SERMON ON REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY 2020
Silence –silence is what many of us associate with Remembrance Sunday
This year, at Whitehall and up and down our nation, smaller civic ceremonies will replace our traditional parades. Last night there was a pared down ceremony at the Albert Hall. And today some market squares will be silent and deserted for the first time in 100 years due to COVID
The words of Psalm 102 come to mind:
“I am like an owl of the wilderness, like a little owl of the waste places. I lie awake; I am like a lonely bird on the house top.”
Remembrance Sunday 2020 is unlike any other.
Shorn of ceremonial let us this morning do this:
First: Reflect on the meaning of today, for our nation and other Commonwealth countries and the meaning for us as Christians – recognising that Remembrance Sunday is for people of all faiths and none.
Second: consider the impact of war through our lens of Christian faith. Our prayers on this Sunday seem to centre on:
Lament
Thanksgiving
And Restoration
and from restoration comes Hope.
The meaning
The Royal British Legion asks us to:
Remember the sacrifice of the Armed Forces community from Britain and the Commonwealth.
Pay tribute to the special contribution of families and of the emergency services.
To acknowledge innocent civilians who have lost their lives in conflict and acts of terrorism.
The acknowledgment of suffering, loss and death is so much part of our faith. And so is restoration and resurrection and the gift of eternal life.
We give thanks to God for the life of those individuals who has died in service of others so that we might live in freedom. We remember especially those named on the war memorials at St. Georges and St. John’s
And we give thanks for survival, health and wellbeing
This year we do all this with a heightened sense of our own mortality and losses in our own community.
Community and the experience of families in war and military campaigns is central to Remembrance Sunday.
This experience perhaps be placed in four categories:
Families where a loved one did not survive the conflict
Families where a loved one survives but has been permanently damaged.
Those who survived, having made a huge contribution, who receive the fruits of restoration.
Those of us gathered together today who, did not experience war yet have received the full fruits of renewal.
Let’s explore each of these four experiences a little further.
Those where a loved one did not survive the conflict. Many of us will have been brought up with stories of relatives who did not return. The sense of loss this had on the family and also colleagues and friends who fought alongside them. Perhaps you have this morning upper most in your thoughts, that photo on a parent or grandparent’s desk or mantelpiece of one who they loved who made the ultimate sacrifice and never returned.
We lament their loss. We remember with deep gratitude our forebears who gave their lives for us. We remember the sacrifice of all the Armed Forces and Emergency Services communities.
Those where a loved one survives but has been permanently damaged. Physical long term injuries have greater visibility. There is the story of the soldier after the First War whose face was so maimed that he decided he could only venture onto the streets when it was dark.
His story brings to mind Psalm 31; “I am a horror to my neighbours, an object of dread to my acquaintances; those who see me in the street flee from me.” A cry of lamentation.
Today we are more aware of combat stress and realise that there are those who we have known who have had to endure great struggles yet received little support.
We lament those who endure long term suffering from war. We give thanks to God for all the organisations who work to alleviate the pain of stress and physical injury to our veterans.
Those who survived, having made a huge contribution whether in the field of battle or on the home front, and received the fruits of renewal.
After Armistice Day in 1918 and the euphoria of VE and VJ Days the massive task of reconstruction began and for many families the years immediately after the cessation of war were ones of continuing shortage and rationing.
But when we look back over the years since 1945, we see the immense progress that has been made in so many fields of life, in healthcare, communications, energy and entertainment, and provision of food. Could those who had come through the war have envisaged such a future?
It has been said that necessity is the mother of invention. To give just one example from the last war. The development of radar at Bawdsey (https://www.bawdseyradar.org.uk/) on the Suffolk coast in the run up to the Second World War meant that Britain, with far less planes, was able to win the Battle of Britain. Radar gave us an early warning system so that our planes were in the right place at the right time to repulse the enemy.
Today radar is fundamental to so many aspects of our daily life. The movement of world-wide shipping and air traffic control to x-rays, microwave ovens. Even cars’ parking sensors and automatic braking systems all are based on radar.
Today we give thanks to God for all those whose intellectual prowess enabled us to be delivered from the tyranny of war and allow us to live life more fruitfully.
Those of us gathered together today who did not experience war yet have received the full fruits of restoration as a result of the sacrifice made by others. We will never forget those who have gone before us who enable us to live in freedom.
A lesson from the World Wars is that times of adversity lead to change, to doing things differently and doing things better.
Relating this to the life of the United Benefice at this time of COVID, we now do our services by Zoom. Until the pandemic few of us knew of Zoom. Yet we now have more members of our community than ever before attending our weekday services through Zoom, and Sunday numbers have also held up well.
Remembrance Sunday is a time of lament and thanksgiving.
It also reminds us that restoration is the natural response to destruction and from this Christians are people of hope.
Let me close with some verses from Psalm 84 which seem to pull together so many of our thoughts this morning.
The Psalm also responds beautifully to the image in Psalm 102, of the lonely bird on the house top, I referred to earlier, at the beginning.
1 How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts!
My soul has a desire and longing to enter the courts of the Lord;
My heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God.
2 The sparrow has found her a house
and the swallow a nest where she may lay her young:
at your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God.
3 Blessed are they who dwell in your house:
they will always be praising you.
4 Blessed are those whose strength is in you,
in whose heart are the highways to Zion,
5 Who going through the barren valley find there a spring,
and the early rains will clothe it with blessing.
When we leave our service this morning do as the Psalmist bids: Let us go from strength to strength and appear before God in Zion.
Father Peter Wolton
Sunday 8 November 2020