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
