Remembrance Sunday, 2020
November 8th, 2020
Rob, a clergyman in the Church of England, to the
congregation of the faithful who gather in Rome. Grace and peace to you from God our Father
and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
It has come up a few times in discussion in what form
Paul’s letters would have been communicated to the congregations they were
directed to and I suppose the answer is that it would be something like
this. Some worthy of the congregation
would be relegated the task of reading a letter as Andrew is doing today and so
you will excuse the cheeky Pauline introduction to this small reflection. How would it have been done? A bit like this, then, in case you were
wondering.
You’ve noted that I’m not with you this morning. Caireen and I were participating at a funeral
north of Rome last week and there we came into contact with a family who
subsequently tested positive for Covid19 and so our doctor has asked us to
quarantine for a period of ten days following the day of contact to see if anything
develops and, whether it does or doesn’t, at the end of that time (i.e. on the
13th of November) we would take a swab test and, hopefully,
re-emerge into society with our ducks all in a row and a negative result. I am happy to see a service proceeding in my
absence – it’s a mark of our willingness and ability to continue to provide
ministry in difficult times and I pray God’s richest blessing on you all. Grace and peace to you – as St Paul is wont
to say….
In another life I was the chaplain to the Canadian
Grenadier Guards in the city of Montreal.
One of the tasks of the chaplain to the Guards in Montreal was, of
course, to preach at the annual church parade each Remembrance Sunday at Christ
Church Cathedral in Montreal. A certain
beardy portion of the cathedral congregation would take that particular Sunday off
because they objected to what they called “Gun Sunday” and would miss out, as
far as I was concerned, on the ministry of hospitality in the opportunity
afforded by the presence of up to 250 young men and women plus a whole wack of
cadets and their families, from a
variety of backgrounds among Montreal’s diverse community who really considered
themselves, in some way, a part of the Cathedral community and who, when they
walked along Ste Catherine street would look up and say to themselves that this
was their church.
That was one side of the equation.
On the other were a number of people – including one
Honorary Colonel – who came to church once a year expecting to hear about the
young and glorious dead and the place of God in leading and championing the
spread of the British Empire throughout the world. My well-honed ability to disappoint many
different people simultaneously got a thorough airing on Remembrance Sundays in
Montreal. The honorary Colonel would inevitably
ream me out about my sermon when we gathered in the Officers’ Mess every year
after the service. I’d need a second
whisky.
I did have something to say though in the Cathedral
back in the nineties and, to this day, I give up a Remembrance Sunday sermon
only reluctantly. I asked somebody else
to preach last year, but I did miss it and was looking forward to saying
something about it this year because I do have something to say and here – in
this letter read by somebody else - I hope you’ll listen.
Most of our soldiers in Montreal, you see, were not
involved in armed conflict. Canada has
provided peacekeepers in various parts of the world in modern times but has not
been involved in as many conflicts following the Korean War under its own flag as
other countries and we did, in fact, have a regular army. A number of our reservists at the Guards were
serving, in my day, in blue berets and with significant distinction in
Bosnia-Herzegovina and, at around the time I left the regiment, were preparing
to do the same in Afghanistan. Others
had served in the role of assistance to the civil powers in times of natural
disaster. I did not want to disappoint
our soldiers. I trust I didn’t. I hope I did not disappoint the ordinary
parishioners of the Cathedral either, who would leave the church that day with
choices to make about how they lived – and the degree to which the conscious
decision to engage, and in fact, to suffer in the midst of their generation, in
the midst of their families is the key to every forward step in their
relationships, in their citizenship, in the effectiveness of institutions they
worked with and for. It is the legacy that we leave even to the youngest
members of our congregation gathered here this morning – to the children of
this congregation and to the children visiting us this morning.
And this would be the lesson:
The decision to preserve self at all costs necessarily
leaves others bereft and weakens the self we thought we would protect. The decision to stay away from the often-ambiguous
movements, conflicts, challenges involved in advocacy, in the protection of the
weak, might well stem from a desire for simplicity and cleanliness – let us do
nothing which will have unintended consequences, in which mistakes will be
made, in which we might be said, at the end of the day, to have mis
stepped. We are so used to second
guessing the soldiers, the administrators, medical practitioners, the social
workers, the social engineers of past generations and yes – we are amazed that
some of them could have missed the mark as badly as they did.
Above all we must do no harm, we say, and so we do
very little.
And, inevitably we find ourselves in the situation of
screaming out when the world is lacking intervenors, lacking responsible adults
to work on the basis of the best probability of forward progress that the world
is an intolerable place for some folks.
We are ashamed. We say “Something
must be done”.
Who will do it?
In these stories told of young people, who left the
relative comfort and stability of hearth and home and who found themselves in
another place and at peril, there is a parable of what you – who are not facing
the prospect of a life in uniform and under orders from other people in uniform
– will nonetheless need to do in order to care for your city, your children,
the stranger in your midst, the unjustly treated in your place of work. You will need to take risks.
As much as your integrity is imperilled by the
possibility that you will not own the entire process, your integrity demands the
exercise of such love on your part – a love which sacrifices yourself and your
certainty.
As much as your comfort could be lost you will have no
comfort in seeing the opportunity missed and squandered.
What did you do in the war? In the war against injustice, in the struggle
for equality? In the war against
everything that makes your city an unfriendly place and leaves its people
without community? Were you on the
outside – even because of your scruples – or were you there with your lamp lit
and charged with oil? Ready to burn
brightly in the challenge your decade brings to you.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit. Amen
