11/11/07: Remembrance Sunday: St. Mary’s Welwyn: Luke 9:18-27: Susannah Underwood


You may have seen as you came into church this morning, photographs of a display from St. Mary’s school, which shows work that some of the children have done for Remembrance Sunday. Year 3, that is 7 and 8 year olds, have been learning about remembrance day and reflecting on what it may have been like had they lived through World War 1. One of the tasks was to answer the question “What would you find in a soldier’s pocket? The responses…a slightly torn letter, a rabbit foot for luck, a packet of damp cards, a grubby handkerchief (I dropped it in the mud),– I expect some parents might identify similar finds when turning out their own little soldiers pockets.

Another task was to write a letter, imagining their Father was at war. Reading them made me wonder whether some of their own experience had crept into this task? “We’ve had new rugs,” writes one child to his imaginary Father in the trench “so do wipe your boots before you enter the front hall”.

The children have also written some poems and one of those I would like to share with you this morning because I think there is something in it that expresses the complexity of emotion that is common at a service such as todays.

Paper petals swaying silently,
Huge horns trumpeting wildly,
The poppies scent wafting through the air,
A sweetening sadness rushing through me.

Sweetening sadness. The words from an eight year old express something rather profound about the experience for many on Remembrance Sunday. I suspect we come to this service with rather mixed feelings. After the sermon we shall listen to the roll of honour, to the names of those from Welwyn and Woolmer Green who lost their lives fighting for this country in the First and Second World Wars. After the service people will gather around the war memorial and I wonder, before we hear the haunting call of the last post, as we stand together, but alone, what will be in your thoughts this morning?

There will undoubtedly be some whose memories stretch back to at least the Second World War, who will remember particular friends or family whose lives were lost. There may be memories of being involved in action, of witnessing terrible things, memories which may have been too dark to ever share. For the generations born since the Wars, your reflections may come from tales passed through families, through what we learned at school, from images from films and books, that make us like the children try to imagine the courage and the cost. You may be thinking of service men and women unknown or known to you, who have died in conflict in the Falklands, Afghanistan or Iraq. What ever we remember we stand with gratitude for the freedom that was gained by the sacrifice of so many.

We may also stand with feelings of anger, for the terrible waste that war is. The waste of young life, of communities and God given resources. With anger that the war to end all wars, didn’t. That never again, has not been heeded. That in parts of the world today, it is not just adults and teenagers, but children who are given guns and told to fight.

We come with mixed feelings. We stand with gratitude to honour the courage and sacrifice of those who lost their lives in the struggle for freedom, and we stand with sorrow for the terrible waste that war is and the ongoing cost to humanity.

In our gospel reading this morning, we learn that this tension between thankfulness and sorrow, gain and sacrifice, death and life is at the very essence of the Christian gospel. Jesus reveals to his disciples that the Son of Humanity must undergo great suffering and be rejected and be killed and on the third day be raised. The word that is used is must. Jesus must suffer. The way to resurrection is only to be found after treading the pathway to the cross. Even after 2000 years of this story, of people and the church trying to tame Jesus of Nazareth, this is still to the human ear, radical stuff. Even the disciples struggled to understand and Jesus had to keep asserting that this was the only way.

I think for some of us the question of why the cross, still hangs in the air. Why the cross? Why not another way? Many great Christian thinkers and philosophers, with very large brains have wrestled and offered explanations- sometimes rather clumsily I feel trying to explain the mechanics of it all. I would not dare to stand before you today and attempt to do the same. It ties me up in knots. But I am not sure that it is necessary. John’s gospel tells us - for God so loved the world that he gave his only Son. This is about love, from beginning to end.

In the context of love, we can understand something of what Christ means when he continues “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it and those who lose their life for my sake will save it”. It is funny how many films and love stories end with the couple disappearing into the sunset as if all will be rosy now they have found love. The love of God is not Hollywood love. It is rarely mushy and sickly. It does not come with soft focus and violins. Rather it is courageous, determined and sacrificial. It seeks out justice, it refuses to leave the side of those who suffer, it never abandons or loses hope for humanity. This is more beautiful than any Hollywood film, or even being serenaded by Ewan McGregor, which is my personal fantasy, but it costs.

If we open ourselves to love we make ourselves vulnerable to the sadness and suffering of others. We make ourselves vulnerable to the pain of loss and separation. Our lives are not merely our own but entangled with the story of others, the world and written into the history of God’s purposes. When we look back at memories of those we love who have died, it is often with sweetness for all they were and sadness for the loss. Those mixed emotions Sweetening sadness. When we look at the world, through eyes of love, we too see the sweetness in so much of creation but also share the weight of sadness that it carries. Sweetening sadness. This is love.

And so as we stand in remembrance this morning, as we listen to the roll of honour, to the beauty and sorrow in the call of the bugle, as we stand before the memorial in silence, we recognise that this is where God dwells. In these moments of sweetness and sadness, today and in all areas of our life, we know what it is like to encounter the sacred, holy gift of love. Here is where God has promised to meet us. Here is where he stands.

Amen