Remembering becomes harder as the years go by. Because of the time that has elapsed of course – though I’m told that those who have lived through a war will never forget – and because those who’ve endured the experience of war become fewer each year. So although we’re told that Armistice Day is enjoying some sort of renaissance, with more of the population pausing at 11o’clock on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the whys and wherefores of it all become increasingly opaque.What is it that we are called to remember, particularly those of us whose memories are too short to encompass 1945, let alone 1918?
What we are called to look at on this Remembrance Sunday is war and its meaning, and the achievement of those who gave up their lives. And as we do so, we’re called too to dream dreams and paint pictures, which draw out of us new and creative ways of living and working together as fellow creatures of our heavenly Father.As Christians, we all believe, I’m sure, that war is an evil, because it falls short of God’s loving purpose for his world. We live and work for the coming of God’s kingdom, longing for that day foreseen by the prophet Isaiah, when “they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; [when] nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”
Yes, war is an evil, always, but sometimes, we argue, or most of us do, war is a necessary evil, used to restrain or resist a greater evil. It is on these grounds that the Church has since the time of St Augustine espoused the concept of the Just War, provided always that the cause is righteous, the means controlled, and the outcome predictable – within reason. Yes, when those conditions are fulfilled, the Church continues to recognise the possibility of war, though always reluctantly.
Human beings are sinful beings – we know that not just from the text books but from our own experience – and precisely for this reason justice will only ever be achieved in our world by a certain degree of coercion on the one hand, and by resistance to coercion and tyranny on the other.
So as today we remember, as today we reflect on war, on its horrors, and on the oppression and tyranny that war seeks to redress, we recognise that it is only because God is truly our strength and salvation, that we would ever dare embark on such an enterprise. It is only because we seek to bring about the rule of almighty God, to uphold the values of his Kingdom, as revealed to us in his son, Jesus Christ, that we are ever willing to take up the sword against our neighbour, against a brother or sister human being, for one of the tragedies of war is that those who engage in combat are all children of the same creator God.
And then we remember those who’ve died. Young, many of them. And a long way from their loved ones. Frightened, much of the time. Courageous, often. Finding their strength in their comrades. Heroic, sometimes. And exactly the same can be said of those who were left at home, holding the baby, keeping the country running, keeping hope alive, in spite of all the hardships and horrors. It’s the stuff of sacrifice and of tragedy, individual, corporate, national; which we pray, and believe, in the end is all for the greater good. But let us never forget the price that was paid by so many, not just for us, but for the well-being of God’s world.
As those who believe in God and pray for the coming of his Kingdom, somehow, as we pause to remember, so we must struggle to fit the pieces together. God’s fatherly care. Our responsibilities to our neighbour. The evils that God’s children inflict on one another. The sacrifices our grandparents and parents, family and friends, made on our behalf. They’re the tangled threads on the back of the tapestry.
But today, Remembrance Sunday, is the time when we turn the canvas over; to see a picture of the world as God would have it be; a picture so attractive, so enticing, so enthralling, that we, like our fathers before us, decide to take risks, and make sacrifices, can do no other, in order to realise that picture impressed on the face of God’s world.
