Remembrance Sunday

Philippians 4:6-9 

In the city of Philippi Christians are urged by Paul not to be anxious about anything. If anyone had cause to be anxious, it was Paul, who wrote this letter while he was in prison.  Paul is surprisingly joyful in this letter, but at the same time he is concerned about the dangers facing the Philippians, and as he warns them in ch.3 of the ‘enemies of the cross of Christ’, Paul assures the Philippians here in ch.4 that by remaining firm in their faith in the Lord, ‘the peace of God will guard their hearts and minds.’  Today when we are anxious about the ‘enemies of the cross’, and they are many, this assurance for us, as well.

In the field of psychology, anxiety falls within the emotional category of ‘fear’. Anxiety is the result of threats that are perceived as uncontrollable or unavoidable.  When we’re faced with a threat, our human response generally goes in one of two ways – it’s either ‘fight’ or ‘flight’.  We could say that Paul’s advice to ‘stand firm’ in the Lord falls under the ‘fight’ response – it’s a spiritual battle, grounded in the real world. We may not be able to avoid ‘the enemies of the cross,’ and in fact, we are called to confront them.  But Paul urges us to have confidence in the cross of Christ, that ultimately God is in control, and the enemies of Christ will be conquered in the end.  And so Paul encourages us to focus our minds on that which is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy – and in so doing, our anxieties are smothered by the good things that are promised by our God.

For many people, today is a day of very mixed emotions.  Some may be veterans themselves, or have relatives who were affected by war.  Some may have loved ones serving currently in the Armed Forces.  Others have had relatively little involvement in the realities of armed conflict.  But in one way or another, we’re all affected, and most of us share in a deep sense of gratitude for those who put their lives on the line for the freedom of others.

It is important to remember so that we can avoid repeating the same mistakes of the past - but remembering can sometimes bring great anxiety.  There are times in this life when to be able to forget might seem the better option.  Combatants returning from frontline activity can experience ‘post-traumatic stress’ and find their return to ‘normality’ anything but normal.  Even the next generation can be affected if raised around a parent who has struggled in the aftermath of war.  

I read an article recently about an American woman named Christal Presley. Christal has written a book called "Thirty Days with My Father", which has been described as ‘a gritty memoir written by a woman haunted by what some psychologists describe as second-generation post-traumatic stress disorder.’ Christal’s father served in the Vietnam War.  Upon his return, at first things seemed ok – he married and had a daughter, but then this man’s flashbacks became so bad he became violent, reclusive and suicidal for many years.  And as his daughter Christal grew up, she began to have serious problems stemming from living in this kind of home environment. Through counselling, she came to realised she was facing the demons of her father’s war.

The term, ‘post-traumatic stress disorder’ was officially defined after the Vietnam War.  It wasn’t a properly recognised or treated condition in the days of WWI or II – but the condition itself was certainly there as a result of those wars – it was called ‘shell shock’ in WW1 and ‘Combat Stress Reaction’ in WWII, and it had its effects on the generations subsequently born to those who battled in those wars. 

It’s important to remember, even when it isn’t easy.  Sometimes memories are anything but lovely, admirable, excellent or praise-worthy.  But remembrance is at the heart of healing and restoring, because it’s only when we spend that necessary time of remembering that we can then move on into a new beginning.  Helping his daughter write her book made it possible for Christal Presley’s father to return to the land of the living.  And this is the transforming power of remembrance; this is where new life can be found out of death.

 

Today we remember the many people who have fought to protect freedom and bring peace.  But in our remembering, let’s not forget the One who puts the vision of freedom and peace into our hearts. He is the One who comes to bring us ultimate freedom and peace. 

Peace is more than just the avoidance of war, because peace also includes reconciliation.  It’s about building relationships between people, between communities and between nations.  And we must start with ourselves, through our own reconciliation with God, and then we must continue in our families, in our parish and in our communities, to build relationships of peace and reconciliation. 

