The Spirituality of Remembrance
Text: Isaiah 2:1-4; Luke 1:67-79; Psalm 46
I find it fascinating where we are this week. Of course, the major topic of conversation since this past Tuesday is the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States, and what it means… in every sense of that word. Yet at the same time, here we are a few days later, marking one of the most solemn occasions in Canadian national life. While Remembrance Day is not until Tuesday, what we do here this morning is certainly in anticipation of that. I think it’s important that for the hope and celebrations that are circulating in the international mindset, we shouldn’t let it overshadow the importance of what we do today, and more importantly why we do it.
Like Thanksgiving a month ago, Remembrance Day is not officially part of the church calendar, and yet the act of Remembrance that we do is a profoundly Spiritual undertaking. It is a solemn ceremony, there is a certain regular “rhythm” to it that we have come to expect. Yet we don’t really think too much about the Spirituality of Remembrance… instead we go through the motions, we carry it out, even with great respect, but there is and can be something profoundly Spiritual about this. If anything it is more important these days for those of us who have never experienced the brutality of war… because except having troops committed in Afghanistan, the living memory of those who fought in the major wars of the last century is slowly disappearing. In the presentation at the beginning of the service, you may have noticed a picture that was taken following last year’s service. Since then, two of the people in that picture have since died.
Fewer and fewer of our veterans from these global conflicts remain with us to be able to share their stories. It is a challenge for us, because once we start losing the stories that define us, we are in danger of losing a sense of meaning. Jack was telling me that he is the only remaining veteran in the Legion that he is a part of. As our living memories are dying, the need to find new ways to remember becomes more important with each passing year. We need to find new ways to listen to the story, new ways to remember… and really, learn for ourselves a Spirituality of Remembrance.
As has developed the custom since the end of the First World War, we wear poppies to remember those who paid with their lives in war. The practice grew out of John McCrae’s poem that the choir sang earlier in the service. The moment of silence, the last post, all of these rituals are important, but begin to ring hollow if we don’t make a personal connection with it. That is far more a challenge for those of us who are too young to have a living memory. There has to be something more.
A Spirituality of Remembrance isn’t simply a point to stop and remember and then carry on our lives as normal. It is a point at which we stop, remember those who died in war, remembering the cost for peace, AND resolving ourselves to be a part of hope that is expressed in the various readings that we heard this morning.
We’re still at the beginning of the 21st Century. Even now, the ironies of war are not lost on us. We can look back on 100 years of violence and bloodshed, we shake our heads, wondering if we have made any progress at all… but there are glimmers of hope.
During the 20th Century, war as a means of international policy has moved from the preferred option to a last resort. Even the recent attempts to revive gunboat diplomacy have failed miserably, reminding us of the First World War lesson that diplomacy by violence is ultimately self-destructive. Since the end of the First World War, people began to see that the price of war was too high. Even those conditions, powers, and people that led to the Second World War tried to reverse that historical lesson. The price we paid for that second lesson was over seventy million people dead, and advent of even newer and catastrophically powerful weapons.
Since the end of the Second World War, we have always lived with the possibility of a Third. There is little doubt that given our present military capacities, a global international conflict could well render all of civilization a smoking ruin. We have come very close in the past sixty years… while it was before my time, many of you remember the Cuban Missile Crisis. The lessons of that experience are ones that we forget at our peril.
Yet in spite of all this, in spite of the recent unrest since 9/11, there are still glimmers of hope. The 20th Century is the only time in history in which there have been conscious attempts on the part of the international community to seek peaceful solutions between nations. The United Nations, for all its flaws, has met with a certain amount of success, diffusing many international conflicts before they have sparked into open warfare. It isn’t perfect to be sure, and we have a long way to go for true peace… but there is something to hope for… and a realization of how far we have come. In no uncertain terms, we have also come a very long way. After all, it has been more than twenty since the Berlin Wall fell… marking the end of the Cold War. And while it may or may not come to fruition, the hope that was expressed this past Tuesday, we can say that peace may well have a chance…
Yet as we know there are still those who pursue violence over peace. They seek to impose their will by force, and cite the name of God to justify it. Nothing undermines the credibility of faith more than invoking the name of God in war. Yet while we stand here in a church remembering those who have fought in war over the past century, we also bear some of that responsibility. When the First World War began, Canadians threw themselves into the war effort with cheerful abandon. God was on our side, and nobody questioned it. As a historian and as a minister, I get a queasy feeling when I remember that clergy were recruiters for the army. There was no questioning thought… no second-guessing that the people that we were going to war against were also Christians. The King needed people to fight, and die if necessary, and that was that. While his name was evoked… God was left out of the picture. This is one part of history that we cannot forget...
