remembrance sermon finchampstead

john 15:9-17, romans 8:31-39

I remember, at some point, reading something G.K.Chesterton wrote about English people and their houses. A house, a home was somehow uniquely important – a place to be yourself – a place, should you so wish, to sit and eat your dinner in your pyjamas on the floor. At least that is what I remember reading.

This rather extraordinary extrapolation of our rights as individuals does enter deep into our psyche – we should have somewhere safe to live where we can be ourselves – provided that we are not infringing upon the rights of someone else and are behaving morally and legally. To live quietly with or without families, to have neighbours who are nice enough but not overbearing, to stay dry in the rain and warm in the winter, these all seem perfectly reasonable – and they are. When people are deprived the basic human right of housing then we should be up in arms about it.

In John's Gospel Jesus is not talking about houses and geography at all – he is talking about something much more fundamental . He is talking about our deep abiding in God – he is saying that God is our basic residence, our place of safety and protection. And that this abiding is the source of our joy and peace.

This should be a source of great comfort to us – that we have a God who wants to surround us and be with us in this way. But it is also a source of great discomfort as today, we are presented with the remembrance of those who have died in wars. It does not take a thinking person very long to realize, that whilst we should certainly remember and give thanks for those who have given their lives in service to all our freedoms, in protection of all our homes and houses, there is a basic inconsistency between war and our call as Christians to be harbingers of peace.

Not for one moment do I think that it is as simple as all of us saying that we are pacifists – this would be a lie for many of us as we simply would not stand by and allow our children or children's children to be hurt or killed without trying to do something about it. Armies and wars are simply an extension of our individual protectiveness – how we use them in the complex modern world is a subject of constant debate – but simply to divide the world up with generals and politicians on one side of the table and us sitting somewhat helplessly on the other, complicit with actions which set out to protect and yet angry at their actual outcome is neither to embrace citizenry nor to take seriously this call to abide which Jesus gives.

Abiding in Christ is not a passive action. The early Christians new all to well that this abiding was costly and may call them to let go of some of those things, food, safety, shelter which we regard as inalienable rights. Abiding in Christ is dynamic – whilst we receive from God we are also called to give of ourselves, to engage with the world around us – to really chew on the questions which beset our age and most definitely to remember our past.

A society which forgets is impoverished by that action but a society which sentimentalizes is trapped. The Gospel today is not about war and the cost of war it is about Jesus and the cost of his life for all the world – everyone in the world of every creed, colour and class. Too often we repeat it as a half hearted excuse for the violence of our race. It is a great sacrifice to die for other people but the paradigm which Jesus lays before us in the Gospel has nothing to do with killing and everything to do with loving.

Remembering correctly is important not only too honour those who have died in the service of their country but also to keep alive in us the sheer horror of war. I was watching a documentary with my son who enjoys military history, yesterday. It was about the first world war but the film had been colourized. Suddenly the soldiers who I had only seen as fuzzy black and white blobs in the past looked clear, like the people who I know. They came to life for me – each one of them with friends and family, each one of them a human life, each one of them valuable in God's sight.

And then there was an interview with Harry Patch – who died last year and fought in the trenches. He was recounting how he had to fire on a German soldier and in that moment, when he help a man's life in his hand, he remembered Moses and the Ten Commandments, he remembered Thou shalt not kill, and he fired twice, hitting the man in the ankle and knee, leaving him disabled but alive.

It is important on Remembrance Sunday, as on every day to really think about where it is that we abide – what is most important to us – where our motivation comes from. The Epistle to the Romans underlines again that there is nothing which will separate us from God – no matter what we do. But this is not an excuse to withdraw from this human struggle of just how we can all get along, just how do we deal with those who are intent upon causing the human race harm, how we engage with those with whom we violently disagree and all the time, in all these things, we aware that we are called to be people of peace, but never to fall into the trap of thinking that peace is itself a cheap or easy option.

At Remembrance time I find myself in a swirl of thoughts – I am sad and angry that we ever get into these wars in the first place – I know that war and destruction is not what God wants for God's people – and yet I realize that I cannot commit to a pacifism which stands by and allows oppression of my fellow human beings. And perhaps in all this, the worst enemy of peace is resignation, our thinking that this is the way it has to be because this is the way people are.

This is not our faith, we do not believe that we have to stay still and remain unchanged – we believe in the transformative power of God's love. What better honour could we do those who have fought and died for peace than to act towards peace. Remembrance cannot simply be about looking sadly back, it must be about looking hopefully forwards – and we look ahead from this place of safety in God – knowing that wherever life many take us – out home is not of bricks and mortar but of stronger stuff – our home is abiding in Christ.