And for that we desperately need God’s help, to change and transform us; to shape us; to give us a passion for peace and for justice and a passion to keep on following Jesus, who is the path to peace.  Colossians 1:17 tells us that ‘in Christ, all things are held together.’  Christ holds us in remembrance. And we are called to live in remembrance of Him.

In the last days, God’s kingdom will be fully established on earth as it is in heaven; and then God’s people will be settled and content under the reign of the Lord.  There will be righteous judgment, peace and harmony; there will be no more war or fear of any kind.  We pray for that kingdom to come whenever we pray the Lord’s Prayer.  And as we walk with Jesus on our journey of discipleship, we’re walking into that kingdom, which is being built even now within us and in His Church.   

There is a tension that we have to live with until the fullness of that kingdom comes.  Today we remember those who have fallen in conflict, in the service of this country.  World Wars I and II were immensely traumatic for this nation, and their legacies are still being explored today.  But we will remember those who fought in the hope that their service was not in vain – and that by remembering, ‘we that are left’ will be spurred on to work passionately for reconciliation, to the glory of God.  Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  And may the peace of God guard our hearts and minds as we stand firm in the faith.  Amen.

Sermon for All Souls

Isaiah 25:6-9
Revelation 22:1-6, 16-17
The other day my daughter said that she doesn’t think prayer works, because if prayer worked, people wouldn’t die.  It’s pretty hard to come back with a quick and satisfying response to that statement, suitable for a 15-year-old’s understanding.  Prayers for healing do work, sometimes in very mysterious ways, but still it is only temporary.  Death is part of life; we cannot deny the fact that death is inevitable. 
 
In the first scripture reading we heard this evening from Isaiah chapter 25, the poet-prophet imagines the earth having over it a shroud or sheet – a covering of death, weighed down by sadness, loss and mourning.  The world is held in the grip of death and has no power to shake it off.  But now, the poet prophesies, the Lord of life will bring an end to this crisis, the active power of death that crowds in on every chance for life.  The death of which this poet speaks is more than just the fact that we are all going to die.  Death encompasses every force that works against wholeness.  Death is all that diminishes well-being and prevents a right relationship with other people and with God.  That’s who death is, and we cannot by ourselves resist this culture of death.  But now the good news from the prophet-poet:  God will swallow death like a great sea monster attacking a smaller fish.  God will attack death in all its forms and crush it and eliminate it: ‘He will swallow up death forever’.  And then, verse 8 tells us, the Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces.  This image is a comfort and expectation for the faithful.  We read of this promise again in the book of Revelation, written some 700 years after Isaiah, where it says:  “He will wipe every tear from their eyes.  Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away”. 

Both of the passages we’ve heard tonight from Isaiah and from Revelation 22 speak of a radical, complete transformation of reality as we now know it.  In Isaiah, God’s act of transformation includes removing “disgrace” from God’s people – the disgrace of being helpless, powerless, and exploited; the shame of not being able to resist the powers of death; the humiliation that we are ultimately inadequate.  Now all of that will be overcome, prophesies Isaiah.  What is old and spent will yield to God’s newness.  The old city of abuse is radically displaced by the new city ‘on this mountain’.  To move from the one city to the other is to move from the shrouded, sheeted desert of death to the abundant banquet of life. There is affirmation, too, from Jesus, of this very vision of God’s generous provision of hospitality, as he tells the parable of the wedding banquet in Matthew 22, and also as he comforts his disciples in John 14, when he says, “In my Father’s house there are many rooms; I am going there to prepare a place for you”.  These are promises on which the Christian hope rests.

The book of Revelation is partly a reminder to the Church that things are not as they should be in this world, but also a sign that things won’t continue this way forever.  There will be a fulfilment of the divine promise given in the Old and New Testaments, in which the separation between heaven and earth and God and humanity are overcome when God presence dwells with men and women in a transformed world. 

