Sermon at All Saints’ Church,
Whiteparish - Battle of the Somme – Sunday 3 July 2016
May I speak in the name
of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen
Amen.
When I was a child at school in the playground, we would
spend our break times and lunch times playing war games. Back in the late 50s and early 60s our
cinemas and TV screens were full of heroic war films where the blood looked
fake and our heroes, by and large, always won the day; surviving the massive onslaughts from the nasty guys on
the other side in grey German uniforms. In
fact in those days most uniforms were grey as we only had black and white TV
sets. We would re-enact the Dambuster’s Raid over the ditch behind the primary
school I attended in north Lincolnshire where real blood was spilt one day when
Geoffrey Tufnell’s head was split open as he tried to destroy one of the great
dams by ducking, not quite low enough, under a
piece of ironmongery designed to keep us little ones out! The Germans had never thought of that one!
We were fed tales of daring do’s, films like Reach for the Sky, The Cockle Shell Heroes, The
Guns of Navarone, 633 Squadron, the Cruel Sea which all told of the
excitement which a relatively recent conflagration had engendered. If we are honest, some of us were a little
disappointed that we hadn’t lived through the war – it seemed such good fun;
but for our parents it certainly wasn’t and they frequently told us so.
More recently films, thanks to modern graphics technology,
have spared us little from the true horror of war. My heart still beats fast with adrenalin when
I watch those opening minutes of Saving
Private Ryan, and we have films telling us some of the story of battles
like Gallipoli in the First World
War.
When I was at school, 100 years would have taken me back to
the Crimean War of which I knew very little. I had virtually no idea why
English soldiers died near the shores of the Black Sea. That seemed just such a
long time ago and today, as we remember one of the biggest and most costly
battles of the First World War it must appear, from the point of view of our
younger generations – a complete remote and distant world. We must thank God for that but as we sit here
today, warfare of a very different, but equally terrifying style faces us.
This past week, following two massive upheavals to the
English – the decision to withdraw from the EU and the dismissal of England’s
national football team of the Euro 2016 competition by largely amateur Iceland,
a third occurred in Turkey when gunmen opened fire and killed and injured so
many at Istanbul’s International airport – an airport I am familiar with. Why? What was the purpose of such destruction? I think this same question was asked 100
years ago.
On the Somme, there
were over a million casualties – 1,088,907 is the official figure. It started as an offensive by the Allied
Forces against German lines which had dug in over a complex series of trenches.
The plan was for a quick and decisive push after the heavy artillery had
softened up and broken up the Germans’ defensive lines over a six day period.
That first push on the first day following the bombardment resulted in nearly
100,000 casualties – think of it, twice the population of Salisbury mown down
in a single day. Both sides thought they were fighting for a just cause. Both
sides would have looked up to heaven for God’s blessing on their cause.
The Sixth Commandment tell us “Thou shalt not kill” and as
Christians we are expected to adhere to that principle and the two commandments
which were given to us by Jesus Christ himself – To love God and to love our
neighbour; to love our enemy even! The
waging of war seems totally contrary to both the commandments of the Old
Testament and the teachings of Christ.
Theologians have therefore grappled with this problem over the centuries
with two schools of thought having emerged – and excuse me if I lapse into
schoolboy Latin for a moment – jus ad
bellum or the “right to go to war” and jus
in bello – “right conduct in war”. St.
Augustine of Hippo argued that Christians should not be afraid to pick up the
sword and fight to protect peace and punish wickedness and writing nine hundred
years later St. Thomas Aquinas set out three basic rules which justified going
to war:
·
First, just war must be
waged by a properly instituted authority such as the state. (Proper Authority
is first: represents the common good: which is peace for the sake of man's true
end—God.)
·
Second, war must occur for
a good and just purpose rather than for self-gain (for example, "in the
nation's interest" is not just) or as an exercise of power. (Just Cause:
for the sake of restoring some good that has been denied. i.e., lost territory,
lost goods, punishment for an evil perpetrated by a government, army, or even
the civilian populace.)
·
Third, peace must be a
central motive even in the midst of violence.[15] (Right
Intention: an authority must fight for the just reasons it has expressly
claimed for declaring war in the first place. Soldiers must also fight for this
intention.)
Recently theologians have added a third dimension to the idea of a just
war:
Jus post bellum or “the right to proper
conduct and re-construction following a war” – i.e. not exploiting the
vanquished or taking revenge for revenge’s sake.
In 1992 the Roman Catholic Church came up with a Just War Doctrine (sometimes mistakenly known as the “Just War Theory”) to help their flock
understand how Christians could ever condone acts of violence in a war setting. This was in the context of controversy
surrounding the First Gulf War. Their four points were as follows:
·
the damage
inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be
lasting, grave, and certain;
·
all other
means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
·
there must be
serious prospects of success;
·
the use of
arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated
(the power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating
this condition).
All too often those going to war,
or more accurately, those caught up as instruments of the belligerents, do not
know themselves exactly why they find their lives on the line. In the case of the Battle of the Somme it
must have seemed, at times, incomprehensible to those crouching in the muddy,
vermin ridden trenches as what was going to be achieved by shifting forwards a
few kilometres across a landscape with seeming little strategic value to them. Nevertheless, both sides prayed to the
Almighty for courage and strength and protection believing their cause to be
the right or just one.
Very often, before going into
battle the soldiers on each side would take solace from the words of the 23rd
and 91st psalms, both of which we are singing today in their form as
hymns. For most, the words provided comfort in overcoming the fear of death and
the thought that they might never see their nearest and dearest again; but they
were also making a plea to God to help them triumph over their enemies in order
to remove the root of the evil they perceived.
We look back now and sense the
futility of it all. The First World War
started with excitement and a deep sense of righteousness. Soldiers sang jolly songs as they set off for
the slaughterhouse of the trenches. Songs
we still hear today like Tipperary and
Pack up your Troubles. Marching off
to a war to end all wars.
Some conscientious objectors and
later deserters were shot and only recently pardoned; but there can be no
mistaking the valour and courage of those who, whether or not they believed in
what they were doing, gave their lives for a cause they believed to be just.
Europe has, by and large, lived at
peace for the last 75 years. Certainly
there has been no major conflagration as we saw between 1939 and 1945. Memories of the horrors of both of the last
World Wars still do remain fresh thanks to our modern media. A recent visit to
Auschwitz testifies to the potential inhumanity of humankind. But today we face increasing attacks upon our
Christian beliefs and values which would and could throw away any sense of warfare
being just. Are we prepared to stand up
for those important values in the face of these attacks?
Those men we remember and honour
this morning fought for decency and the protection of what they thought were the
values which God would wish to preserve.
As Christians we respect them today but we also need to honour them by
the way we lead our lives in this modern day and age and protect the values
which they fought and died for. In the
words of the famous hymn – “Onward
Christian Soldiers” for as disciples we are also the soldiers of Christ.
When you go home, tell them
of us, and say,
for your tomorrow we gave
our today.
Amen
MFB/82/01.07.2016
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