This sermon was delivered to Holy Trinity in Ayr,
Ayrshire, Scotland on the 12th November 2017
(a Scottish Episcopal Church in the Dioceses of Glasgow and Dumfries).
John 15:12-17 John 3:15-17
Psalm 19:14: Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of our hearts, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength, and our redeemer. Amen.
1. Introduction
Today is Remembrance Sunday, a day where we commemorate the contribution of the British and Commonwealth military and civilian services in the two World Wars … and the later conflicts. …
Across the United Kingdom this morning, there are many such ceremonies … many poppy wreaths of remembrance will be laid … and there will be a two minutes' silence in respect … of those who gave their life: … of those who were injured; … of those who returned home to pick up the pieces … and of those who simply never returned. … We remember too, those at home who supported campaigns … and we pay tribute to the innocent who suffered needlessly.
These services are always very solemn, sincere and sad, always respectful, particularly the service at the cenotaph in London, [which has been televised since 1946, the longest-running annual live televised event in the world]; and for many people that may not go to a service themselves, watch this program … and in their way, they can pay tribute privately.
There is also another service on the Saturday night from the Royal Albert Hall, and that is the one I have always engaged with since I was a boy … and from that service, I was some reason encouraged to join up and do my bit … but as you know the Merchant navy was as far as I got, although we must also show respect for both our navy’s and the seamen and woman who gave their lives during those conflicts, and without whose help, Britain would surely have starved.
2. The silence on remembrance of those who died
Today is a time to remember, and what I particularly like is the silence … the two minutes silence which represents the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918, when the guns of Europe fell silent. It is a silence where all our thoughts go to these brave men and woman who took part … and it is the only time on our calendar where the whole country falls silent, thinking about something other than themselves. … What a moment to cherish; and I have always loved that … no telephones; no chatter just silence to remember them; a silent you can feel.
And on the Saturday night service, during this silence I was always fascinated by the thousands of poppies that are dropped from the ceiling of Royal Albert Hall onto the various representatives below; … I always enjoyed watching them flutter down and land beside them … landing on their cloths … on their heads … in fact just land anywhere. I remember someone once saying to me, that each poppy represents a life lost during those wars and I remember feeling bad because there were so many. … Years later someone said to me, those poppies were only a token in number of those who died, as there were so many that were killed, and that it was physically impossible to have one poppy per person dropping from that ceiling. … That was even more people than I thought, and I think that this really hit it home to me the sacrifices … the wanton destruction … and the evil that men and woman do. … What a waste … what a world we live in.
3 Why the poppy?
And I also never remember asking the question, why use the poppy to symbolise the fallen, even it was kind of obvious that the red poppy represented the blood that was sown, and that the poppy was one of the first flowers to grow after the armistice was declared … just like they had done after the destruction brought about by the Napoleonic wars of the early 19th century, which also transformed bare land into fields of red … red both for the blood of the slaughter, and red for the poppies when the fighting had ceased … however it was not until 1918 that the poppy became the national symbol of the natural cycle of war and a memorial to the fallen, … a symbol adopted by the Royal British Legion of those serving in the British armed forces, and we therefore cannot promote it high enough.
3 So many wars
The common corn flower poppy … is now a popular symbol of the blood that flowed … yet despite all the acts of sacrifice and heroism throughout the centuries, we live in a world that is at war with itself. … Even the society of International Law in London states this incredible statistic: … that since the beginning of recorded history … the entire world has been at peace less than 8% of the time. … Just think, that over the last 4000 years of history, only 268 years saw peace, which means that this world has been at war with itself for 3732 years … and in that time, more than 8000 peace treatises have been made, and broken.
I mean, are we the British, are still not bombing somebody, somewhere at this very time? … We are certainly “there or there abouts” in support of somebody in the regions of Syria … and disturbingly, we know the government can find money for that. … … Our own troops even, and although the British army whom we are very proud … are not on standing … they are busy preparing for the next lot of hostilities … which will happen, (hopefully later rather than sooner). … We don’t know where this will be, but it will come as no surprise when it does.
4 How do we make sense of it all?
How do we make sense of it all? … Yes it is difficult … yes it is well beyond reason, it is well beyond logic; and yes it’s horrible. … And this continual war that humanity faces cause us to ask the question, “where is the love” … “where is God’s love” that I spoke of in my last sermon, because clearly, it is simply … not there? People are clearly “not loving others as themselves” as we live in a culture of “do unto others before they do it unto us”. … I thought that saying was a joke when I first heard, but I am beginning to see it is not.
People today, are focused upon themselves … it is all about them, it is all about what they want; it is all about what they think they can take from others, and it is all about what they think they can get away with. Because bullying, intimidation, bulldozing decisions without considering others, all have consequences; … greed always has consequences, and bullying forces people into corners, and when in a corner there is only one way out … the way the bully understands … the way of conflict … the way of war.
5 Where is love
And what I speak of is so serious and important, “where exactly is the love” … because as I said before, “where there is no love, there is no God”, that’s it. … This is question was made so poignant in a hit single from the American rapper group, the Black Eyed Peas away back in 2005, called … “Where is the love”? … If you are not a rapper, or a Black eyed pea’s fan, it is interesting to read the chorus, which goes like this …
“… people killing’, people dying’, children hurt and you hear then crying’. … Can you practice what you preach? And would you turn the other cheek? … Father, father, father help us … need some guidance from above … because people got me questioning, where is your love”.
