Remembering God

Talk for Remembrance Sunday, 14 November 2021

Today is Remembrance Sunday.

In the UK we observe Remembrance DAY on the 11th of November and we observe Remembrance SUNDAY on the second Sunday in November.

On both of those days we REMEMBER members of the armed forces who gave their lives in the First World War and in conflicts since then.

But the Bible doesn’t say anything about either day! So we might ask, why do we observe them?

It’s true that the Bible doesn’t tell us to observe these days. But the Bible takes it as a given that we remember things that have happened. The word ‘remember’ comes hundreds of times in the Bible. Remembering is essential! Life works because we remember things.

A student remembers he has an essay due in next week. A UK driver leaves the ferry at Cherbourg; he remembers that in France, people drive on the right. Of course, remembering is only useful if we do something with that knowledge. The student needs to get down to work. The driver leaving the ferry in Cherbourg needs to drive on the right.

So, it’s normal and good to remember. We don’t need the Bible to tell us to remember. We should remember! It’s good for us to observe Remembrance Sunday.

As we look back on the conflicts of the past 100 years or so, what should we remember?

There are some things we CAN’T remember. We can’t remember the First World War itself. We weren’t there. And we may not personally know anyone in the armed forces who died in conflict. We can’t remember people we never knew.

But there are lots of important things we CAN remember.

(1) We can remember FACTS. Let me give you a few. Nearly 900,000 British members of the armed forces died in the First World War. About 400,000 died in the Second World War. About 7,000 have died since the end of the Second World War, in the Persian Gulf, in Bosnia and Kosovo, in Afghanistan, in Iraq and in the Middle East against ISIS. Those are facts.

I got a sense of what those facts represent when I was about 14. I went to a boarding school. It had a large hall and all along one wall were the names of students of the college who had died in the First World War. There was column after column of names the length of the hall. I remember the first time I went into the hall and looked at that long list. It brought home to me how many young men had died. There were over 700 names of boys from my school who died in the First World War. It’s a huge number for one school.

NONE of us witnessed the First World War. SOME of us witnessed the Second World War and MOST of us have heard about later conflicts in the news. But it doesn’t matter if we witnessed these conflicts or not. We know they happened and it’s important that we remember some of the FACTS.

(2) As well as the facts, we must remember what those facts reflect. They reflect suffering and loss. I said that about 900,000 British military personnel lost their lives in World War I. But Britain was just one of the combatants in that war. Remember, this was the first WORLD war. Ten or eleven countries fought. All those countries had military and civilian losses and almost 20 MILLION people died in total. It’s a huge number. People called it ‘the war to end all wars.’ But it wasn’t. In the Second World War, about 75 MILLION people died. It’s hard to imagine the suffering.

When we remember this, we should grieve. We should certainly grieve with people who have lost family or friends. Jesus did that. A friend of Jesus’ called Lazarus died. Jesus came to his house and met Mary and Martha, Lazarus’ sisters. We read that Jesus ‘was deeply moved in spirit and troubled … he wept’. [John 11:33-35]. Jesus feels our grief and he grieves.

The prophet Isaiah described Jesus this way: ‘He was despised and rejected by men; A MAN OF SORROWS, AND ACQUAINTED WITH GRIEF’ [Isaiah 53:3]. I’m sure Jesus is weeping over the conflicts that are happening in the world today and the suffering they are causing.

Remembering this challenges us. There is a lot that’s happening in the world to grieve over. God grieves. What about us? Are WE grieving? We should.

(3) We should also remember WHY men and women from Britain were involved in these conflicts.

God loves peace. He works for peace and one day he’ll establish it.

But sometimes it’s necessary to fight to achieve it.

If some kids pick a fight with your little brother in the playground, you won’t stand back. You’ll jump in and protect him and you’ll fight if you have to.