God has long been used to justify war throughout history. This reality provides a great deal of ammunition to the cause of atheism. The justifications come from Biblical images of God as a warrior. Selected verses can be used to beat the drums, and sharpen plows into swords, and pruning hooks into spears. We take bits and pieces of Scripture to justify what we want, without truly listening to what God is trying to tell us. History shows us that there is nothing more dangerous and destructive than a half-truth disguised as the real thing.
When set into the whole context, the larger picture, there is a change in understanding. The Bible changes its imagery of God from that of a warrior, to Jesus calling us to turn the other cheek. We ask, what happened? Has God changed, or have we? Maybe we’re missing the big picture…
Words from Psalm 46:
“[God] makes wars to cease to the ends of the earth;
he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear;
he burns the shields with fire.
Be still, and know that I am God!
I am exalted amongst the nations,
I am exalted in the earth.”
God is the one who brings peace. If there is anyone who brings war, it is us. We simply tack on God as an afterthought to make our fights legitimate. When we say that God is on our side, we are creating God in our own image… we violate the third commandment… We know that one… The one that says you shall not take the Lord’s name in vain. These days we’ve cheapened it by saying it applies only to swear words… but that’s not what it means. It means that we cannot justify our own actions by simply tacking on God’s name.
All God asks of us is stop for a moment and listen… “Be still, and know that I am God!”
When I served as Presbyterian Chaplain at UWO, there was an Orthodox Rabbi who read Psalm 46 directly from Hebrew translating as he went. When he got to that line, he said “Desist, and know that I am God.” Stop your fighting! Listen, even for a moment… and know that I am God… the one who brings an end to war.
We now live in an age where considering war is flirting with disaster. We point to governments and leaders, shake our heads, saying it is their fault, they got us into this. Yet, we forget our own role, and how important each of us can be. Because ministers were amongst those who supported the call to battle in the First World War, I can’t put the blame somewhere else. I realize that I was raised in a different age, but if we don’t learn the lessons of the past… What then? One of the lessons of the past century is how much responsibility we really do bear…
The call is no different for each of us. Peace starts at home… Peace starts with an act of remembrance… a poppy, a poem… Peace starts when we are still, listening for the presence of God when we remember those who died. The spirituality of remembrance is more than going through the motions.
Through this act of remembrance God calls us to keep that testament alive and let God shape and change us towards a life of peace, rather than making God a rubber stamp for our own shallow goals. That is the torch and the promise we keep with those who have died in war, that their struggle may not be in vain… working and praying that we may never see war again. We work and pray so that our moments of silence lead to moments of actions, and that we may be God’s agents of peace.
Amen.
I find it fascinating where we are this week. Of course, the major topic of conversation since this past Tuesday is the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States, and what it means… in every sense of that word. Yet at the same time, here we are a few days later, marking one of the most solemn occasions in Canadian national life. While Remembrance Day is not until Tuesday, what we do here this morning is certainly in anticipation of that. I think it’s important that for the hope and celebrations that are circulating in the international mindset, we shouldn’t let it overshadow the importance of what we do today, and more importantly why we do it.
Like Thanksgiving a month ago, Remembrance Day is not officially part of the church calendar, and yet the act of Remembrance that we do is a profoundly Spiritual undertaking. It is a solemn ceremony, there is a certain regular “rhythm” to it that we have come to expect. Yet we don’t really think too much about the Spirituality of Remembrance… instead we go through the motions, we carry it out, even with great respect, but there is and can be something profoundly Spiritual about this. If anything it is more important these days for those of us who have never experienced the brutality of war… because except having troops committed in Afghanistan, the living memory of those who fought in the major wars of the last century is slowly disappearing. In the presentation at the beginning of the service, you may have noticed a picture that was taken following last year’s service. Since then, two of the people in that picture have since died.
Fewer and fewer of our veterans from these global conflicts remain with us to be able to share their stories. It is a challenge for us, because once we start losing the stories that define us, we are in danger of losing a sense of meaning. Jack was telling me that he is the only remaining veteran in the Legion that he is a part of. As our living memories are dying, the need to find new ways to remember becomes more important with each passing year. We need to find new ways to listen to the story, new ways to remember… and really, learn for ourselves a Spirituality of Remembrance.
As has developed the custom since the end of the First World War, we wear poppies to remember those who paid with their lives in war. The practice grew out of John McCrae’s poem that the choir sang earlier in the service. The moment of silence, the last post, all of these rituals are important, but begin to ring hollow if we don’t make a personal connection with it. That is far more a challenge for those of us who are too young to have a living memory. There has to be something more.
A Spirituality of Remembrance isn’t simply a point to stop and remember and then carry on our lives as normal. It is a point at which we stop, remember those who died in war, remembering the cost for peace, AND resolving ourselves to be a part of hope that is expressed in the various readings that we heard this morning.
We’re still at the beginning of the 21st Century. Even now, the ironies of war are not lost on us. We can look back on 100 years of violence and bloodshed, we shake our heads, wondering if we have made any progress at all… but there are glimmers of hope.
