Sermon for CATM - November 13, 2022. Remembrance Day - Psalm 105:1-8 "Symbols of Sacrifice"
My grandfather, Gilbert Hyde Parker, was a naval engineer in WW2. He was on at least one navy ship during the war that was bombed by the Nazis and sank in frigid waters.
There are unconfirmed family accounts that he may have been on a total of 3 ships, all of which met the same fate.
Each time he was rescued, it was after being in freezing water for too long. This led to lifelong health issues.
This year is the 80th anniversary of Operation Jubilee, better known as the disastrous raid at Dieppe. The raiding force was made up of almost 5,000 Canadians, approximately 1,000 British commandos and 50 American Army Rangers.
The Allies’ plan was to launch a large-scale amphibious landing, damage enemy shipping and port facilities, and gather intelligence on German defences and radar technology.
Recent research has suggested that the desire to capture a top secret Enigma code machine and accompanying codebooks was also an important factor in mounting the raid.
My grandfather was also at Dieppe, and his role was to direct the landing craft that took the Canadian soldiers from the Dido Class Cruiser that worked with the RCN Destroyers to that fateful shore on August 19, 1942.
As soon as the Canadian soldiers got out of the boats, they began to be picked off one by one by German snipers.
It quickly became obvious that it was going to be a bloodbath. Soldiers who were the last to leave the landing craft and who saw their brothers dying ahead of them, ran through the water back to the boats shortly after jumping out, begging to be allowed back in.
A few were able to climb back in. My grandfather then received orders to return to the ship from which the smaller landing craft were launched.
He had to close the boat’s doors to the cries of these young soldiers who remained in the frigid water, most of them between 18 and 22 years old.
They begged my grandfather to let them come back into the landing craft rather than being picked off in the water.
He closed the doors and then watched from the relative safety of the boat as it returned to the cruiser, as those same soldiers who begged him to be allowed to come aboard were, one by one, shot dead in the water.
This traumatic experience led to lifelong struggles that included constant nightmares and general trouble sleeping.
What the military learned from the disaster at Dieppe was an obvious lesson that led to the success of the Normandy invasion later and near the end of the war: you can’t do a land assault by sea on a heavily fortified coast without air cover.
That fact that that is a no-brainer was sadly missed by the people in charge.
There were 3,367 casualties, including 1,946 prisoners of war; 916 Canadians lost their lives. From Toronto alone a great many lives were lost in that war.
Why talk about this? Why does something unpleasant that happened so long ago have anything to do with life now in 2022?
How is this useful or relevant to now? Even the symbols of remembrance, like the poppy, what’s really the point of keeping up that tradition?
Remembering does many things. And symbols of remembrance are more important than we perhaps realize.
Remembering brings us back to the reality of what actually happened.
It encourages us to see the dedication of those who fought and died.
Remembering should stir within us a sense of gratitude and appreciation, and it should strengthen our own resolve to do our part in serving God and others.
Remembering can also limit how quickly a nation and a world might choose to return to the horrors of war.
War is sometimes the failure of relationship and diplomacy. It is also, as in the current war in the Ukraine and in WW2, caused by evil leaders wanting to dominate others.
Remembering at times like this is important, because as human beings, we really are inclined to be so caught up in today that we forget what happened yesterday, often to our harm.
Throughout the Bible, God’s people are instructed to stop and recall what He did for them. Psalm 105 in its entirety is a song of remembrance of God’s goodness to His beloved ones.
It traces His direction, provision and protection through their history.
As believers in the 21st century, we can look back over a much longer history and see how God’s plan has and is unfolding, and observe His incredible goodness and faithfulness to us.
Psalm 105
1 Give praise to the Lord, proclaim his name; make known among the nations what he has done. 2 Sing to him, sing praise to him; tell of all his wonderful acts.
It’s Important to recognize that the History of the people of God in the Old Testament is the history of us. We are the ones who have been grafted into the family of God as it says in Romans chapter 11.
In these verses we are encouraged to give praise and adoration to God, to speak his name aloud, and testify about the things that He has done.
For Israel, that of course included the miraculous deliverance from Egypt, God sustaining them for so long in the desert despite their disobedience to him,
and many other promises that were fulfilled by God to the people of God, despite the fact that while God was always faithful, his people have generally not been faithful.
They, like us, are prone to forget our blessings and more inclined to focus on our problems and the business of today.
Here we find a strong prompting to always be ready to give an account of the ways that God has blessed us.
When we gather together on Sundays and during the week as many of us do, we are gathering together as the people of God. We gather to praise the Lord and to worship him.
This is so important. It is far more than it appears to be, particularly when you think that as we gather we are continuing an ancient and good tradition that keeps us grounded in Jesus, that keeps us rooted in God.
