The Parish Church of St John-at-Hampstead

Our readings and Psalm this evening were not, I think, specifically those for Remembrance Sunday, although the third Sunday before Advent must often fall close to the 11th November.But how comforting and encouraging they might have been to soldiers sheltering in great danger in squalid trenches. The First World War has not been the only occasion in the past century when it has seemed, as the psalmist says, that the earth gives way and the mountains are moved in the heart of roaring and foaming sea. It takes great courage and faith to trust in God in such times; but the reward is great too as God is recognized as our refuge and our strength.
We are not, perhaps in such turmoil ourselves this November evening in 2012 in Hampstead, but we will each have anxieties and many will suffer different sorts of pain and sorrow. And while I don’t feel that we are in a world where the mountains are trembling at the swelling of the sea- even metaphorically- mankind, along with the rest of creation does face cataclysmic threats from famine, population growth and the inexorable warming of our planet. Those who experienced the effects of hurricane Sandy or the now perennial tropical floods have more present disasters to contend with.
The readings remind us of these terrible events, but I think we may question the value of remembering the entirely man-made suffering in a previous century. If one thing is clear from history, it is that we seldom learn from it. Talleyrand said of the Bourbons émigrés that they had learned nothing and forgotten nothing; we are not much better and not much better at forgiving either. Perhaps would be best to forget; to allow dust to settle on the trenches, the concentration camps, the gulags and the killing fields of the 20th Century. Is it really wise to turn them into museums and make school children visit them? Memory only fuels revenge and vindictiveness; memory enlivens- and usually twists further- the prejudices, envies and misunderstandings which fuelled those atrocities.
Of course, I know what we remember on Remembrance Sunday is the sacrifice and heroism of those who died, and go on dying, resisting the sort of horrors that I have mentioned. But that remembrance is all too easily tainted by a maudlin obsession with the suffering and pain. It’s all too easy to forget as well that as my imaginary Tommies in their trenches might have been comforted by Psalm 46, they might just have caught the words of Luther’s hymn wafting in over no-man’s land: Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott. Conflicts are seldom a straightforward fight of good against evil. It is only by trying to recall accurately and dispassionately that some truth can emerge, and with that truth the opportunity to learn and to forgive
Despite my misgivings about Remembrance Sunday,  it is plain that remembering forms a large part of religion, as does looking forward; the Old Testament is constantly looking back to experiences of the Israelites and forward to the Promised Land, the return from exile; next year in Jerusalem.  It’s no exaggeration to say that it was, and remains the collective memory and aspiration that forms the Jewish people, just as the remembering of the crucifixion and the promise of the resurrection makes us Christians. The remembering and the strangely anticipated expectation are intimately linked; out of disaster and desolation, life and victory will emerge.
 This is the message of our reading from Isaiah, and it too might have been a comfort and inspiration to my cold wet infantry waiting for the whistle. It is about regeneration, the growing up after the chopping down. Those soldiers may have hoped that mostly involuntary sacrifice they were about to make would in some way lead to a new life, one of liberty and peace. But this is probably fanciful and I suspect that fear and hatred were probably more effective motivators. They would however have found some way out of the cycle of hatred if, in their predicament, they could have taken to heart the vision of righteousness arising from the stump of the forest. The messiah who appears out of that destruction brings justice, equity and fairness- that, in the vision, implies punishment of the wicked- but it is divine punishment taken out of men’s hands. There is no room in the vision for the human vengeance and no need for fear or envy- and still less is there space for the perverted patriotism and blind prejudice.
Isaiah’s vision moves on to one of the strangest and most compelling and appealing passages in in the Bible- or so I think. It would be a hard heart that was not moved by the idea of predator and prey lying down together or the toddler harmlessly investigating the adders’ nest. But it’s certainly strange; a vision of a world of contradiction, one in which two and two do not make four, where blue a yellow make orange. Most crucially and fundamentally it’s a world in which decay and death are not necessary for regeneration and life. Evidently this is not our world, not even our world seen through rose tinted spectacles.
It is a vision that reminds us of two other stories or visions which are central to our belief; the Fall and the Resurrection. The picture of Eden in Genesis is not fully drawn, be we are to suppose, from the consequences of Adam and Eve’s disobedience, that it is a place where there is no hurt or destruction; where fruit grows without need for decay where the animals too are vegetarian and none of the creatures, human or other need work, nor reproduce themselves, as they will not grow old or die. What the serpent brings into this world is reality; the real world is a living world and life implies change, decay and regeneration, and with them, inevitably, pain and suffering. Equally, out of that death and destruction comes new life. The pre-lapsarian world is like the holy mountain; a fantastical but impossible vision. The Resurrection with its promise of everlasting life is surely equally impossible and illogical in any worldly terms, and it echoes the description of Eden; the new garden where the risen Christ appears is new world. As in Isaiah’s vision an impossible and fantastic but beautiful new state comes from destruction. With Resurrection comes Redemption and Isaiah’s vision reminds me of the feeling one has when one is forgiven some wrongdoing that has weighed especially heavily on one’s conscience; the weight is lifted and the grey and gravity bound world is suddenly full of rainbow colours, and one’s feet scarcely touch the ground. It is a world without predator or prey; where the deadly adder has lost its bite.
What does any of this have to do with remembrance? I think this; we need to acknowledge the pain and suffering in the world in order to see through it. Unless we accept reality for what it is we cannot understand the way change and growth can come about. To the extent that we can bring about the fantastical vision of Eden, of the Holy Mountain, indeed of Heaven on earth, the change and growth that we need will come from justice and forgiveness. That is the rule of righteousness. And for any justice and forgiveness we must recognize the wrong in the world and come to terms with it. So remembrance of terrible events matters; it keeps alive our potential to bring about change, but that should not allow it to become self-indulgent, nor an excuse to perpetuate the very failings which cause the suffering. Remembrance needs to be a re-living, an experiencing and understanding from that we may grow  and not the mere repetition of past pain which keeps us earth bound. Amen.