During the 20th Century, war as a means of international policy has moved from the preferred option to a last resort. Even the recent attempts to revive gunboat diplomacy have failed miserably, reminding us of the First World War lesson that diplomacy by violence is ultimately self-destructive. Since the end of the First World War, people began to see that the price of war was too high. Even those conditions, powers, and people that led to the Second World War tried to reverse that historical lesson. The price we paid for that second lesson was over seventy million people dead, and advent of even newer and catastrophically powerful weapons.
Since the end of the Second World War, we have always lived with the possibility of a Third. There is little doubt that given our present military capacities, a global international conflict could well render all of civilization a smoking ruin. We have come very close in the past sixty years… while it was before my time, many of you remember the Cuban Missile Crisis. The lessons of that experience are ones that we forget at our peril.
Yet in spite of all this, in spite of the recent unrest since 9/11, there are still glimmers of hope. The 20th Century is the only time in history in which there have been conscious attempts on the part of the international community to seek peaceful solutions between nations. The United Nations, for all its flaws, has met with a certain amount of success, diffusing many international conflicts before they have sparked into open warfare. It isn’t perfect to be sure, and we have a long way to go for true peace… but there is something to hope for… and a realization of how far we have come. In no uncertain terms, we have also come a very long way. After all, it has been more than twenty since the Berlin Wall fell… marking the end of the Cold War. And while it may or may not come to fruition, the hope that was expressed this past Tuesday, we can say that peace may well have a chance…
Yet as we know there are still those who pursue violence over peace. They seek to impose their will by force, and cite the name of God to justify it. Nothing undermines the credibility of faith more than invoking the name of God in war. Yet while we stand here in a church remembering those who have fought in war over the past century, we also bear some of that responsibility. When the First World War began, Canadians threw themselves into the war effort with cheerful abandon. God was on our side, and nobody questioned it. As a historian and as a minister, I get a queasy feeling when I remember that clergy were recruiters for the army. There was no questioning thought… no second-guessing that the people that we were going to war against were also Christians. The King needed people to fight, and die if necessary, and that was that. While his name was evoked… God was left out of the picture. This is one part of history that we cannot forget...
God has long been used to justify war throughout history. This reality provides a great deal of ammunition to the cause of atheism. The justifications come from Biblical images of God as a warrior. Selected verses can be used to beat the drums, and sharpen plows into swords, and pruning hooks into spears. We take bits and pieces of Scripture to justify what we want, without truly listening to what God is trying to tell us. History shows us that there is nothing more dangerous and destructive than a half-truth disguised as the real thing.
When set into the whole context, the larger picture, there is a change in understanding. The Bible changes its imagery of God from that of a warrior, to Jesus calling us to turn the other cheek. We ask, what happened? Has God changed, or have we? Maybe we’re missing the big picture…
Words from Psalm 46:
“[God] makes wars to cease to the ends of the earth;
he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear;
he burns the shields with fire.
Be still, and know that I am God!
I am exalted amongst the nations,
I am exalted in the earth.”
God is the one who brings peace. If there is anyone who brings war, it is us. We simply tack on God as an afterthought to make our fights legitimate. When we say that God is on our side, we are creating God in our own image… we violate the third commandment… We know that one… The one that says you shall not take the Lord’s name in vain. These days we’ve cheapened it by saying it applies only to swear words… but that’s not what it means. It means that we cannot justify our own actions by simply tacking on God’s name.
All God asks of us is stop for a moment and listen… “Be still, and know that I am God!”
When I served as Presbyterian Chaplain at UWO, there was an Orthodox Rabbi who read Psalm 46 directly from Hebrew translating as he went. When he got to that line, he said “Desist, and know that I am God.” Stop your fighting! Listen, even for a moment… and know that I am God… the one who brings an end to war.
We now live in an age where considering war is flirting with disaster. We point to governments and leaders, shake our heads, saying it is their fault, they got us into this. Yet, we forget our own role, and how important each of us can be. Because ministers were amongst those who supported the call to battle in the First World War, I can’t put the blame somewhere else. I realize that I was raised in a different age, but if we don’t learn the lessons of the past… What then? One of the lessons of the past century is how much responsibility we really do bear…
The call is no different for each of us. Peace starts at home… Peace starts with an act of remembrance… a poppy, a poem… Peace starts when we are still, listening for the presence of God when we remember those who died. The spirituality of remembrance is more than going through the motions.
Through this act of remembrance God calls us to keep that testament alive and let God shape and change us towards a life of peace, rather than making God a rubber stamp for our own shallow goals. That is the torch and the promise we keep with those who have died in war, that their struggle may not be in vain… working and praying that we may never see war again. We work and pray so that our moments of silence lead to moments of actions, and that we may be God’s agents of peace.
Amen.
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