3 Glory in his holy name; let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice. 4 Look to the Lord and his strength; seek his face always.
What happens when we focus on our trials and temptations, our problems and anxieties? If I just speak for myself, I know it drags me down. It can really drag me down far.
And it’s pretty easy to get overwhelmed by all the things that area within our control that we don’t know how to deal with, let alone by all the many more things outside of our control.
Problem-focused living is anxiety-filled living. Focussing on ourselves is, frankly, never healthy. Far better that we look to Jesus and His power and His strength and the glory of His holy name! God-focused living is peace-filled living.
And we’re called to seek His face always. We can’t do that without the Spirit of God at work in us. In the natural, this doesn’t happen. Scripture says: “...There is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. Romans 3:11.
But we also have the promise of what God does when we seek Him in the Spirit
The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him. Lamentations 3:25
What does it mean to seek the Lord? Very briefly:
1. Call on God and pray to him
2. Serve God with wholehearted devotion and with a willing mind
3. Cast your cares upon the Lord
4. Keep your tongue from evil, Turn from evil, Do good, Seek peace and pursue it
5. Focus on doing what’s right and live humbly
Back to our main passage:
5 Remember the wonders he has done, his miracles, and the judgments he pronounced,
6 you his servants, the descendants of Abraham, his chosen ones, the children of Jacob.
7 He is the Lord our God; his judgments are in all the earth.
8 He remembers his covenant forever, the promise he made, for a thousand generations
We are called to remember. We are called to remember the goodness of God in all things.
And we are called to remember that God is the Lord our God, the covenant-keeper, the righteous judge of all the earth, the One, the only One who we can set our hearts on with full devotion who will never fail to keep His promises.
And yes, we have symbols of remembrance. They are really very important. Around Remembrance Day, you see a lot of poppies.
What is so special about a poppy on Remembrance Day? Why not use a pansy or a carnation or a rose?
Scarlet poppies grow naturally in conditions of disturbed earth throughout Western Europe.
The destruction brought by the Napoleonic wars of the early 19th Century, transformed bare land into fields of blood red poppies, growing around the bodies of the fallen soldiers.
In late 1914, the fields of Northern France and Flanders were once again ripped open as the First World War raged through Europe’s heart.
The significance of the poppy as a lasting memorial symbol to the fallen was realised by the Canadian surgeon John McCrae in his poem ‘In Flanders Fields’.
The poppy came to represent the immeasurable sacrifice made by his comrades and quickly became a lasting memorial to those who died in the First World War and later conflicts.
Here is the poem:
‘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 amid 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.’
Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die we shall not sleep, though poppies grow, In Flanders fields.
When fighting ceased in 1918 the mud of the battlefields was allowed to rest and nature began to be restored and before long the wild flowers grew and bloomed including the poppy.
The colour of red reminded people of bloodshed and the sacrifice by millions of brave soldiers of their lives.
And so the poppy became the sobering symbol of sacrifice.
We, you and I and all who trust in Jesus also have a sobering symbol. It’s the Cross of Jesus. It’s the reminder, quite a vivid one, of the lengths that God was willing to go - indeed had planned to go before He created the universe –
it’s the reminder that God was willing to suffer in order to redeem us; that the Holy One who was only ever good and righteous, was willing to suffer the penalty for our sin, in order to make it possible for us to come to God.
That’s the truth that we must never forget. Because of Jesus, a real relationship with God is possible. It begins with hearing the gospel, and the gospel by God’s grace then finds a pathway into our hearts, enabling us to believe the truth.
The truth that Jesus gave His life for us, that He suffered the penalty we deserve, that on the cross He willingly laid down His life for us, in order to take away our sins – the sin and unholiness that separates us, creates a terrible chasm between us and God.
We repent and turn from everything in our lives that is not the truth, from every sin. And we receive Jesus Christ as our Lord, as our King, as the Saviour of our souls, our very lives.
And then we live our lives in increasing freedom, as we submit ourselves, spirit, soul, mind and body, to Jesus' authority, and call on His name.
By coming to Jesus in humility and brokenness and need, we find what we are looking for. And for those of us who have loved and served Jesus for some time, we have the symbol of the cross which reminds us of the nearly unimaginable love of God.
May each of us, even as we remember today the terrible sacrifices made by soldiers who defended Canada and who served as peacekeepers internationally; may we remember the one, greatest sacrifice of all.
The sacrifice to which no other sacrifice can ever compare. And may we respond in gratitude to the gift of life, the gift of freedom, the gift of relationship with God, the gift of salvation, that Jesus won for us. Amen.
