a view from the croft: A short service and reflection for Remembrance Sunday

You may wish to light a candle before you begin.

May the grace, mercy and love of God be with us all. Amen.

Sentence from Scripture

What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? Micah 6.8

Collect

Ever-living God, we remember those whom you have gathered from the storm of war into the peace of your presence; may that same peace calm our fears, bring justice to all peoples and establish harmony among the nations, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Call to Worship

In the presence of God, we meet to commit ourselves to work in penitence and faith for reconciliation between the nations, and that all people may, together, live in freedom, justice and peace.

We pray for all who in bereavement, disability and pain continue to suffer the consequences of fighting and terror. And we remember with thanksgiving and sorrow those whose lives, in world wars and conflicts past and present, have been given and taken away.

Remembering

They shall grow not old,

as we that are left grow old;

age shall not weary them,

nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun

and in the morning,

we will remember them.

We will remember them.

A time of silent remembrance may be kept.

God’s Word in the New Testament:

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.

John 14:27

The wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.

James 3:17-18

This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.

1 John 1:5

Thanks be to God, for this his holy word. Amen.

Reflection on the Readings

Like the vast majority of the population of this country, I was born after the end of the Second World War. But not that long after, so as I think back to Remembrance Services I attended as a child, those who were being remembered, the fallen from the Second World War and even from the First, were not long gone, still very much in the thoughts and the hearts of those who gathered in church or at the memorial.

The reality of a war - of two wars - that dominated every life, and stole young lives from every community, was still very close at hand. And at the same time we were also very aware that the peace we did have was in reality an armed stand-off, with two nuclear arsenals, each trained on the other, and moments like the Cuban missile crisis when the button got very close to being pressed.

We are not out of those woods today, although the Mutually Assured Destruction of the Cold War era has been replaced by a much more mixed economy of regional conflicts, civil wars, and much less certainty as to who in fact our enemy might be. One thing though is certain. Wars are no longer confined to battlefields. When conflicts arise, every community and every person is placed at risk.

Remembrance Day honours events that are increasingly remote, but it is needed as much now as ever. It reminds us of the cost of peace, and freedom, and democracy. And therefore it also reminds us of the value of these things, and of the part we need to play in maintaining the free and fair society that their lives defended.

This year Remembrance is having to take a different form, and we are as a nation and as a world faced with a conflict very different from, but potentially just as deadly as, the world wars that led to our war memorials being erected. The enemy, being a virus, is invisible; the danger could come via our closest friends and family. The sense of stress and tension is immense, and it has opened up divisions, as the different home nations adopt different measures, as people at the heart of it all, in the NHS and elsewhere, have felt not as well supported or understood as they might have wished, and as some people at least have wanted either to search for people to blame, or to insist that the virus threat has been overplayed by governments whose main aim is just to control our lives and restrict our pleasure.

The fact is that, as in war, together we stand, and divided we fall. The fact is that, as in war, it takes personal sacrifice and care and thought for others, if we are to come through this. I deliberately emphasise that word “we”. I can get through this by looking after number one, but a selfish approach to danger does fatal harm to the fabric of freedom and democracy that is essential to safe and healthy living.

Today we honour that sense of duty that sent people out to fight when to fight was the only option. And we honour the sacrifices offered, and so often made, by those who put their own lives on the line. And we honour the care and thought for others that those who served needed to have, in order to keep going and to win through.

The sentence with which this service started reminds us that we serve God when we serve one another; we serve God when we seek the greater good; we serve God, as Jesus also said, when we serve our neighbour. I consider religion to be of little value unless it is genuinely a matter of faith, and there I’m on the same wavelength as the prophet Micah, who was saying, in effect, it isn’t when you do what’s right in God’s house that God is pleased, but when you do what’s right in your own place.

Those who in the great wars of all those years ago offered and so often gave their lives in the defence of all that is good and godly in the life of our nation and in the life of the world would not want us to value these things any less than they did. In fact, to do so would be to betray and belittle the sacrifice they made. We need, here and now, the same sense of shared identity, shared values, shared purpose; the same stickability, the same thought for others - so that “the new normal”, when it happens, as it will, is still a good place, a place of fairness and freedom and mercy; a place where the values that cost so many lives and yet are so easily taken for granted are treasured, protected, worked at, and shared.

Statement of faith -

We believe in God the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. We believe in God the Son, who lives in our hearts through faith, and fills us with his love. We believe in God the Holy Spirit, who strengthens us with power from on high. We believe in one God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Let us pray for all who suffer as a result of conflict, and ask that God may give us peace: for the service men and women who have died in the violence of war, each one remembered by and known to God;