Revelation presents to us a vision, where we’re asked to suspend our judgment and submit ourselves to be informed by the shock of what is unusual, for the sake of a better understanding of reality.  Revelation poses some problems of language and symbolism – it doesn’t offer a view of things in any kind of literal way.  But we prefer things that are down-to-earth. We want to see things ‘as they really are’.  We like people to call a spade a spade and to be practical rather than airy-fairy about things. The accuracy of a photograph or a video – what we see or hear on the news - now, that’s reliable.  But is it really?  Can we capture reality by sight or hearing alone?  What we perceive as real may be far from the whole story.  Artists and poets have long recognised that photographs or prose can never do justice to the full dimension of human experience.  We must read Revelation as if we were reading poetry or looking at a painting.  Provided that we don’t demand a ‘photographic’ quality, we can find in Revelation the most ‘realistic’ insight and understanding of our relationships and the longing of our impoverished world. 

Revelation as a whole offers an account that resolves the contrast between heaven and earth, and good and evil, in the dwelling of God with men and women in a heaven on earth – what the bible calls ‘the New Jerusalem’.  And the event that brings about this resolution is that which lies at the centre of the Christian faith - the confession that the crucified Jesus is raised from the dead.  Resurrection from the dead transforms that which was destined to death into the shared life of a renewed world.  The vision in Revelation helps us to see the contrast between earth and heaven disappearing in the new creation, when God’s dwelling is no longer somewhere above us in heaven, but right here on earth. 

Heaven on earth is the fulfilment of God’s purposes, where God is immediate and manifest – very much as God was in the Paradise described in Genesis 3.  All the inhabitants of the new creation are God’s children and are identified with God’s character and enjoy the divine presence unmediated.  And as Paul reminds us in 2 Cor. 5, that new creation isn’t just something to look forward to, because already in Christ there is the possibility in the power of God’s Spirit of bringing about that new creation in individual lives and in communities. In Revelation the vision is of a city – it’s communal rather than individual. From first to last, biblical practice and hope is centred on the healing of relationships, between humanity and God and with one another.  In contrast to the destruction of nature and humanity in the middle chapters of Revelation, we now have the water of life and the fruit-bearing tree of life, and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. 

Placed as it is at the end of the Christian bible, Revelation offers to us the key to understanding the whole story, as it points to the fulfilment of God’s purposes for justice and reconciliation.  But looking forward in hope doesn’t mean we never look back, for remembering makes us present to life as it really is - there can be no healing unless we are present to the wound.  Remembrance is at the heart of healing and restoration.  There is transformational power in remembering, for only by remembering our loss and our grief are we able to embrace the journey into new beginnings.  Renewal is a work of remembrance... it is life out of death.  What is broken is reconnected. 

In the Church, as a fellowship of blessed mourners, we somehow experience peace.  At the Lord’s Table, we experience comfort and healing, as we believe in the communion of saints – those who are with us together with those who have died.  And our hope lies in Christ, in his Resurrection and in his promise to remember us in his Kingdom.  As we remember his story, we hope and pray that God’s kingdom will come on earth as it already is in heaven.  And until then, may our thoughts, words and deeds reflect that time when sorrow and sighing will flee away, and each person will be recognised as equally stamped with the name of our God; and then we shall see God face to face. 

Remembrance

Isaiah 25:1-9 & Revelation 22:1-5

Remembrance Sunday brings to mind a variety of feelings. Some people here may have experienced war or have relatives who’ve been affected by war. Some here may have loved ones currently serving in the Armed Forces. Others, like me, have little involvement in the realities of armed conflict, but we all have immense respect for those who have put their lives on the line for our freedom. Today, it is important to remember.

Many of you will have seen some of the many war memorials in France. It’s a humbling experience. Travelling through the Somme in the summer, we visited the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing, which bears the names of more than 72,000 officers and men of the United Kingdom and South African forces who died in WW1 and have no known grave. The whereabouts of their bodily remains will always be a mystery - and how disturbing this must have been for their families.

