Sermon Archive
Remembrance
Sermon preached by Donald Reid at Holy Communion on 13 November 2005, Remembrance Sunday
I wonder if you've seen the film 'Saving Private Ryan' ?
I recommend it. I recommend it mainly because of its opening scenes. What you are shown for the first 20 minutes of the film is a graphic account of war. So graphic it strips away all the sanitising glorifying disguises we sometimes put on war.
For 20 unrelenting minutes you are shown, with close camera work, ordinary men in the first landing crafts to arrive on the Normandy beaches on D Day. You see their faces and into their eyes as they steel themselves for what's ahead, obviously psyching themselves up as best they can to contain their fear. Then the craft hit the beaches, the front ramps are lowered and you watch with disbelief as you see them being cut down by the waves of machine gun fire that ravage them, even before they get off the landing craft. Some make it further but only because someone in front has shielded them from the bullets; but then many of them die or are horribly injured as they scuttle up the beach that is by now littered with bodies. It is only through sheer numbers that this armada successfully lands and these brave men eventually gain the first toe-hold in occupied Europe.
The power of the film is not just that it horrifies you but that through the way in which it depicts the flesh and blood reality of warfare it draws you in and involves you emotionally. It is shocking, horrific, leaves no room for denying or not seeing the horror of war. As I witnessed this carnage I found myself thinking simply "thank God that wasn't me. Or anyone I know." I saw this film in a suburban cinema in Sacramento and the silence which fell on the audience and which remained as we left, showed how affected people were.
In short, the film successfully makes the experience of those men then present to you NOW it in a way you cannot but be shocked by - to the very core of your being. Those scenes of the film are, in short, a vivid act of remembrance. As such, films like this should surely be compulsory viewing in Downing Street, the White House - in caves in Afghanistan - or wherever else war is plotted.
This remembrance is a kind of intercession. It is about standing before God with a deep gut awareness of the suffering of others and there is an added responsibility on us for whose benefit these people suffered. And remembrance is about much more than just remembering, which can be too cerebral, too historical, too much about looking back. It is much more about feeling, about being affected in your guts by the lot that has been dealt to others - and holding them before God, who, we believe also feels a gut-wrenching pain at human suffering. The trouble is, perhaps, that not enough of us do feel this gut level effect for the world to be different.
The real presence of God; and the real presence of human suffering: that's what we are here to do, to bring these together. Our communion meal is a remembrance meal - not just an historical re-enactment- and it is meant to make Christ and the experience of Christ really present to us. Our intercessions are also a remembrance of people before God, and before the community.
Why does this matter? Because, speaking personally there is only one thing worse than the fact that people are caught up in the horror of war or in tides of violence greater than themselves. And that worse thing would be that such death, such experience, should be forgotten. How insulting to them if we were to be oblivious to these terrible experiences - especially if it has been for our benefit in the first place! How terrible to have this happen to you, and to be forgotten. Down that road lies more horror, more war. More Auswchwitzes, more Gallipolis or Guernicas, more Normandy beaches or Fallujahs. We should remember. And repent in sackcloth and ashes that war is ever necessary.
This remembrance, this quality to our remembering, this communion we (hopefully) come to sense with others - soldiers dying in distant places, whoever we pray for - isn't this somehow linked with the value of our existence?
The 18th century philosopher and theologian George Berkeley spoke of us all being held in existence moment by the moment by the very fact that - in the heart of God, we are named, known individually and held in remembrance. In the same way that God intends that there should be light - and there is light - so God intends that you should be - and you are. If for any moment God should forget, we would slip into non-being.
We used to joke about this on our way up The Mound to systematic theology classes in New College when I was a student here 20 odd years ago. "Oh look" we'd say, "the Scott Monument's disappeared! It must have slipped God's mind" "Oh it's back. Phew!! God's remembered!". (Theological jokes don't always get the biggest belly laughs I have to admit).
As our liturgy puts it God "sustains in being all that is" - at every moment. Our offering here is to work with God, holding in remembrance all those whose lives have been annihilated in wars past and present - to reclaim them from annihilation, to hold a different reality, a different kingdom, where we are all remembered by God and neighbour, we are not forgotten or lost, no matter what befalls us in this life. Not one sparrow falls to the ground without God knowing - and the hairs on our heads are counted.
So we ought to have proper remembrance as part of the co-creating work which God calls us to so that we understand that our life here and hereafter is one life under God and that life, here and hereafter, is an eternal life.
Loving God, may fruitless strife and ruinous wars pass away and may the Great Peace come. Let us not glory in this, that we love our country, let us rather glory in this, that we love our human kind. Amen.
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