READING John Chapter 15 v 9 – 17

“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.

If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love.

I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.

My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.

Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

You are my friends if you do what I command.

I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.

You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit —fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you.

This is my command: Love each other.

SERMON

Through the written word and the spoken word, may we know your Living Word Jesus Christ our Saviour. Amen

Over this week, since the government announcement last Saturday that we were going into a second lockdown to try and control the spread of the coronavirus I have been pondering and praying on how we can honour through our act of remembrance those men and women who fought and lost their lives in horrific wars through the centuries.

Wars that were decreed in the galleries of power with perhaps little thought for the consequences of where the decisions and ideologies would lead.

However I kept coming back to faith, and to honour men and women who fought for a freedom they believed would be made possible by sacrifice we need to look to our own faith and put that faith into action as they did.

When the news of the winning of the battle of Waterloo reached the towns and cities of this country people allegedly went bananas.The bells were peeled in every church steeple, bonfires were lit and the free beer flowed in the inns and taverns of the land.

Even in Mansfield a bull was slaughtered and roasted in the market place whilst the ragged and hungry children of the poor were made to sing for their suppers by recounting rhymes about the exiled tyrant Bonaparte.

But only hours after that self same victory, the hero himself, Wellington the Iron Duke sat bareheaded on his horse in torrential rain and said “the only thing worse than a battle lost is a battle won”.

All around him were the mountainous piles of allied and French dead. Bodies lying knee deep in mud, hacked and mutilated through over eight hours of continuous fighting. The carrion crows and stray dogs were about their macabre business of picking over the dead and the local inhabitants were already looting anything of value.

In that muddy field lay the smashed loves and hopes of mother’s, wives and sweethearts of a multitude of nations. These were the fathers, brothers and lovers of many. And as the earth swallowed their remains did it know that it would be experiencing the same one hundred years on as the First World War ravaged once more the nations pride.

Like David of old the combatants had honed their skills and selected their weapons. Like him in the arrogance of youth, which made him stride with confidence towards the Philistine horde. Playing with his selected stones in his young trained hands. He who had fought wolves and protected his flock, who would now do battle with a giant and a champion. But the Lord was with him and he trusted him well. In David’s mind God was not glory. Faith was not patriotism and love did not end with death.

We choose to kill and not to heal, we choose to hate and not to love. Yet the hands that can select stones to be hurled from a slingshot can easily lay them down and not use them! As Isaiah said so prophetically of the change that would occur with the coming of the Messiah…

Many peoples shall come and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.’ For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

He shall judge between nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. (Isaiah 2:3-4)

Faith in action helps us to choose to heal and not to kill, to love and not to hate.To reconcile with our enemy and to feel and know that the pain of war and loss is equal on which ever side you are on.

As an example of faith in action honestly I cannot think of anyone better than that of Ernest Gordon.

During the Second World War he was a Far East prisoner of war and captain in the Argyll and Sutherland highlanders, he found and walked with Christ in possibly one of the worst situations of the entire war. The building of the Burma to Thailand railway by forced labour.

After three years of hideous conditions. Personally undergoing starvation, disease and close to death along with witnessing the death and torture of many comrades which also included the crucifixion of his friend.

Ernest seized by the love of Jesus Christ, on seeing wounded Japanese soldiers towards the end of the conflict, cleaned their wounds and offered them water and sustenance showing the love of God and faith in action in the light of hideous adversity.

Ernest’s actions were deemed traitorous by some of his fellow prisoners and viewed in disbelief by the Japanese who saw compassion as dishonourable. But did it he did.

Pain and grief are felt by everyone. Christ’s suffering on the cross was to show us that even the son of God can suffer. It is not wrong to feel your adversaries agony.

A few years ago Simon and I visited the Rhine-land area of Germany and whilst walking through a medieval town through narrow streets and stepped alleyways we chanced upon a municipal cemetery where we were suddenly faced with German war graves from the First World War.

Simple black crosses with the names and the date of death and in among them we saw a reflection of our own war graves and felt the same sadness at the loss of life and shed the same tears at the grave of an unknown soldier which bore the inscription “Deutcher Soldatan”, German Soldier.

No different to the unknown warriors of our own nation. No different to the loss and agony felt by their loved ones, but the difference being they were killed by the allied side and the pain was felt by ordinary Germans.

As we pause at the eleventh hour today and perhaps on Wednesday too, take a moment to remember not just the combatants who gave their lives in the ultimate sacrifice, but to remember and pray for all those affected by war; the innocent, the orphaned, the starving children, the ragged and destitute refugees, the blasted land and burnt out homes, those who return changed and damaged by the unspeakable nature of war. And open your hearts to love and vow to live a life of faith in action because when we choose to kill instead of heal, when we hate instead of love we betray the one who told us to love one another has he loved us.

The one who was betrayed. The one who was mocked and scourged. The one who screamed out in his dying breath for us to be forgiven. Let us not remember his words, let us start to live them. Love one another has he loves us put your faith into action. Amen.

Ann Hilton
Licensed Lay reader St.Wilfrid’s and St.Thomas’s Kirkby in Ashfield

PRAYERS

As we pray, I invite you to use a poppy and hold it in your hand. If you do not have a poppy with you, please picture one in your mind.

Let us pray…….

First, we hold one of the petals of the poppy. Father, the red of this petal is like the red of the blood shed by so many in the wars of the last century. We remember members of our family who were directly involved in those wars, some in the armed forces, some left behind. We remember injury, trauma, death, courage, fear all which led to lives changed forever. We give thanks for so many who were prepared to pay the highest price of all….

Lord in your mercy hear our prayer

Now we take hold of the second petal on our poppy. In doing so, we hold before God the violence and warfare of our own times. The continuing simmering violence, open hostilities, threats of terrorism. We pray, Father, that you will give us politicians and military leaders equal to the huge tasks they face, wise in judgement, calm in spirit and makers of peace.

Lord in your mercy hear our prayer

Now we touch the centre of the poppy, the place where the seeds are kept, ready for new life. Lord, take the seeds of peace which lie in the hearts of your people everywhere, and cast them generously over every continent and nation. Let those seeds germinate, grow and flourish. Beat our swords into ploughshares, our spears into pruning hooks and our weapons of mass destruction into technologies for peace.

Lord in your mercy hear our prayer

Now we hold the green leaf (or the green stem) and remember the green and growing hope which comes from faith alone, faith in a God for whom everything is possible, even in the darkest hour.

May hope guide our politics, our nation, our thinking and our lives. May hope draw us ever nearer to that day when the world shall be filed with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea.

Lord in your mercy hear our prayer

In your mercy, forgive our foolish ways,
In your mercy, help us to listen before we fight,
In your mercy, hold back the men of war,
In your mercy, save the innocent,
In your mercy, hear us,
In your mercy. Amen.

Revd Kevin Charles, Priest at St.Wilfrid’s and St.Thomas’s, Kirkby in Ashfield