Remembrance Sunday - What We Should Remember

INTRODUCTION EARLIER IN THE SERVICE

Today is Remembrance Sunday. It’s a time for remembering. In Britain, I think we’re good at remembering the people in the armed forces who gave their lives in conflicts over the past century or so.

Yesterday, the Royal British Legion held Festivals of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall.

Probably every church in the country – 40,000 or so churches – is holding a service of remembrance at the moment.

A National Service of Remembrance is being held now at the Cenotaph on Whitehall.

Similar ceremonies are taking place at war memorials in Bournemouth, Poole and Christchurch and all over the country.

There will be further acts of remembering tomorrow to mark Armistice Day.

So, as a nation, we take the task of remembering seriously. But what should we, AS CHRISTIANS, remember? I’d like to suggest that we remember three things. First, there are things to SACRIFICE for. Second, there are things to FIGHT for. And third, there are things to HOPE for. We will think more about those later in the service.

MAIN TALK

At the start of the service I suggested that on Remembrance Sunday we remember three things. First, there are things to SACRIFICE for. Second, there are things to FIGHT for. And third, there are things to HOPE for.

Let me start with things to sacrifice for.

One of the most moving stories of sacrifice that I’ve come across is the story of Maximilian Kolbe. [Peter probably knows who I’m talking about.]

Maximilian Kolbe was Polish, a Catholic priest and a Franciscan friar. He was born in 1894. After the First World War, Kolbe taught at a seminary in Krakow. He went overseas as a missionary for a while but returned to Poland in the 1930s to work at the monastery he had founded. When the Second World War broke out, Kolbe and a small number of other friars remained at the monastery. During this time, they hid about 2,000 Jews from the Germans. But in 1941, the Germans shut down the monastery and arrested Kolbe. After a few months, he was transferred to Auschwitz.

At the end of July 1941, a prisoner escaped from Auschwitz. The camp commander decided that ten men should be starved to death in order to deter further escape attempts. One of the men selected was Franciszek Gajowniczek [‘Franchijek Gayovnichek’]. When Gajowniczek heard that he’d been chosen he cried out, ‘My wife! My children!’

At this point, Kolbe stepped forward and told the commander, ‘I want to die in place of this prisoner.’ Gajowniczek took the man’s place. The ten men were starved and deprived of water. After two weeks only four were still alive, Kolbe being one of them. The guards wanted the bunker where the men were being kept so they decided to kill the remaining prisoners by injecting them with poison.

Gajowniczek lived another 53 years. During those years he constantly honoured Kolbe. Just before he died, he said that as long as he had breath in his lungs, he would consider it his duty to tell people about the heroic act of love by Maximilian Kolbe.

Kolbe’s sacrifice WAS an act of love. It was one of the greatest acts of love. Jesus said, ‘Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends’ [John 15:13].

Kolbe made a sacrifice. It goes without saying that soldiers make sacrifices. There is a war memorial in Westbury-on-Trym in Bristol which has the following words:

‘When you go home, tell them of us and say

For your tomorrow, we gave our today.’

In times of war, people make sacrifices, perhaps even their lives, to gain something for others. During the two World Wars, about 1.3 million British soldiers were killed in combat. It’s an appalling number. Thankfully, the number of soldiers killed has been much lower since the end of the Second World War.

On Remembrance Sunday we remember the sacrifices people in the armed forces made. I hope that as we remember their sacrifices, it will inspire us to make sacrifices too.

WE are not called to go to war. But we often need to make sacrifices. Let me give a couple of examples.

Let’s suppose we have young children. We’re tired and we want some ‘me’ time. But the children also want our time. Do we sit the kids in front of a TV and let the TV do the parenting? Or do we sacrifice some of our precious time for them?

Another example is caring for Planet Earth. There are all sorts of things most of us want to do or get. The trouble is that lots of them produce carbon emissions. Our planet needs us to radically reduce our carbon emissions. Do we still do all the things we’d like to do? Or do we sacrifice some of those things for the sake of the planet?