance Day was one of the most important in our school calendar. We were all trooped off to Palmerston Place Church for a service, then solemnly led back into school past the great bronze war memorial in the entrance hall with the names of all the boys who’d died in two world wars and flanked by two cadets who stood with heads bowed and arms reversed. A piper played the Floors o’ the Forest. We were left in no doubt that this was a very significant day.

I suppose one of the main things we felt was a sense of history. We were remembering boys not much older than ourselves, many of whom – certainly in the First World War – were turned into instant officers with a life expectancy measured in weeks or less. But we were also a generation for whom the Second World War was even nearer. The comics we read were full of it, as were our games – running around Corstorphine Woods playing “Japs and Commandos”, with Tommy guns. This was before the phrase political correctness had even been thought of. But more seriously, our parents still bore the scars of a conflict that had ended only ten years before we were born.

For them remembering wasn’t about history at all. My father and his two brothers and his sister were all called up in 1939, and one of those brothers would never return. One uncle spent the entire war in Japanese captivity and never recovered. The whole family, none of whom had ever been further than an annual summer holiday in Aberdour, were suddenly scattered across the world. And that experience you could replicate across the entire nation and indeed across so many countries, so many real people, real families, just torn apart by the horrors of war.

So this isn’t history, it’s a deep and abiding wounding of the human spirit. And there probably isn’t a family here that hasn’t been touched by that shadow. My father couldn’t watch the annual Festival of Remembrance without tears in his eyes,  especially that part where the poppies fall onto the shoulders of today’s young service men and women.

Today’s reading from Amos is a cry from the heart of God through the lips of his prophet to turn from the ways of violence. Don’t bring me your songs and your sacrifices: Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. And the Gospel has the same urgency: Stay awake! One of the best of many new books on the First World War is called “The Sleepwalkers” because it tells how the so-called leaders of the world almost sleep-walked into evil, through pride and brinksmanship, each never thinking that the other would take that final step beyond the point of no return. It’s said all that’s necessary for evil to flourish is for good people to do nothing. But the Prince of Peace, the bridegroom, is always coming and his kingdom demands that we stay awake. Peace has to be worked for with every fibre of our being.

The Remembrance services of my school days did seem, in some ways, to be about history and rows upon rows of faceless names on war memorials. Today’s young dead have young, happy faces we see on television. They have valiant young widows whose pain and pride we actually get to listen to, in a way we never did before. Afghanistan may be a world away, but the pain of it breaks into our consciousness every day – and it should.

Because the sacrifices others make in our name should deeply question us. Just as the Cross questions us – this is the greatest love, so will I take up my share of the Cross and follow? Will I stay awake? Young people are dying in my name – whatever my views on the conflicts now going on – so, what am I doing to make a world where war no longer consumes the lives of young and old? After the First World War, there was much talk of homes fit for heroes and a country renewed for people who’d given and suffered so much – much of which turned to ashes as we know. But that doesn’t mean that that instinct of hope was wrong. Because here’s where the Christian way of seeing has to be different, never cynical, always hopeful.

Every Sunday we stand at the foot of the Cross, witnessing the death of a young man; but we also, and even more so, stand by the empty tomb, met by a young man transformed, whose first word to us is: Peace, (don’t be afraid). Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Can tribulation or peril, or nakedness or sword, or 21st century terrorism, or anything else? No, because in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

The best, the very best way we can honour the young Jesus and the even younger dead of today is by not giving in to despair. In a dark world we’re to keep our lamps lit and be ready to welcome the Prince of Peace every day – indeed, whenever we pray: “your kingdom come, Lord”. We owe that to the children whose Dads – and Mums - aren’t coming home and to the young men and women returning with such terrible wounds. That’s why our Peace Pole is almost an act of defiance. No matter what today’s news may bring, we will honour the hope our young have died for time and again, and we will put their hope right in front of our church, in the very heart of this busy community, so that what they died for is always before our eyes: May peace prevail on earth. Amen.

When you go home, tell them of us and say: For your tomorrow, we gave our today.