Sermon
for Remembrance Sunday
Sunday 14th November 2004
Preached
by Rev Brian Parker
Remembrance
Sunday brings back memories for me of individuals.
My Uncle Willie, a big man went to the First World War as a lad of
16, was gassed at the Somme but fell across a dirt track used by ammunition
carts. He was picked up and brought back to a field hospital. He survived.
My Aunt Kathleen regularly sent me stamps and coins from Germany as
well as some pieces of Nazi insignia. She was with the first British
company to enter Belsen – but we only knew about that many years
later.
My maths teacher –‘Slapper’. He had been a Spitfire
pilot in the Battle of Britain. Once he called me to the front of
the class, opened my exercise book and demanded to know where the
working out of the correct answer was. It was at the back of the book
– it should have been at the front. Slap! He caught me on the
side of the head. I didn’t see it coming. It was said of ‘Slapper’
that he always came at you out of the sun!
Later memories are of young men and women who gave their lives in
the fight against terrorism here at home in our so-called ‘internal
war’. Mervyn, Jackie, David and so many others, members of the
Ulster Defence Regiment and the RUC who were murdered in their homes,
at the shops, in front of their families.
Its been said we need to remember for the future. “Remember the
former things”. The implication is that in remembering we have
the opportunity and the responsibility to make things better, to get
relationships right, to establish justice and to work for peace.
The psalmist speaks of the children of God embracing this vision.
It is their purpose in life. It is a pilgrimage of faith and hope.
“Blessed are those whose strength is in you, who have set their
hearts on pilgrimage. They go from strength to strength.”
This is a compelling vocation – to be peacemakers, healers, and
reconcilers.
After the Omagh bomb a man spoke of his loss. The IRA had slaughtered
his wife, his daughter and his granddaughter. He said he had cause
to hate more than most and he added: “But hate brought this on
us – we must go beyond hate”.
His pilgrimage was just beginning.
Of course Jesus was the supreme peacemaker. He came into the world
to reconcile God to man, and man to man. And look how he went about
it?
He didn’t hesitate to challenge and expose hypocrisy and empty
gestures. He challenged a murderous mob. He was moved to violent anger
over the shameless exploitation of the poor.
To use that term from the trenches of the First World War, Jesus went
‘over the top’ in a very courageous and deliberate way.
This courage was the mark of his peacemaking pilgrimage among us.
Peace as he understood it was not about the absence of trouble but
rather about everything that makes for man’s highest good. His
pilgrimage had a positive dynamic about it and so should ours.
In the beatitude ‘blessed are the peacemakers’ Jesus is
not talking about peace lovers. We may love peace in the wrong way.
We may allow dangerous situations to develop and say ‘for peace
sake let it be, do nothing’.
But the Bible doesn’t see it like that. Peace does not come from
evading the issues – it comes from facing them, dealing with
them. Peacemaking demands action – even ‘going over the
top’ to make the world a better place.
In the Hebrew tradition peace begins in right relationships. Peace
making is about individuals who have it within them to bridge the
gulfs, heal the breaches, sweeten the bitterness.
Archbishop William Temple said in 1944 that ‘the obligations
of decent men are decided for them by contingencies and they must
be ready to do what is required to defeat the enemy.’
That enemy he described as nothing less than a power of evil. This
‘infection of evil’ spreads injustice, greed, wickedness
and violence.
However Jesus had no easy answers. He spoke of ‘Satan’,
‘the Devil’ and ‘the evil One’.
So whether we think of Milton’s fallen angelic power or evil
arising out of centuries of selfish living – whatever way you
look at it - Christ spoke and acted on the assumption that this evil
is an unremitting enemy, a darkness that threatens us all.
Bishop Michael Jackson of Clogher speaking in St Martin’s Church
in Ballymacarrett the other night said: ‘the darkness of evil
is not denied but it is dealt with and the light of holiness shines”.
The peacemakers then are to anticipate the positive and to combat
evil with goodness and truth.
In our society today we face the scourge of the paramilitaries –
the rackets in drugs, fuel and cigarettes. We see the lifestyles of
the racketeers and thugs that run in the face of decent values. We
see the corruption and the human misery that they inflict on people.
Every day the social services, the police, the ‘powers for good’
do battle with this menace. We are at war. And many individuals bravely
‘go over the top’ and go the second mile in trying to bring
healing and justice to so many suffering people here on our own doorstep.
That takes spiritual stamina and integrity. It’s a battle.
In waging this battle individuals need to be prepared to put themselves
out, they need to be motivated by something other than personal gain,
they need to have something of the ethic of service that is prepared
to keep on trying.
If we look at a tall ship in the harbour it’s a beautiful sight
but that ship only realises its true purpose when it sets sail and
ventures out into the open sea.
Loving peace and justice is a beautiful mindset but making peace demands
that we go out into the world around us, that we set sail and move
to make things better.
The former Dean of Kildare, Matthew Byrne, was a Royal Irish Rangers
Chaplain during the Korean War. In a recent article he despairs over
the fact that in the 90 years since the end of the war to end all
wars we seem to have learnt nothing and worse, we have done nothing
to try to learn.
He says only the way of warring has changed.
The Somme was a tragic degrading slaughter.
World War Two – Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden, Coventry –
people crowded in towns and cities obliterated.
Belsen and so many other concentration camps – stories of people,
masses of people systematically and painfully wiped out.
Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf – refining and testing even more devastating
methods and weapons of war.
Enniskillen, Omagh, New York, Beslan, hostage taking, killings shown
on television
Iraq – 100,000 ordinary people killed so far.
Such is the pity of war.
In all of this warring and in the social battles for the hearts and
minds of future generations ‘blessed are the peacemakers’
for trying, for remembering, for healing, for going beyond hate, for
going over the top.
Let me conclude with a Prayer of Remembrance, a remembrance of our
calling as God’s peacemakers in the world.
Show us, Good Lord
How to be frugal: till all are fed
How to weep, till all can laugh
How to be meek, till all can stand in pride
How to mourn, till all are comforted
How to be restless, till all live in peace
How to claim less, till all find justice.
Amen.
