Remembrance Sunday - 14th November 2004
The details for the Gospel reading (Luke 21:5-19) we have just heard could have been taken from any newspaper this week. For wars we can pick anywhere in Iraq, be it 18,000 US marines going into Fallujah with guns blazing or members of the Black Watch coming under fire in Camp Dog Wood. ‘Insurrections’ presumably could involve this new word insurgents, well new to me, - a word which means ‘rushing in, rising in revolt, one who rises in opposition to established authority’. Or from another way of looking at it, the volatile forces rushing in to fill a power vacuum created by not thinking through what would follow after one brutal dictator has been removed and winding up the host people by overbearing military tactics. Choose your spin.
The mention in the gospel reading of famines and plagues can make us think of Band Aid being reformed 20 years on to raise money for Ethiopia. Africa continues to be a place of extremes, where poverty and oppression are neighbours and governments astound the world with their appalling treatment of already shattered and displaced people, those who have already lost everything.
The Gospel reading then gave us images of persecution and hatred and we’ve seen those in bucket loads too.
Back in August, like everyone else, I received a leaflet which dropped through our letter box. It gave advice on what to do in the event of a terrorist attack. It prompted all sorts of jokes, one saying that further information was available at the web site www.we’re-all-doomed.com.
It struck me that it might be quite interesting to look at this for a moment and compare what people were expected to do during the Second World War in the 1940s with what we are being advised to do today. I will then offer one or two thoughts that pop out of that.
So I need a couple of volunteers - 1 to be a person in 1940 and the other a person from today.
1940
Some of the differences show the different type of attack that is being predicted. A gas mask is not on offer today partly because the chemicals available would require a complete decontamination suit and mobile backup unit.
Both though point out starkly that we are living in times of threat, even if that threat is somewhat different: one was from bombs, air borne attack and the threat of invasion; the other is less visible and may or may not happen or be happening. So we don’t have to dig so deep to find links between wars of the past and today. [Thank you to the helpers; put the props in front of the altar.]
Over the last year 21 of our own troops have died on active service in Iraq. Something similar happened last year and it has been the case most years since the end of the Second World War. This says nothing of the 100,000 civilians who have been killed in Iraq and that is only an estimate because there isn’t an official tally. The Queen recently visited Dresden in Germany and we were reminded of the civilian casualties there during the bombing in World War 2.
The power of Remembrance Sunday has not diminished with the years. That is sad, because it would be great to think that one day we might forget what this is about, or more to the point just might not know what it is for people to die in war. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a child say to its parent, “Mum/Dad, what’s a war?”. We know only too well and here we stare into a darkness within the soul of humanity.
We will remember them because we will continue to know the darkness that they entered. We will remember them because the experience will have been revisited in recent memory, or be current. Remembrance Sunday brings us sharply to face our short-comings and failures, our sinfulness and need of God’s redemption. We remember because we have reminders around us of what it is we are grateful for and what we are ashamed of.
Within this darkness people still manage to display the best in human spirit. There are the acts of bravery and disciplined restraint, acts of amazing humanity amidst bloodshed. I heard a military chaplain talking recently about the moral code that our troops are expected to follow. One minute they can be required to find lethal aggression for survival, the next they can be expected to treat the enemy turned prisoner with dignity and respect their humanity. Remembrance does bring light as well as darkness.
The presence of this light shows that all is not lost and we do not have to give up the ground to the despairing and cynical. After the madness that is war comes the striving for peace and life does settle again. Warfare does not have permanent sway over us and the challenge we face is not to let it. This is why terrorism is so invidious because it strikes at this spirit and espouses death rather than life. Terrorists are not the only ones who do this, others do too, and our challenge is to reject that oppression and suffocation.
The Gospel reading has a hidden message in it. The endurance it commends and the opportunity to testify when being oppressed is rooted in a profound hope and trust in God. It may not always seem like it, but this is God’s world and the ways of peace cannot be stamped out completely. We see this in its ability to flower even in the darkest moments in those acts of restraint, humanity and struggle to be humane again.
© Ian Black 2004