Remembrance Sunday 2018

Jonah 3:1-5,10

Psalm 62:5-12

Hebrews 9:24-28

Mark 12:38-44

Remembrance-tide, if it is to do what it is meant to, first of all must make us pause.  For two minutes on Remembrance Sunday the traffic is stilled and we still ourselves to our core to mark the sacrifice of ordinary men and women who were prepared to be extraordinary for their nation and their comrades and their families.  This itself is a  pause. In 1918 the Allies (France, Great Britain and its Empire and colonies, Belgium, Serbia, Greece, Montenegro and the United States of America agreed to an armistice or end of hostilities requested by Germany.  The Central Powers, of which Germany was one, had realized the impossibility of their winning the war. Bulgaria had asked for an armistice on  the 30^th September, Turkey on the 30^th October and Austria-Hungary on the 3^rd November. The Armistice too was a pause, initially for 36 days. Guns were stilled, birdsong could be heard again and men and women could return to their homes. The world war was not over, and would grumble on in some parts of the world until 1922 but at least there was a pause, there was time to reflect.  And that’s what we do on Remembrance Sunday, we pause and we reflect, and our reflection takes us down a number of paths .

We remember those who die in war and those who are broken, the cost to them and their families. We express our regret at the waste and the cost of war, when communities in poorer countries experience famine, poor sanitation and over-stretched education systems. We re-commit ourselves to speak for and to act for peace, to be peacemakers where others delight to be revenge-takers and score-settlers. We commit ourselves to supporting those who are damaged in war. Sometimes that damage is obvious- limbs missing, and faces scared. Sometimes that damage is deeper than we can see, the damage that comes from the things soldiers have seen. So we support help for Heroes and Combat Stress and forces charities. To this rich mix of themes we add another  one this year – we cannot mark the centenary of the Armistice without remembering too the thanksgiving for a victorious end of the war, and the immense pride of teach community in the heroism and gallantry of their sons who went to be sailors, soldiers and airmen. We can airbrush out that pride in our attempts to make history more acceptable, more PC but it is a reality. We have a paper memorial to the workers of Westwoods metal-works (it’s on the Altar in St John’s Chapel for you to look at). It celebrates everyone who went to fight, their rank and their units, not just the names of those who died. St Luke’s has a printed memorial book for the Millwall Parish that does the same, as I remember. Only the starred names of the dead were then carved on the War Memorial. This year, in particular, we remember them all, those who didn’t come back, and those who did.

The themes of Remembrance vary from year to year, but the word of God that illuminates them is eternal and speaks unchanging truths. The Gospel we heard today reminds that the sacrifices that society expects often fall hardest on the most vulnerable. Jesus watches a widow putting her last two small copper coins into the temple treasury. Jesus comments that she has put in more than anyone else, for she, out of her poverty has put in all that she had to live on. In war families often give all that they have, their livelihoods, their homes and properties and their treasured sons and daughters, and the poorest give and suffer the most. The point of the Gospel though is that Jesus sees, and Jesus gives the widow’s sacrifice its true value.

 Our Old Testament reading from the Book of Jonah is realistic about human sin, that it brings calamity, like the calamity of war. But it is also optimistic. The prophet Jonah would like to consign the people of Nineveh to their just desserts, unrepentant, but God isn’t prepared to give up on the inhabitants of this sprawling, densely populated city. God sends Jonah into their midst with his divine word, and they hear it and repent. Destruction for the city of Nineveh is averted, it isn’t going to happen today. Nineveh and the cities like it are the historical root of our Western civilization – the word itself comes from idea of living in a city. In 1918 western civilisations were morally bankrupt as men were brutalised by the conditions in the trenches and the appalling things that they were expected to do against their fellow human beings. Destruction of all that was loved and treasured in human society loomed. But at the last moment the very people who seemed hell-bent on destruction came to their senses and asked for an end to the fighting. The ultimate calamity, which was where their stubbornness was leading them, didn’t happen. When we turn to God seeking his forgiveness, if we do so with sincerity and a real desire to change, God will avert the calamity, he will forgive us and welcome us back into his presence.

I’m going to end though with the reading from Hebrews. Looking back at my notes I see that I spoke about this passage on Remembrance Sunday 2012, but it bears repeating. Hebrews contrasts the ministry of the priests in the Temple with that of Jesus. For their sacrifices to have any effect they would need to be from the beginning of the world. And that’s how it feels with war, that it has been always with us, and its sacrifices and its suffering have always to be faced, accepted and endured. But Jesus Christ is not like those ministries of the priests in the temple. He is not just the priest, he is the offering or sacrifice. He sacrifices himself for us, and his action is so perfect that it is both once and it is for all. His sacrifice of himself is universal  and it happens just the once. Just once, but it changes the world and makes all other sacrifices redundant and unnecessary. We do not have to suffer with war as if it is from the beginning of the world, as if it is in our DNA and we can’t as humans get along without it. We can. Jesus’ once and for all sacrifice proves that change is possible and we should be building that change wherever we see the need for it. At the moment I see the need for that change in the Yemen, do you? At the end of a very good article about the Armistice in the Church Times this week Professor Philpott, from Kings wrote: One hundred years after the end of the Great War, it is wise to remember that peace is the temporary absence of war, but not the destiny of mankind. I don’t agree with him. Because of the cross of Jesu, and what it has done, I believe peace is indeed our human destiny, and we should do all we can to enable ourselves and others achieve that destiny.