The Parish Church of St John-at-Hampstead

Sermon 8 November 2015 – Remembrance Sunday –
Jonah 3: 1 – 5, 10; Psalm 62: 5 – end; Hebrews 9: 24 – end; Mark 1: 14 – 20
A 91 year old RAF veteran interviewed on the radio said that he’d decided he was no longer going to wear a poppy because it now symbolised not the horrors war, but its glorification.   He said that politicians, who used to say “Lest we forget” and “Never again” no longer say the second of these.  I wonder whether dropping the “Never again” may not reflect a desire to glorify war, but a sober recognition of reality.  There always seems to be a war somewhere in the world, even if we’re not involved.  And there are currently some 60 million refugees across the globe. 
We probably all have our family stories about the first and second world wars.  Some of mine are ambiguous. For my father, the Second World War was an experience too terrible to be spoken about, but, having joined up in 1942, the army became his career.  So when I was a child Remembrance Sunday was a big, solemn occasion with parades and bugles.
In 2011 a Radio 4 Archive on Four programme summed up our country’s attitude to Remembrance as follows:
“There are now no living survivors of World War I, yet Remembrance Day has gained a new and powerful significance in the nation’s life. …..Remembrance is now pivotal to British identity, as shaped by the collective memories of two great conflicts.  The Second World War especially has infused our culture with feelings of pride, moral worth and British exceptionalism. The Remembrance ceremony has become a crucial moment to sustain this sense of ourselves, despite the more controversial legacy of modern wars.”
So, how do we, in church, in 2015, approach this Remembrance Sunday?
We might begin by asking, ‘Where is God, in situations of conflict?’  Many theologians on both sides in the First World War claimed that God was on their side.  We may now find this over simplistic.  One who would agree with this was P T Forsyth.  In a series of lectures in 1916, he warned against any such simple attempt at finding God in the events of war. “An event like the war at least aids God’s purpose in this,” he wrote, “that it shocks and rouses us into some due sense of what evil is, and what a Saviour’s task with it is.” In the War he suggested, “We are having a revelation of the awful and desperate nature of evil.”
One aspect of evil which is particularly apparent in war is how quick people can be to demonize and dehumanise those who are perceived to be the enemy.  In civil wars, neighbours from different ethnic or religious groups who have lived peacefully together for years seem easily to turn violently against one another.  The monk and writer Thomas Merton had the following to say about this:
“It is enough to affirm one basic principle: anyone belonging to class x or nation y or race z is to be regarded as subhuman or worthless, and consequently has no right to exist.  All the rest will follow without difficulty….As long as this principle is easily available, as long as it is taken for granted, as long as it can be spread out on the front pages at a moment’s notice and accepted by all, we have no need of monsters: ordinary policemen and good citizens will take care of everything.”
So, in the light of our undoubted capacity for doing evil with the best possible motives, what hope do we have?  
Our reading from the letter to the Hebrews this morning suggests where, as Christians, we might find hope.  Because Christ has made the “supreme sacrifice” for us.  He died, not for His country, but for the whole human race.  In Christ, God has taken on Himself the evil of the whole world.  He has dealt with everything we inflict on one another.   Jesus has inaugurated a new kingdom, the kingdom of God.  We don’t see it in full yet, but we can work for it now, and every time we pray “thy kingdom come, thy will be done”, that kingdom comes a little closer. 
In the last few years I’ve had the pleasure of making two visits to Berlin.  I think it’s one of my favourite cities.  You can barely walk a few paces in the centre of the city without coming across reminders of its violent and divided past.  In some places it’s still being rebuilt.  And yet, it’s a vibrant and enjoyable place.  And it feels very safe.
The most moving War Memorial I have ever seen is in Berlin too.  It’s in the Neue Wache, or new guard house.  There have been several different memorials here over the years.  This one dates from 1993, after re-unification.  It’s a sculpture by Kathe Kollwitz of a mother cradling her dead adult son.  It’s sited under a circular hole in the roof, open to the elements so they’re out in the rain, the snow or the heat of the sun.  It depicts not the glory, nor even the sacrifice of the armed forces, but the suffering of civilians in time of war. It could be a modern Pieta, except that this is any mother and any son.  It’s a universal image which goes far beyond any state boundaries.  Anyone can identify with it.
Berlin is a city which is still coming to terms with its past.  We too are constantly adjusting our attitudes to Remembrance.  It’s right that we should remember the many victims of war; it’s right that we should honour and care for veterans who have been injured or traumatised by what we have expected them to do.   As we sang in our Psalm, let us also put our trust in Christ, the only One who can save us from the capacity for violence that is within us all, and let us continue to work and pray for peace and reconciliation wherever we can. 
“O put your trust in him  alway [sic] ye people:  pour out your hearts before him, for God is our hope.”
Amen