Remembrance Sunday at Stebbing and Lindsell

Readings Micah 4, 1-5 and Philippians 4, 6-9

We will remember them.

It is 70 years ago this year that the Second World War began, and it is 90 years since we first held a remembrance Sunday – 91 since the end of the war, so 90 since the first annual marking of its ending.

But of course – and unfortunately - Remembrance Sunday is about so much more than that these days. It has been hard this week to frame in my mind what to say today after events first in Afghanistan and then in Fort Hood, Texas, in which virtues like honour and trust were discarded for personal and political gain at the cost of 18 lives.

I want to start with the obvious. Remembrance Sunday is ever more important year by year, as the number of living veterans of the first Armistice Day dwindles to almost none. It also remains important because in the news every day, and never more so perhaps than this week, conflict, death and injury are unavoidable, and we need to find some way of making sense of it all. I hope in what we do here today and what I say in this address we can try to do that.

In the three years we have been here there have probably been more deaths of UK service personnel than at any time for a good few years. But the conflicts that have taken their lives are far away from our lives; we do not see what they saw and we do not share their experience in any way really, in spite of the media coverage it all gets. This is a great contrast with conflicts of the past where the nation was under a fairly constant threat and the population as a whole considered themselves to be at war, even though it took weeks sometimes for news to get through. I guess that although we are constantly aware of what’s going on in Afghanistan, we do not actually consider ourselves to be at war – these days that is what soldiers do. So today of all days, we should not forget them.

The most significant thing I have learned in getting to know soldiers over the last few years is that they all love peace; they strive for it and long for it. That is why a reading like Philippians 4 is actually a good one for today; at first hearing these words do not sit well in a context of war, especially if you are a pacifist, but put yourself in the shoes of a soldier in Kandahar reading these words today from his or her special Armed Forces edition of the new testament. What better words could there be to both encourage and comfort someone like that? Yes it is true that there is very little that is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent or praiseworthy in what we see on our TV screens from war zones around the world. All the more reason then for us, as for that hypothetical Bible –reading soldier to follow the apostle Paul’s advice to the Philippians and think about these things, because by their very nature they remind us of God’s Kingdom, and they focus our minds on trying to bring that to fruition.

Which is also what is going on in the prophecy of Micah 4. It has a short term fulfilment in the return of God’s people from exile, but when we reads it with our New Testament Christian glasses on, we see it referring metaphorically to the future rule and reign of God, with the consequence of peace and reconciliation. It is a famous passage often cited by people who oppose war, but I wanted us to hear it today because I believe Micah speaks into our current world as a voice of hope for the future, and as an encouragement to see the sacrifice of wars past and present not as futile, but as building towards a future in which the words of Micah speak of reality, not as a prophecy, and the words of Paul to the Philippians are more immediately relevant. We are not yet beating our sword into ploughshares, and there is still a lot of ugliness dishonesty, impurity, ignobility, and so on in the world, but our purpose in acting as we are called to, whether military or civilian, must be to work within God’s plan towards the goal these words spur us on to.

It is traditional on occasions such as today to draw a comparison between the sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of human lives in war, and in one sense my conclusion today is not going to deviate from that tradition. I will say as I always do that any comparison must point to the supremacy of Christ’s sacrifice, because its efficacy, as we are about to sing, means that God’s wrath is turned away form humanity – “On that cross as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied”.

There is a painting that belongs to the Royal Corps of Signals in Blandford, Dorset. It is called “Through”, and it depicts the body of a signaller, lying in open ground it what is clearly a battle situation. The signaller has given his life to re-connect a severed signals line, thus enabling two separated groups of soldiers to communicate. To me there is no co-incidence in the fact that the soldier’s body lies with arms outstretched and knees drawn up to one side, in the manner of a crucified body. The painting tells a story about human heroism, but it portrays a more profound truth about the supreme sacrifice, of Jesus Christ, which restored the connection between God and humanity that had been broken by human sinfulness.

Paul wrote to the Philippians, telling them “the peace of God which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts in Christ Jesus”. The key words in that phrase are the last three – God’s peace is made available to us in Christ Jesus – through faith in him and by an acceptance of the validity of his teaching and the achievements of his sacrifice.

As we remember today all those in the past and in the present whose lives were spent in protecting our freedom, I feel the best way of making sense of the pain and the suffering of war today is to look at it all in the light of Christ’s own suffering. Not that we see Afghanistan as some kind of holy war, but that our understanding of what is happening in the world is always subject to the sovereignty of God.

All Saints 1 Nov 2009 at Lindsell and Stebbing, and All Souls at Stebbing

Isaiah 25, 6-8

John 11, 32-44

Today's Gospel presents a dramatic working out of the second beatitude: 'Blessed are those who weep now, for you will laugh' (Luke 6.21) or Matthew 5.4 'Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.' It is a theme echoed in Isaiah 25.8, and then in Revelation 21.4, as tears in the face of death are turned to joy.

All were weeping at Lazarus' death, and Jesus shared the sorrow of his friends. But his real response will be to enact the words of the second beatitude. His prayer at Lazarus' tomb does not ask for a miracle. He says 'Father, I am giving you thanks' (eucharisteo in Greek). His expression of confidence and joy uses a word, which we associate with the Eucharistic Prayer, which we of course make through our risen Lord Jesus Christ.

Tonight we will be thinking more about death and resurrection as we celebrate All Souls at Stebbing and Great Saling, with those who have been bereaved. This morning I would like to concentrate more on the status of the living church and the communion of all saints

The saints, in the way the term is used in the New Testament, are the community of believers who share a faith in Jesus as the way, the truth and the life. You do not have to be dead or even dead famous to be a saint. St Paul frequently addresses his letters to “the saints in ..”  

