Remembrance Sunday 2018

Remembrance Sunday 2018 at TSJ

I would like to focus our thoughts this morning on one verse from Ps 46

Psalm 46:1

“God is our refuge and strength

A very help in trouble”

Our mind is that unique gift that reminds us that we are made in the image of God.

The ability to remember is a wonderful gift that God has given to us.

In a flash you can be a child again, skimming rocks across a pond, or walking in a meadow.

Many of us can recall the time when you fell in love, got married and had children all over again.

You can remember – because those memories that are fixed in your mind.

And time cannot rob you of those - so long as your memory continues to function.

Some of our memories are happy and we can recall wonderful experiences.

But some of our memories are sad and we may weep.

The problem, though, is that sometimes memory fails us. Sometimes we forget.

For that reason alone, I think that the Remembrance Sunday Service is one of the most important services in the Church’s calendar, after Christmas and Easter.

Because it helps us not to forget why we have the freedom that we enjoy today.

This year’s service is particularly poignant as it commemorates exactly 100 years since the beginning of the First World War.

Remembrance Sunday reminds us that the peace that we have enjoyed 73 years of peace in Europe , but we must always remember it wasn’t bought cheaply.

It is not just a reminder of those who died in the First and Second World Wars - important as they were.

It is also a reminder of other conflicts that our armed services have been in

The Korean War

The Aden and Malayan Emergencies

The Falkland War

The Cyprus Conflict

The Northern Ireland Police Action

The 1st and 2nd Gulf Wars

The Afghanistan and Iraq Conflicts

And it gives us an opportunity to say “Thank you” for the sacrifice that so many made - so that we in the United Kingdom can enjoy peace

It is appropriate too to come to a Christian Church to hold a service of Remembrance because the Church building should remind us of the greatest sacrifice of all

For in the New Testament we read of the story of God sending his own Son Jesus into the world to bring mankind back into a right relationship with God.

And to do so Jesus made the Ultimate sacrifice on our behalf on the Cross.

It is the sacrifice that we recall every Easter.

For it is more than simply the remembering of the life of a good man

Rather through it, we are reminded how GOD wants us to live

The rules that God has given us for living - are not rules to curtail our enjoyment of life.

Quite the contrary – they are given – as Jesus

said: so that we may have life and life in abundance (Jn 10:10)

Try and imagine playing a game of football with no rules. It would be chaos!

So it is with us when we fail to remember the rules of life that God has given us.

Jesus gave us two great rules to govern life in our society, The first was this.

To “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind (Mt 22:37)

The second was to “Love your neighbour as yourself” (Mt 22:39)

In war many people found their faith – others lost it.

Story: In March 2004, I was in the second bookshop in Dymchurch rummaging through the books when I came across a second hand Jerusalem Bible.

As I opened the Bible up, a number of papers fell into my hand.

On one of them was written a story.

It was obviously very meaningful to the previous owner, an elderly lady because she had specially typed it out on a piece of paper.

And she had written this:

They were found by a corporal in the Royal Army Medical Corps and were printed in a Tunis newspaper.

They found their way to Britain through the United States.

A friend of the writer of these lines, who was with him when they were written (and who survived the battle in which the writer was killed) said the soldier was a thoroughly wild character, but there were tears running down his face as he wrote these lines.

“Look, God, I have never spoken to you,

And now I want to say: “ How do you do?”.

You see, God, they told me you didn’t exist,

And I, like a fool, believed all this.