And that is that question we must answer, “where is the love?” … Well we could start from a quotation from my last sermon from John 15:12, “This is my commandment … that ye love one another, as I have loved you” ... and next verse reads, verse 13, “Greater love hath no man than this … that a man lay down his life for his friends”.
The British legion has their symbol, the poppy, which is good, but we Christians also have a symbol, and that symbol is the cross. … And by that symbol, we remember the greatest act of sacrificial love ever shown to a world in conflict … a sacrifice where the son of God died for us miserable sinners.
And because he died for us, we can live in hope … John 3:15-17 puts it this way, “That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. … For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. … For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved”.
What a scripture, does that not give us hope … hope when we cannot make sense of it all … hope, when all else fails. … When we were still sinners, Christ died for us all … and everyone needs to be aware of this, and many do … but they also need to realise it and believe it in their hearts and that is much harder … because regardless of our situation, the shed blood of Jesus can bring about peace between ourselves, and with almighty God … a “peace which passes all understanding”, according to Philippians 4:7.
There was a great tribute paid to the Royal Air Force just after the Battle of Britain by Winston Churchill who said, “never in the field of human conflict … was so much owed by so many … too so few” … and that was so true, and we are all indebted to them, but this tribute could go further … the expression “never in the field of human conflict” could be seen as man’s battle with sin, and that “so much owed by so many”, can be seen as the whole world, and the “too so few” could be reduced to just one man, our Lord Jesus Christ.
5 War is all about conflict - the conflict with sin.
War is about conflict – but the real conflict is with sin. … Romans 3:23 tell us that “… all have all sinned, and come short of the glory of God”. … Why are there so many wars in our world? It’s because of sin in the heart of humanity … because sin is not of God … sin opposes God … sin is rebellion … sin is lawlessness … sin is basically unbelief in the one who truly loves us. … Albert Einstein once said, “the true problem lies in the hearts and thoughts of men ... what terrifies us is not the explosive power of the atomic bomb, but the power of wickedness of the human heart”.
You see the problem is within the hearts of the men and women, and by the hearts I mean, the soul, the mind, the will, the emotions, the ID, that which drive and controls us, and if we are not submitted to God and his love, then we are submitted to … something else.
The writer G.K. Chesterton of the Father Brown fame, was once asked, “What is the problem with the world”? His answer was “i am”. … Not the great “I am”, our Lord, the “I am of love” … but the small “i am” … the me, me, & me. …
Romans 3 verse 23 tells us clearly that “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” … there are not two categories of people on this earth, good and evil, we are all sinners, and we all face sin every day in our lives … but it is how we handle that sin, that determines our future, as this conflict within us is very real. There are no exceptions, and we all need to face up to this.
Yes there are times when we can blame others, but most of the times we need to face the internal conflict within us, we need to face and deal with our own internal demons in the name of Jesus … before we can deal with the external conflicts that rage in our world today.
I love this next story as an example, where an unknown monk once said, “when I was a young man, I wanted to make a difference, I wanted to change the world but I found it so difficult … so I tried to change my nation. When I found I couldn’t change the nation either, I began to focus on my own town. I couldn’t change the town either, so I worked on changing my family. And that didn’t work too well either, and so the only thing I could change was myself. … I am now an old man, I now realise that had I changed myself first all those years ago, I could have made an impact on my family, and my family could have made an impact on our town, and our town would have made an impact on our nation, and our nation could have changed the world”.
It is how we as individuals respond in repentance and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ that matters, because he alone dealt with the greatest conflict within us all … the sin. … John 15:13 says, “greater love has no-one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends”. … Jesus did more than this, he did not lay down his life only for his friends … no, he laid down his life for his enemies as well. Where is the love? That’s where love is, it is with him, because God himself is love.
Today we remember those brave men and women who have laid down their lives for us … but we must also be drawn to remember the greatest sacrifice of all, the sacrifice where Jesus laid down his life so that all may have the opportunity to receive that “peace which passes all understanding”, peace that keeps our hearts and minds focused on our Lord Jesus Christ … Jesus the only man who “overcame the world”, Jesus, the man “who knew no sin, yet was made sin for us upon that cross” … that we may live and be forgiven, and have peace with almighty God himself … so that “if God be for us, just who can be against us”? Where is love, love is in accepting and living in Jesus Christ as our Lord. Amen
Let us pray
Father we thank you for Jesus, we thank you he died for us all those years ago, that we may live in peace with you.
Father this morning we remember them that sacrificed their lives in those conflicts for us, we thank you for them, and we thank you that they are with you in heaven … that their sacrifices were not in vain.
Father for those left behind, those who live this this world of so called peace; give us the understanding that you want us to draw love from you, so that we too can pass that love onto others.
Father we cannot stop these horrible conflicts so teach us to see you in that love … to see the power of your love … and how to use your love … that we are so blessed with so much love, that we need to pass it on to others … even those whom we struggle to understand.
Father we ask therefore that you cover us with your love today … in the mighty name of Jesus, Amen.
