I remember one time a group of us clergy were all talking shop, as you can imagine clergy do (you can only take so much of it at a time, however) and one of the group said, “Do you know that so and so (no names mentioned) has his sermon done by Tuesday!” And as quick as that, someone else said, “Yeh, but have you heard him preach?”

I tried to get this sermon written early in the week; because I knew I was going to see Ireland play South Africa yesterday in Lansdowne Road (I thought I would just let you know that) but the time I spent early in the week on my sermon was mostly spent looking at a blank screen on the computer!... and the week that was in it; I have felt that I’ve been doing this 11 plus myself! So, please forgive the ramble.

I think I need the pressure of a Saturday night to get something down on paper for the next day, and, particularly, perhaps, when the next day is Remembrance Sunday.

I think we all know by now the horrors of war, the waste, the futility of battle and bloodshed and death. And looking at a blank screen for part of the week, made me ask the question, ‘What are we actually doing on Remembrance Sunday?’

I’m a great fan of Michael Caine. He’s exactly the same in all the movies I’ve seen him in, but I think he’s great. In an interview with Michel Parkinson the other week, he said, when talking about his army career, something along the lines, “If everyone could experience a day of real war, there would be a lot less war”.

When Malcolm Rifkind, the former Foreign Secretary, was on Question Time the other night, he gave a kind of ‘sermon’ in response to a question about wearing the red poppy; that poppies grow best when the soil has been disturbed; thus the lesson that out of chaos and grief, there grows new life.

When the Poppy leaves fall in silence near the end of the Festival of Remembrance in the Albert Hall in London, the leaves represent lives that were lost; thousands upon thousands upon thousands, it is a very moving moment.

The futility, the waste, the horror, the grief, we know all about it, but whether right or wrong whether this side or that side, every death means something, and that’s the real point. At Rockport Remembrance Day Service I said, “We come together not to glorify war or to make a political point; we come together to remember and to give thanks to God...” Wouldn’t it be wonderful to take the politics out of Remembrance Sunday, especially in this country? To simply come together, from all sides, from all nations to remember the futility, the waste, the horror, the grief. Yes, with the intention of learning lessons, but do we ever seem to learn?

I remember telling you a long time ago, when we had our Four Church Fellowship meetings and one of the best meetings we had was here in Glencraig when we had Brendan McAllister as our guest from Mediation Network. It was part of a series entitled ‘The Way of Peace’. He started off by asking us to describe himself by showing us various articles that belonged to him. He started off by putting on the table an impressive row of First World War medals. He had deliberately confused his audience from the very beginning. As a young man coming out of Mass one Sunday morning in Newry, he noticed all the other local church-attenders streaming out of other Churches, wearing what? Wearing poppies! And it struck him forcefully that it was Remembrance Sunday. Yet that information hadn’t been given to him during mass and at Church, he wasn’t able to properly remember the dead and yet the impressive row of First World War medals belonged to his Grandfather who had been killed in that war. He didn’t know it was Remembrance Sunday; he couldn’t then truly ‘remember’ the sacrifice – even of his own granddad!

I’ve no doubt that I have told you before about the very impressive War Memorial in Phoenix Park in Dublin. When I was a lot younger that memorial was left to go to rack and ruin; you hardly knew it was there. It was completely unkept and weeds grew everywhere. Now, I believe, it has been completely restored and every Armistice Day there is a Remembrance Day Service recited in Irish. President Mary Robinson and, if I’m not mistaken President Mary McAleese have worn the poppy.

In all, about 210,000 Irishmen served in the British forces during World War One; some 35,000 died. How on earth, however, could politics be removed from all of this when you consider these circumstances: most protestants and unionists from the northern province joined the 36^th Ulster Division, as you know well.

Nationalists, themselves mostly Catholic, joined the other two of Lord Kitchener’s ‘New Army’ divisions raised in Ireland: the 10^th (Irish) and 16^th (Irish) Divisions. The first of the Irish New Army Divisions to see action was the 10^th Division which landed at Suvla Bay in Gallipoli in August 1915. And there is more of a story to tell there, but consider this: The other two divisions served in France, both taking part in the Battle of the Somme, suffering terrible casualties on the very first day, 1st July, especially the 36^th. The 1^st of July was the original date of the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, before the calendar was changed by 11 days in 1752. The serious losses came to be identified with the Ulster Unionist cause. You couldn’t make it up if you tried!

The 16^th (Irish) Division first saw serious action in September 1916, still part of the long drawn-out Somme campaign. Eight months later, up the line in Belgium, the 16^th and the 36^th Divisions fought alongside each other at the battle of Messines. Sort that one out!

Wasn’t it the great Sean O’Casey who said that Ireland was a ‘land of contradictions’?

How on earth could we ever unravel politics from the reality of what war brings; the futility, the waste, the horror, the grief? Unless we realise, dare I say it, that we are actually all on the same side!

So, what we are doing on Remembrance Sunday, in this part of the world, is remembering that thousands of Irishmen of all political persuasions actually died together in the defence of justice and freedom.