Remembrance Sunday
Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
As the world never ceases to spin, and technology runs our social lives, dating, churches (hi Dad), and basically everything; there will always be those who cling to the past, and those who wish to leave it behind forever.
Wars are times of great innovation, necessity being mother to invention. The First World War which we remember today, takes credit for tanks, flamethrowers, poison gas and aircraft carriers, and also more generally helpful things like air traffic control and mobile X-ray machines.
The cost of not staying up to date in war bears an especially high price. Take Field Marshal Douglas Haig, commander during the infamous Battle of the Somme. Haig was very popular; his funeral in 1928 was a day of National Mourning. But from the 60s Britain turned on him, owing largely to the satirical musical “Oh What a Lovely War”. The musical might not have made it on to the West End but Princess Margaret went to see it and said afterwards that what’s been “said here tonight should have been said long ago” to the Lord Chamberlain. The family of Haig protested, but it was a hit. It’s been said that it tells you more about the 60s than the War, but its view was later set in stone by Blackadder Goes Forth.
Haig was a creature of habit, and the big push that started the battle of the Somme began predictably, as always, at 7.30am. There was no attempt at surprise and 66,000 men (mostly volunteers like you or I, not professional soldiers) walked forward steadily in a line, carrying up to 100lbs of kit towards the German line. Haig, who never visited the Western Front, overestimated his earlier bombardment, and underestimated the German machine gun. Within an hour there were 30,000 casualties. At the end of the first day there were 20,000 dead and 35000 injured with no significant objectives achieved.
The Daily Mail, ever the objective truth-teller, described how “The very attitudes of the dead fallen eagerly forwards, have a look of expectant hope. You would say that they died with the light of expectant victory in their eyes.” Other papers were no more truthful; the Times described the wounded as “extraordinarily cheery and brave” the Observer claimed we had “excelled our best hopes”. It’s not Haig alone that carries the blame for this, the greatest disaster in British military history, but his attitude is significant. In 1926 with a bewildered nation mourning nearly a million dead, Haig wrote: ‘I believe that the value of the horse and the opportunity of the horse in the future are likely to be as great as ever. Aeroplanes and tanks are only accessories to the men and the horse, and I feel as time goes on you will find just as much use for the horse – the well-bred horse – as you have ever done in the past.’
Our views of that war now often reflect more the poetry, than the history – But remembering is important – History can be cruel, can be kind. What and how are we remembering today?
Christianity is a faith of remembrance. The Hebrew Bible has a continual command to remember the Lord and his great works of salvation. Malachi today: “Remember the teaching of my servant Moses, the statutes and ordinances that I commanded him at Horeb.” It is by remembrance that the people of God know who they are.
But, even more than Scripture, Liturgy, our festivals are all acts of collective remembrance recalling great acts and sacrifices, and by their continual repetition bringing depth and meaning to human experience. Christmas and Easter layer memories, of Jesus and the church, our families and nations; Through sentimental adverts, seasonal chocolate and board games we recall our salvation and family arguments. But who would we be without these rituals – Imagine if it really was always winter and never Christmas; Someone’s going to get a shock tuning in this year for the Queen’s speech. Our family life, cultural and social life, and national life is all held together by rituals.
Rituals can become bad. Bad habits, ritual humiliations, the Two-minutes hates in George Orwell’s 1984, blood-rituals that swear revenge. Remembrance of violence and pain can swing both ways, seeking peace or perpetuating violence. In a previous parish, a German friend of mine was berated for wearing a poppy. (not by anyone in church I should add!) Is it forgiveable if the berator fought against the Germans? if they lost a loved one in the war? How are we remembering? There is remembrance that clings to the past, and there is remembrance that seeks peace.
We can remember war to hold on to enmity and mistrust; to never forgive a people; to remember our victory over another set of nations; as a basis for suspicion against foreigners. Or we remember lest we forget; remember the war which the science-fiction writer H.G. Wells too optimistically called “the war to end wars”, to remember the mindlessness of war; that two world wars killed more than a hundred million people; people like you and I, but on the whole people a lot younger than you and I.
And how we remember affects what sort of people we are. Does remembering give us a sense of superiority, justify our resentment of other nationalities, give us a misguided sense of strength, then we are a particular sort of people. Two world wars and one world cup – they used to sing. And presumably are still singing – at least until Christmas.
But we can remember to give honour to people we love, and values we cherish; We can remember the weakness of all flesh before weaponry, and the weakness of all minds before power, pride, envy, cruelty and above all fear; That is remembrance as confession – And if we remember with faith, in hope and love then we remember well.
The holiest part of the communion service is the words of institution. It’s called the Anamnesis – which means Remembrance – Or rather – as amnesis, from which we get amnesia means to forget, An-amnesis strictly means ‘to not forget’. Here we recall Christ’s words, even as he is remembering the great act of the Hebrew’s deliverance at the Passover of the angel of death. And Christ’s words are a command: “Do this in remembrance of me.” Our first task as Christians is to not forget the death and resurrection of a man who gave his life for others. Some have remembered these words with violence – as a basis for anti-semitism. But for the Jews who celebrated the meal with Jesus, and the Gentiles who continued this with them in the face of persecution and death, it was a meal of solidarity. Solidarity with all those who suffer, and especially those who have died, and were continuing to suffer for the faith.
This is the remembering that draws us here today. The re-membering of the body of Christ, which is one even as it is broken. The French and English have been at war most of their history, the Americans won their independence from us in battle, and the twentieth-century pitched friends and families across Europe on different unwanted sides of reckless wars. Nation rising against nation and kingdom against kingdom. The remembering we do here does not undo that history of suffering and tragedy; But it does not remain trapped in the past; it hopes for something better; for ‘the sun of righteousness [that] shall rise, with healing in its wings’; for a peace in Europe that extends to the East. It hopes that out of suffering and death, through love, can arise new life.
And for the tragedy that rocked Europe for thirty years and more, for the wasted youth and avoidable suffering, all we can do is give thanks and entrust them to God, knowing that nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God. If we have no faith then this remembrance is a bleak minute. A hundred million youths cut down before they’d begun, and a humanity that hardly deserves another chance and cannot believe in being better. But if we dare to believe, then by our endurance we will gain our souls, as they who have known even darker times than these surely did.
Today we remember the fallen and all who give their lives for their country, in faith, with hope, for greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Amen.