Tuesday, 16 November 2021

SERMON 166 - SUNDAY 14 NOVEMBER 2021 - REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY

Sermon at Farley Parish Church, - Remembrance Day Service –  Sunday 14th November 2021

Daniel 12:1-3; Hebrews 10:11-25; Mark 13:1-8

Today, this Day of Remembrance, is set aside in our Church Calendar to remember and give thanks for those who gave their lives in those great conflicts of the Twentieth Century, predominantly the First and Second World Wars.  None, now, are left who can actually remember the Great War of 1914-1918 and as each year passes fewer and fewer can recall the Second Great Conflict.  It is therefore ever more important that we keep alive the memories of those who gave their lives in the these conflicts and all those who suffered as a consequence.  The Great War of 1914-1918, the First World War as it became known, was described, on Armistice Day, as the War to end all Wars yet, less than twenty years later the world was caught up in yet another terrible conflict with the loss of millions of lives. To a greater extent, this was perhaps a more terrible war than the First World War with its additional massive loss of civilian life in the Holocaust, the Blitz and finally the Atomic bombings in Japan.  As we heard earlier, for our future many made the ultimate sacrifice of their present.

Today, despite the horrors of those two great conflicts of the past century, war and suffering continues with the continuance of lives lost and suffering caused by the displacement of people from their homelands.  Tyranny and disrespect of human lives and cultures continues today and it is nothing new.  Throughout the bible we read of conflicts and wars, of death and destruction and the suffering of people. People often ask that very important question – why does God allow suffering on this scale? Why does he allow suffering at all?  Not easy questions are they, and often dodged by Christian apologists. Sometimes I really wonder this myself; but each and every time I do ponder on this question I remember the ultimate suffering and sacrifice made by Jesus on the Cross. We know that through his suffering, crucifixion and resurrection, death was itself defeated.

We all long for a world where suffering is eradicated, but the truth is that however hard we might try, the reality is that suffering and poverty are likely to remain with us for all time until Christ’s return. Indeed Jesus himself rebuked the disciple Judas Iscariot when Judas complained about the amount of costly perfume which was being lavished on Jesus by Mary Magdalene saying that the perfume could have been sold and the proceeds distributed to the poor. You will recall that Jesus retorted that “The poor will always be with you but I am only here a little longer”.  The truth of the matter is that Jesus is right, poverty and suffering are likely to continue until his return when we are told that there will be created a new Heaven and Earth.

But back to the present; I often respond to the question “why is there suffering” in this world and “why doesn’t God do something about it” with my view which is that God gave us free will and the responsibility for looking after this our fragile planet. However hard we try, we humans are, to use a cliché “only human” and our own personal gratification, thirst for power or recognition or just simply plain dogma leads us into conflict with others who might not see the world exactly as we do. History has shown that most conflicts have occurred because of a thirst or drive for power or territory or promulgation of a particular political or religious dogma. I have frequently heard people say “religion is the poison of the people” and we would be a better world if it didn’t exist. In my view, the very essence of our Christian religion is to spread the good news of Jesus as our Saviour irrespective of any particular denominational doctrine; to simply to be faithful to the words of Jesus Christ during his three and a half years of ministry and recognise and understand about his ultimate sacrifice for our sins. That is the true Christian message which is designed to reduce conflict.

We live on a very fragile yet precious planet – one of eight orbiting a relatively small star in the Milky Way Galaxy. To our current knowledge, we are the only planet in our Solar System upon which life exists – certainly civilisation.  Despite investigating thousands of other exo-planets orbiting other star systems, we have yet to detect one with the ability to support life.  That makes us extremely precious – that’s why a global understanding of the need to preserve our resources and use them sensibly is so important.  That’s why COP26 is such a ground-breaking and important conference in Glasgow. 

At the Creation of the world, we are told that God gave the stewardship of this planet to Adam and Eve and their human offspring; that’s us! - a huge responsibility. I have made reference before to that amazing photograph of the planet Earth rising over the surface of the Moon taken by astronaut Bill Anders on the Apollo 8 mission and beamed back to Earth.  A fragile beautiful world and taken from just above the lunar surface - no country boundaries could be detected all looked serene and peaceful – just as the Earth is meant to be. It also reminded Bill that we are all huddled together on this small planetary spacecraft hurtling through space and there is nowhere else we can go.  The Moon’s desolation - “magnificent desolation as it was described” - was in deep contrast to the deep blue of the Earth’s oceans and green of the verdant forests; so precious.

In these days of global communication and news – when we can have a Zoom meeting with our friends and family as far away as New Zealand and Australia, or the United States or Canada, there is no excuse for not knowing what is going on elsewhere on our globe or, worse still, not caring. The future of our world, to keep it environmentally clean and conflict free, rests with us and our prayers and petitions to and for those in authority.  No longer can the words of Neville Chamberlain which he used to justify signing the Munich Agreement which “sold out” the Czechs to the Nazis be used by us to stop caring in the future “a quarrel in a faraway country, between people of whom we know nothing".  It could be argued that a stance made then in 1938 could have prevented the outbreak of World War II in 1939. But that is historical conjecture.

The simple fact is, it is for this reason (that history can teach us how to behave in the future) that the sacrifices made by the warriors of the First and Second World Wars and, regrettably later conflicts in many other parts of the world, must never be forgotten. My history teacher taught me that the importance of learning history was not simply to remember a catalogue of dates and events of the past but to take heed of the warnings it gives for the future.

And so, from the going down of the Sun and in the morning, we must remember them.

  

Amen                                                                                       MFB/166/11112021

No comments:

Post a Comment