St Margaret's Church Prestwich

Rev Helen preached this sermon on Remembrance Sunday 2024. Here it is for you again:

War is an unpleasant thing, I think we can all agree with that. Whatever side of the debate you sit on or your views it’s not something we like or would want for anyone. The destruction, the loss of life both soldiers and civilians, the hate, the bitterness and the lasting memories that come with it. It makes me sad that even in this day and age sometimes war is the only answer when tensions get too high. Israel/Palestine and Gaza being ripped apart, Russia and the Ukraine and the other places in the world where there are still issues.

However despite all this there is one thing we can cling onto during all of this death, destruction and pain and that is hope. Hope mean that we can pray and wish for things to get better and there are examples of this through time and scripture. One of the stories is the one we have heard a bit of in the first reading which is the story of Jonah and I love this story. When I was in year 6 at school we did a musical production of the story of Jonah, I played Johna’s girlfriend, but it reminded me of what a good story this is. In short God is going to destroy the city of Ninevah, Jonah is the one who is sent to bring the bad news and he tries many things to get out of it, eventually the message gets through and the people repent, they are sorry for the things the had done and God forgave them. Now this was never a forgone conclusion, the people didn’t know that God would save them but they had hope and this hope was rewarded.

In the gospel we see the beginning of Jesus ministry in the gospel of Mark (which is most likely the first of the gospels to be written) and Jesus makes that grand statement ‘The Kingdom of God is near, repent and believe in the good news’. From this moment he starts to speak to crowds, gather disciples and followers. He looks like he is leading a revolution, he was a rebel and going to start a war against the authorities. Maybe Jesus was doing that however there is one very key difference here. Jesus chosen weapon isn’t inciting violence, he uses his words in a very different way. Jesus tells his followers to turn the other cheek, to trade cruelty for kindness, to love each other, to love and pray for your enemies. Jesus told us to love everyone, liking is an optional extra here. It’s easy to love and pray for those we get along with but praying for those you don’t, it’s a challenge but Jesus never said being his follower would be easy. Jesus himself didn’t always get it right, he said turn the other cheek yet he kicked off in the temple turning the tables and throwing out the traders there. There’s still hope there, Jesus death and resurrection is the cementation of that and the hope we can hold from Jesus resurrection and his place at the right hand of God. we see that hope in the bible but also in other media even coming out of something as terrible as war.

One of the images of war I often think of is the last episode of Blackadder goes fourth. If you’ve not seen it the series is set in the trenches of World War One and the group there constantly trying to avoid ‘going over the top of the trenches’ as they know what will happen. Finally though they face the inevitable and the main cast go over the top but what do we see. The war trenches fade away into the background and the fields of poppies grow out of the bog. The poppy (what ever colour you chose and don’t chose to wear) is a symbol of hope. That hope things will be better and hope that something good will come out of this terrible thing. It’s an image I do hold onto when I see the world being torn apart.

There is also an episode of Doctor Who (I am quite a big Doctor Who fan, I don’t know if Steve has warned you), there was a couple of episodes recently about two people who wanted their races to go to the war and the Doctor (Played by the fabulous Peter Capaldi) has to try and defuse everything and bring in some sanity to the situation. When tension is at the highest this is part of a speech made by the Doctor in the hope that the two sides would see sense (maybe a bit like Jonah did in Ninevah) ‘This is a scale model of war. Every war ever fought right there in front of you. Because it’s always the same. When you fire that first shot, no matter how right you feel, you have no idea who’s going to die. You don’t know who’s children are going to scream and burn. How many hearts will be broken! How many lives shattered! How much blood will spill until everybody does what they’re always going to have to do from the very beginning, sit down and talk!’(Peter Capaldi does it much better than me!). Hope and compassion won through and war was avoided because they sat down and talked rather than fought.

So what do we do in a world that at times seems just to be fighting with each other or if not getting ready for a fight. Well as I said we hope that things will de escalate and calm down, we hope that lesson can be learnt from the conflicts of the past, we continue to remember all those who have lost their lives in conflict and never let those deaths be in vain but most importantly we do as Jesus said, we pray for peace, we hope for more love in the world and less hate, use words of peace and understanding, let forgiveness win out, pray for our enemies and hope that maybe one day, things will be different. Amen