We have mixed feelings about war. We hope that we live in a country where conflict is only entered into when necessary to protect our freedom or the freedom of vulnerable people. We hope that world leaders consider long and hard whether war is justified before entering into armed conflict. We hope that those who fight in our Armed Forces will fight with honour. But evidence from contemporary conflicts shows that sometimes wars start with questionable motivations, and sometimes conflict brings out the most shameful behaviour, not just in the enemy, but in us and in our allies.

Sadly, we still count the dead, as bodies are flown back to the UK, and we read their stories in the newspaper. At the end of WW1, you wouldn’t be able to fit the names of the dead in a single newspaper. The sheer numbers are hard for us to comprehend today. WW1 was known as ‘the war to end all wars’. It has been followed by WW2, Korea, the Falklands, the two Gulf Wars, the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan and conflicts in other areas where British & Commonwealth troops have been engaged. It is important to remember.

Some of us who were at the service of Remembrance in Liscard on Thursday were disappointed because at the 2 minute silence at 11:00, some people just walked on past, carrying on their conversations. At that one point in time, which is set aside for remembrance, they had forgotten. But on reflection, those people remind me of the fact that all of us, at times, take our freedom for granted. And that’s why the work of the Royal British Legion is so important, lest we forget.

This year, the British Legion has done something really different to mark Remembrance Sunday. They’ve made a single called ‘2 Minute Silence’, which is available online to download for £1 - and as well as the silent track, buyers also receive a video file showing individuals standing silent in remembrance: famous actors, sports stars, politicians and musicians as well as serving and injured soldiers. I found it quite moving. Chris Simpkins, from the British Legion, hopes that people will appreciate the significance of the absence of sound: ‘Rather than record a song’, he says, ‘we felt the UK public would recognise the poignancy of silence and its clear association with remembrance.’ Let us hope so, too.

A Facebook campaign has boosted the single into the Top 40 – and because it’s a ‘new entry’ in the charts, BBC Radio 1 is going to play this silent song during the Sunday afternoon countdown. A completely noiseless charity single in the charts for the first time. The Official Charts Company says they’re ‘not aware that any track like this has ever made an impact on the Official Singles Chart before. But even aside from that, this [is] a great achievement by the Royal British Legion - and for a great cause, of course’ – what a contemporary way of encouraging Remembrance in the public arena, especially amongst younger people. The Royal British Legion knows it’s important to remember.

We remember the many people who have fought to protect freedom and bring peace. But in our remembering, as Christians, let us not forget the one who puts the vision of freedom and peace into our hearts – he is the one who comes to bring us ultimate freedom and peace.

Our bible readings today are all about God’s promises for freedom and peace. The reading from Revelation 22 reminds us that the day will come when there will be no more pain, no more conflict, no more war. It’s a prophecy of the New Jerusalem, of Eden restored, the time to come when earth will merge with heaven in the new creation. And the first reading from Isaiah 25, written some 700 years before Jesus came to begin the merger, prophesies the same thing:

The context of the Isaiah reading is a time in Israel’s history when things are bleak – civilised society has become disordered, and Israel is badly afflicted. Verse 2 says: ‘You have made the city a heap of rubble, the fortified town a ruin...’ We’re not told which city this is – it could be Babylon, but it seems to move beyond this to any city characterised by arrogance, injustice and the misuse of power. It’s every city devoted to greed and exploitation. This city is in ruin, and Isaiah praises the Lord for having done ‘wonderful things’, which he had planned long ago. This prophecy speaks of God’s ultimate intentions to humble those who exploit the weak.

