REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY
9TH 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.
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