Sermon at Holy Trinity Church, East
Grimstead - Remembrance Sunday - Sunday 12 November 2017
Amos 5:18-24; 1
Thessalonians 4:13-end; Matthew 25:1-13
May I speak in the name
of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen
Ypres, Jutland, Passendale, Gallipoli; El Alemein, River Plate, Stalingrad,
Hiroshima, Nagasaki; Inchon; Saigon;
Goose Green, San Carlos, Bluff Cove, Helmand Province; Iraq; Aleppo, and
so on; just a few names of places which have seen great battles during the last
100 years or so. Whenever we have the
two minutes of silence I try and remember as many areas of conflict as possible
bringing to mind the suffering and the heroism which each invokes. Two minutes is never long enough.
I have recently been reading Michael Dobb’s novel “Winston’s War” in which Lord Dobbs, as
he now is, chronicles the two years or so leading up to the declaration of war
in September 1939 and the subsequent appointment of Churchill as Prime
Minister. The book opens by setting the scene of the Munich Agreement and
Neville Chamberlain’s famous words “Peace
in our time” followed later by “How horrible, fantastic,
incredible, it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks
here because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know
nothing.”
Both Neville
Chamberlain and Lord Halifax, the then Foreign Secretary, regarded themselves
as pious men – good Christians upholding good Christian values through
appeasement; but as we know this only led to the tyrants in Berlin seeking to
grab more and more territory and subjugating a people to some of the most
ghastly and inhumane treatment ever known – torture, concentration camps, mass
murders and ethnic cleansing.
Chamberlain and Halifax both looked down with
disdain on Winston Churchill – an elderly man who had made many errors of
judgement in the past – including the disastrous Gallipoli Campaign – who in
their mind was an ungodly man, a drunkard, a warmonger and self-opportunist
without party loyalty. A man who had embarrassed his government again and again
by pointing out their shortcomings in not realising the clouds of destruction
forming in Germany which would engulf Europe and for which the British nation
was not ready.
When I was a
small boy I joined the Clubs – the younger version of the Scout Movement –
whose motto was “Be Prepared” (I seldom was I have to confess - always losing
my woggle!) and this was the message which Churchill tried, repeatedly, to get
over to his government; and it is the same message which Jesus is trying to get
over in the parable we heard today from Matthew’s gospel. Jesus is, of course, talking about his return
but it equally applies to all of us -
always be prepared to stand up for our Christian beliefs and values even
if this does mean preparing to fight hard for those same beliefs and values.
I do
understand the reasoning and philosophy of Chamberlain and Halifax. Love and peace are preached continuously by
Jesus in the gospels. Both Chamberlain and Halifax prayed regularly before
important Cabinet meetings. He even talks about turning ones cheek and loving
your enemies – not killing them.
However, there are times when conflict can be justified and Jesus
himself was not immune from displaying righteous anger – remember how he dealt
with the money lenders in the Temple in that final week in Jerusalem. The
importance, of course, is that when conflict becomes unavoidable it is just
that – unavoidable. A stance has finally
to be taken.
St. Augustine
of Hippo (and later St. Thomas Aquinas) had much to say about this:
St. Augustine emphasizes the idea of restoration of peace as the main motive of war. He says, 'We do not seek peace in order to be at war, but we go to war that we may have peace. Be peaceful, therefore, in warring, so that you may vanquish those whom you war against, and bring them to the prosperity of peace.' So in St. Augustine's thinking a war "was limited by its purpose, its authority and its conduct."
Today, whole generations have grown up having little or no
understanding of those horrors although, of course, here in Wiltshire there are
many families involved in the armed forces which, today, have personal experiences
of the effects of warfare in far off lands; where our servicemen and women
continue to fight for justice and peace along the lines of St. Augustine’s
thinking.
But we should never glorify war – as many do. The Christian
message should always be that given by the two great commandments – love God
and love your neighbour; but these two bastions of our Faith sometimes need
defending by those who would act in contravention of them. The Old and the New Testament, especially the
Old, show that God is not against war – indeed the Book of Joshua reads as
though it should be on the library shelves under “Military History” rather than
“Religion” but in victory, having overcome the oppressors, we should be humble
and magnanimous and help build and restore those nations ravaged by the effects
of any conflict – making the world a better and more pleasant place. To bring a
bit of the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth.
Remembrance Sunday, then, is such an important occasion – not
just for those veterans to recall what they went through or to remember
companions who never survived the conflicts, but also so that those generations
from my own onwards may clearly understand why so many lives were given, and
continue to be lost, and are able to continue to give praise and thanks that so
many stemmed the tide of evil which could have so easily engulfed the world.
Today, those conflicts in which our troops are engaged are
largely in far flung parts of the world (often “because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people
of whom we know nothing” to quote again Neville Chamberlain) and the issues which have provoked
them are often very complex. Many young
people have no real understanding or concept as to why or where these conflicts
are taking place – indeed many adults, including some very prominent
politicians it could be argued, don’t either.
Although these modern conflicts may be remote, the battles now often
fought with technology, and the victims largely unknown to us, the horrors are
still the same.
And so, the importance of today cannot and should not ever be
trivialised. We owe it to forthcoming
generations to keep alive the memory of those brave fallen and the causes for
which they fell – to remember the evil which could have engulfed us. In the words of the Kohima they gave their today so that we, all of us
and the generations to follow, could have our tomorrows.
In his later letter to the Thessalonians, Paul reminds us
that the return of our Saviour Jesus Christ will only come after the “lawless
one” is revealed through rebellion. In
other words, as Christians we are expected to uphold the ethics which we have
been taught by Jesus and should stand up against and expose all who would
deceive the truth as revealed by him.
Throughout history leaders have waged war and oppressed people either in
the name of Christianity or by pretending to be Christians themselves. In Nazi Germany, Hitler and his regime tried
to appeal to Catholics and Lutherans alike that there was a score to settle
against the Jews because the Jewish leadership had been responsible for Jesus’s
crucifixion.
There is only one omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent God
– creator of all thing and all people, everybody, black, white, and
asiatic. He appeals to Christians and
God-fearing people everywhere, just as Paul does, to stand up against tyranny
and oppression. As well as our armed
forces the church also has an important role to play. Emeritus Archbishop
Desmond Tutu puts it simply – If the Church is not going to stand up for the
poor, the hungry, the oppressed, the discriminated, then who is?
In conclusion, I praise and thank all those who have been
prepared and who have so courageously given their lives to oppose tyranny and
evil and uphold those true Christian values as taught by our Lord Saviour Jesus
Christ. Let us remember them today and
never forget them in the days, weeks and years ahead.
Amen
