Isaiah 2:3-5
Matthew 5:1-12
Sermon
Today is a solemn day. Today we remember those who have offered their lives in sacrifice for their country. This year the UK would have been at in some theatre or the other for over 12 years and in all the conflicts the United Kingdom armed forces would have suffered 1300 casualties. Since 1900 the UK armed forces have suffered just under 1.5 million casualties from all sections of the Armed Forces.
I have a strong link with the military and with war. My Father served in the Royal Navy, my Grandfather in the RAF, my uncle was a military policeman and my mother served as a nurse in the Rhodesian Army during the Rhodesian bush war. My brother served in the infantry.
We grew up in during the Rhodesian Bush War in a town near the Zambian Border. I remember when I was small being made to sleep in the passage of my house because Zanu PF (the party of Robert Mugabe) insurgents had a nasty habit of dropping mortar rounds into the gardens of homes of civilians. I remember seeing the helicopters bringing the wounded and the dead to my mom’s hospital and the sight of my mom learning to use an automatic weapon and side arm during in her training. I also remember the fear of my class when we were told to climb under our desks as the insurgents had been spotted near the school.
Seeing the accounts of children in places like Syria or Congo or Chechnya or Myanmar has bought back my own memories of my time in Rhodesia now Zimbabwe. But it has also made it clear to me that war and armed conflict is universal. And it seems eternal.
War is an ugly thing. It is violent and bloody and full of horror and evil on all sides. Last year a marine was convicted of murdering an injured Taliban insurgent. It brings out the worst in people. Paradoxically it brings out the best in people as well. It brings out courage and valour, selflessness and unity. It can bring people together in way we cannot understand. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting for a second that war is positive I just cannot say for sure that all war is evil. We have fought wars for good reasons like the prevention of tyranny and the protection of the weak.
But Isaiah promises us a time when war will cease. The prophet reminds us that there will come a time when the Kingdom of God will prevail and peace will be the norm rather than the dream.
However Jesus reminds us that we have a role to play until that time comes. These words of Jesus are called the beatitudes but someone has referred to them as the “how to be”-attitudes. These are things we can be while we wait for Christ’s return. We can be peacemakers, we can be merciful.
We also owe a debt to those who have given their lives to protect others whether it be the fields of the Somme or the beaches of Normandy, or the Falkland Islands. We need to remember them and how we respond to them is as important.
Archibald MacLeish wrote a poem called “the young dead soldiers”:
The young dead soldiers do not speak.
Nevertheless, they are heard in the still houses: who has not heard them?
They have a silence that speaks for them at night and when the clock counts.
They say: we were young. We have died. Remember us.
They say: we have done what we could but until it is finished it is not done.
They say: we have given our lives but until it is finished no one can know what our lives gave.
They say: our deaths are not ours; they are yours; they will mean what you make them.
They say: whether our lives and our deaths were for peace and a new hope or for nothing we cannot say; it is you who must say this.
They say: we leave you our deaths. Give them their meaning.
We were young, they say. We have died. Remember us”.
I am a war child and I have been a soldier. But I also choose to be a peacemaker now. I choose to show mercy. I choose to be salt and light to the world. I also choose to remember those that have made war and I choose to honour these words from the poem:
They say: We leave you our deaths. Give them meaning.
I can be a peacemaker and be merciful because someone has laid down their life in an act of sacrifice. I will choose to remember them and honour them with my life. How about you?
Amen