While I guess it is a bit strange that the Gospel chosen for this day is not about someone whom we would necessarily regard as a saint in the stereotypical sense, hre story of Lazarust does make the dramatic point that risen life with Christ is a free gift from God to all who are called to be saints. Famous saints like St Francis, or St Maximilian Kolbe, who did things to get themselves and more importantly God noticed are all very well, but if we concentrate too much on them, we might miss out on the person they are trying to draw us to – Jesus. St Therese of Lisieux - whose relics recently toured the UK, is all very well, but she’s no different from you or me in the eyes of God.  To focus too much on any saint, if our relationship with God suffers, is like going on a journey, but stopping at the first signpost to our destination, and just standing looking at it.

 The dead Lazarus, bound in his grave clothes, could do nothing for himself, but he was given life as the free gift from God. Having said he’s not normally listed under saints, we need to remember that travellers to Paris are sometimes greeted by him, if they arrive by train at the Gare St Lazare.

Though of course St John couldn’t have known about that rather good designation for the end of a journey, he invites us to note the parallels between the raising of Lazarus and the resurrection of Jesus, which of course opens the way to us to our final destination in the new creation.

Think about it for a second. Both stories have women called Mary who weep; they both involve cave tombs with stones rolled away. In both narratives there is a lengthy time the body spends in the tomb, and references to grave clothes, and (implied by the spices on Easter morning, and overtly here,) the resultant smell. Of course the passages are ultimately linked by the sheer impossibility in human terms alone, of coming to life again.

 The similarity continues then with the appearances of Lazarus and the risen Christ from their tombs. Lazarus emerges bound in strips of cloth, and Jesus orders people to unbind him. This is a symbol of the way in which we are bound by sin and death, and a reminder that the risen Christ will proclaim release from sin when he appears in the upper room (John 20). There, his authority to release people bound by sin will be given to his disciples. With this, the tears are at an end as, in the words of Isaiah (25.8), 'He will swallow up death for ever.'

One  Tuesday night last month at the course in Christian studies we were looking at the apostle’s creed, and considering what those ancient words mean for the relationship of believers to each other and to God. I was blessed to be in a small group as we discussed the final paragraph:

       I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting.

Amen.

As a group we noticed how there a natural and gracious sequence in these words: the Spirit of God brings together the church on earth and the communion of saints, which transcends the boundaries of space and time. The communion is based on forgiveness – by God’s grace alone we are saints, remember, and centres on the resurrection of the body – the body of Jesus yes, but also our bodies, when we make the transition from being part of the earthly church to just being members of the communion of saints in eternity.

But I promised to focus on the living this morning, so I wonder how we really ought to feel about the communion of saints. I’ve never been much of a protestant, until last week anyway, and I do, you’ve probably noticed, celebrate saints’ days from the lectionary whenever I can. I’m not doing this, I’m sure you realise, because I think that saints are more important than Jesus, or even because I think they are as important as Jesus. I do it because they point to Jesus, and so help us on our way.

That is our task too, but that’s another story.

All Souls at Stebbing

1 Peter 1 3-9

You know typing, right – well, the fact is I have to do a lot of it these days, but haven’t had a lesson since I was 17. I know I’m doing it wrong, but I’ve just kind of adapted to the keyboard and screen so that I can get on with the job in hand.

The other day I was typing an address for a funeral, and instead of writing about the hope of eternal life, I wrote about the hop of eternal life. That’s funny now, but I had a hard time trying to keep a straight face at the crematorium.

If I knew how to type properly, and didn’t rely on computers to do my grammar for me, my life would in a way be simpler, less complex and more joyful. I’d be doing fewer corrections too!

Why am I talking about typing, you ask, well, because it is a bit like life, especially the life of a Christian; we do it, but not all of us actually know what we’re doing. Some of us were taught about it in our youth, some more recently, but under stress it is hard to call to mind things from the recesses of our memories.

But our struggle with life, like my struggle with the keyboard, doesn’t normally show, it just sometimes comes to the surface when we are under pressure or stress, as we are when we suffer bereavement.

Church, then, is like a typing class; it gives us the things we need to do life together, even in the darkness. Here we can find support, comfort and (by the grace of God) strength to carry on. Here we can soak up the wisdom of the Scriptures and our traditions, that have served us for many centuries and are still of indispensable use today. Here we can find a comforting shoulder, a listening ear, and even simple things like a cup of tea and a box of tissues. Things we need for every day, but particularly so in our loss.

But the picture breaks down at this point. If you attend a class – for typing or whatever, you have a teacher, who spends some time with you and then you are left on your own to get on with it. With God it is not like that. Yes, Jesus did spend some time on earth, but after he left he sent the Holy Spirit to be our comforter and guide, so we never need to be alone; we never need to be alone. Even in the deepest darkest moments of our sorrow or suffering, we never need to be alone.

Jesus doesn’t just teach us how to live in good times and in bad, then leave is alone -  he walks with us on the journey through life.

You and I find comfort in the love we receive from others, the practical help, the hug, the company; in the touch of a comforter’s hand, you may be assured that you are receiving the love of God.

So if you are feeling a little like an untrained typist trying to type a dissertation, be assured you are in good company. Church is not about being superior and saying “we know how to do this”. Church is really just a bunch of people who know they need God’s grace and strength, and are brought together on a common journey to seek these things. We are, you might say, the walking wounded, but because we walk with the wounded saviour, our heads do not drop.

Our reading spoke of the inexpressible joy of knowing Christ; perhaps that is what is meant by the hop of eternal life?

But the hope of eternal life, which never disappoints us because the Holy Spirit has been given us, is always waiting for us to reach out and claim it for ourselves, and then we shall find rest for our souls.