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

On the 11th of November 1918 Private Arthur Wrench of the Seaforth Highlanders wrote in his diary: “I think it is quite hopeless to describe what today means to us. We who will return to tell people what war really is surely hope that 11 am this day will be of great significance to generations to come. Surely this is the last war that will ever be between civilised nations.”

We have come to remember all those who have fallen in wars present and past. Some of you will have a personal memory of losing a member of your own family or friend, but for many of us it will be an inherited memory, passed on from one generation to the next.

It was not in our lifetime when the Armistice was signed at the end of the First World War, nor when the Cenotaph was unveiled and the Unknown Warrior was buried in Westminster Abbey.

These things are part of history, but for millions of people since then war has not been history but a part of their lives. In recent years members of our armed forces have died in conflict leaving yet more families and friends grieving.

How do we define a war? So often we hear and read about the number of deaths and injured; the length of campaigns, the number of guns and missiles and the size of the Navy, Army and Air Force. Perhaps the numbers suggest the scale of a conflict, but I suggest that statistics have little, if any, relevance to those who have lost a son, daughter, brother, sister, father or mother.

It is eternally important that we remind ourselves of the dreadful cost of war if we are ever to live in peace. The most compelling outward sign of our remembrance is the simple red flower, the Flanders Poppy. It has become the symbol of the Royal British Legion, but more than that, across the world, it has come to represent the sacrifice made by all those men, women and children who have given their lives in conflict.

From early history flowers have become symbols; the clover leaf for the Holy Trinity – Father, Son and Holy Spirit, lilies for purity, roses for love and for England, daffodils for the Marie Curie charity and for Wales, thistle for Scotland and the shamrock for Ireland. But, how was the poppy chosen as the universal symbol of remembrance?

As you might expect, it began with a death, the death of a friend of a man called John McCrae in 1915 in Belgium. John McCrae was kneeling at the grave of his friend and was moved to write a poem reflecting the scene around him. He wrote:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard among the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields

McCrae himself was unhappy with the poem and he threw it aside, but one of McCrae’s fellow officers found it and was so touched that he sent the poem to England where it was published in the magazine Punch.

As a result, the scarlet poppy quickly became the symbol for soldiers who died in battle.

In 1921, the British Legion began the Poppy Day Appeal to raise money for poor and disabled veterans, and now the Poppy campaign is the Royal Legion’s most important activity.

The appeal continues to raise the funding needed to help all service-men and women and their families in the most practical way. However, critically, the appeal serves to maintain our awareness of our past, and present, in order that our prayers for peace, and the future of our families, our children and grandchildren, will be fulfilled.

Peace is a precious commodity; it comes from trust, patience, tolerance and faith. It is not one-sided, it cannot be “Peace only on my terms”, it results from mutual agreement and understanding. Peace has never been easy to achieve; it is very hard work to establish and keep the peace at any level in our society.

Yet regardless of the difficulties, peace must be what we all strive for, what Micah foresaw, what Jesus taught us.

The driving force for peace must come from us, it must come from our remembrance of those who have given their lives in war; it must come from those injured in conflict and for their families and loved ones. Peace will not come if we forget; it won’t happen if we wait for others to work for it.

It is through our vigilance, our voice, and our prayers that peace and light will emerge.

The poppy wreaths and crosses that we will laid at the memorial today remember not only those from this community who have given their lives. We will also remember the injured and their families for whom we have no recorded names.

The poppy is our symbol of remembrance, but let us remember through the remembering of pain and loss that there is always the light of hope, love and faith through Jesus Christ. Amen

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.

And so we seal our prayers together in the prayer that Jesus taught his disciple’s, the Lord’s prayer …

Our Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name, Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done; on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, For ever and ever.
Amen

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