Isaiah is inspired to speak for all the poor and needy, those who are crushed and abused by indifference and greed. In the abusive city the poor are surrounded by the merciless who care only for themselves. Isaiah speaks the word that God will intervene against that city, and even the heartless will glorify and fear the Lord because God eliminates the old way of living and being. From verse 6 both the city and the ruthless have disappeared, leaving only the generous and caring presence of the righteous Lord. The vision is of a mountain. On ‘this mountain’ is the great banquet for all peoples, in the fullness of the Kingdom of God, who offers this feast as a sign of generosity, security, and joy - but goes even further than that. Isaiah imagines that the whole earth has a ‘pall’ over it – a shroud of death – weighed down by sadness and loss. The world is gripped by the power of death that crowds in upon every chance for life. This isn’t just about the awareness that we’re all going to die. This is about the active negation of well-being; everything that limits humanity and our well-being, and prevents communion with others or with God. That’s who death is, and that’s the death that God will swallow up. The apostle Paul says in 1 Cor 15:54, ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory’. This is the good news of Jesus – this is his accomplishment on the cross. And 700 years before Jesus, Isaiah envisions nothing less than a radical, complete transformation. The final act of transformation removes the shame of helplessness and exploitation; of not being able to resist the powers of death. All of that will be overcome. This is our faith – it is important to remember.

In verse 1, Isaiah says, ‘You are my God.’ By the end of the passage he’s joined by all who welcome the Lord’s kingdom: ‘This is our God.’ This is the community that hopes in confidence that the Lord will prevail. The city of abuse cannot escape the God whom Israel trusts and praises: the Lord who has power to save and to transform. Armistice is about peace, but Christians understand ‘peace’ as more than just the avoidance of war. It’s about building relationships between people, communities, and nations, founded on justice. We start here in our own parish, in our own community, building relationships of peace. And for that we need God’s help, to change each and every one of us: to give us a passion for peace and justice and to follow Jesus, who is the path to peace.

Lord God, give us the will to pledge ourselves to serve you and all others, in the cause of peace, for the relief of want and suffering, and for the praise of your name. Guide us by your Spirit, give us wisdom, give us courage, give us hope, and keep us faithful now and always. Amen.

Reflecting on Funerals

I remember when I was on the ordination training course asking former students who were into their first year of curacy how they felt about funeral ministry. It’s a common question amongst ordinands in training – how will we respond to the inevitable and regular taking of funerals? The answer given by all the new curates and experienced clergy that I’ve ever asked has been that funeral ministry is very special, very much a privilege and a blessing, and a unique opportunity to minister to people at one of life’s most deeply challenging times. And now that I have begun taking funerals myself, I have to agree.

Every funeral is different, because every person is unique. It’s fairly peculiar to the Church of England (as the national ‘established’ church) that we often take funerals for people who have had only a very weak link with the church. Anyone within our parish boundaries can have a funeral service led by a Church of England minister, whether they ever attended church or not; whether they were baptised or not.

Some funerals are more difficult than others, of course. In my experience that can often depend upon whether the family are a cohesive unit or not, but obviously a funeral for anyone who isn’t elderly carries an added sense of tragedy. Recently I conducted a funeral for someone who was under the age of 40, who died in tragic circumstances, and whose family situation was quite fragmented. That was the hardest so far, which affected me for several days after, though I never knew the deceased person or his family before the funeral.

To me, a ‘good’ funeral is one where I can really sense a good support system within the family itself, which I know will help carry them through the weeks, months and years ahead. The minister has got a pastoral obligation to follow up with visiting the bereaved, but family and friends are going to be the more frequent providers of care and attention. I have to say at this point, though, that the church can be a real lifeline to people who have lost loved ones. I think also that it is so good for a church to offer some form of bereavement support group, something which I know has been very helpful for members of my own family after my brother-in-law and stepfather passed away last year. Hopefully we will be able to set up something like that soon at the church I’m in now. It certainly seems needed.

Death is such an enigma. On the one hand, we know it is unavoidable, part of life, and will come to us all. On the other hand, we are so shocked by it. St. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 15:55 that because of the resurrection of Jesus after his death, death’s sting and victory are no more. This gives us assurance and hope for the afterlife, where there will be no more tears or sorrow. For now, death still jars us and shocks us. We weep for love lost. We are still bound to suffering in this world. It doesn’t feel right, and it isn’t right. But I believe that is why Jesus came, why he suffered, died, was buried, resurrected and ascended into heaven. I believe wholeheartedly in the everlasting life offered in Christ Jesus. And that is the only possible comfort I can bring to others who mourn.