A Poppy at the Crossroads
A Reflection for Remembrance Day
Text: Psalm 46; Matthew 5:1-12
I have a picture on my desk in my office, and as messy as it can be at times, this picture has always remained where I can see it. I don’t remember exactly when it was taken, but I know that it was prior to the Margaret Terry Room being renovated. In the picture are seventeen people, all of whom served in the Second World War, and all of them members of this congregation. By the time that picture came into my possession, a good number had already passed away… and with each passing year, I am looking into the eyes of fewer and fewer of them. From the seventeen faces in that picture, I can now count the people who are still with us on one hand. It is a lament, to be sure, that the generation that brought us through the most horrific conflict that the world has ever seen is steadily shrinking year after year. Over this past year, the very last Canadian veteran of the First World War died… and in four years time, we will mark the one hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of the conflict that brought us the poppy as a symbol. As someone who wears a poppy without a personal living memory, what happens when those living memories are gone? It seems we wear a poppy at the crossroads… wondering what it now means for us for those of us who never endured the hardships of war.
It is very important to note that I certainly do not forget the mission in Afghanistan. Canada has lost 152 military personnel and 5 civilians to that conflict. We should also remember that in addition to these casualties, there have been more than 530 wounded in action, and another 900 injured outside of combat. Yet their work, their sacrifice is not something that we personally experience here. If it wasn’t for the news keeping us up to date… many of us wouldn’t even know what’s going on. It is only the families of those soldiers who are over there who bear this burden… sometimes a lonely burden, because it is half a world away.
I think it is a lonely burden because even with Afghanistan, our whole society is losing this living memory. My generation certainly has no memory of what it was like to live in the highly regulated system of rationing when the entire industrial might of western nations was poured into combat. We don’t know what it is like to live in a country whose whole being and identity has been overcome and so dominated by the spectre of war.
So we wear a poppy at the crossroads… wondering what this tradition will mean when the living memories are gone. We say “lest we forget” as a way to remember those who died in war, that age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn… but how can we say “lest we forget” when we never had those memories to begin with?
I think that perhaps now, more than ever, the ritual of Remembrance has a great value for us. We wear a poppy that grew in Europe amidst the soil tilled by artillery fire and fertilized with human blood. We stand in silence for two minutes, symbolic of the two world wars… and in that silence, maybe we begin to learn something in the stillness.
“Be still and know that I am God…” part of Psalm 46… but a part that follows this line that says,
“Come, behold the works of the Lord;
see what desolations he has brought on the earth.
He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;
he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear;
he burns the shields with fire.”
And then it follows…
‘Be still, and know that I am God!
I am exalted among the nations,
I am exalted in the earth.’”
God makes wars cease to the ends of the earth… be still and know that I am God.
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.
Wearing a poppy at the crossroads, maybe that’s something that when we pause for those two minutes of Silence… to be still… and to realize that out of all things God calls us to peace… to work for peace on a personal level. Those two minutes of silence where we are still remind us of the lesson that the costs of war are too high… that no society can sustain itself by violence and injustice. We started to learn that in 1914… when the arrogance of world leaders meshed with the naïve enthusiasm that war was somehow “glorious” and “manly.”
The lesson goes back further than that. During the opening months of the American Civil War, there was a battle that has come to be known as “Bull Run” where as the armies of the Confederacy and the Union arrayed against each other, civilians actually came out to watch it all unfold as if it were a sporting event!
How things have changed. Bull Run was so bloody, so devastating, and those who did come out to “watch” quickly found themselves in the crossfire… and the War Between the States continued to teach that lesson in blood. Yet forty years later, in the lead-up to the Great War in Europe, the lessons of the Civil War were dismissed as the antics of uncivilized colonials. Europe would learn the exact same lesson the hard way.
Be still and know that I am God… who makes wars to cease to the ends of the earth. Maybe that’s a lesson that we still haven’t learned.
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 at the crossroads… Peace starts when we are still, listening for the presence of God when we remember those who died.
Our call through this act of remembrance is 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 we may be God’s agents of peace. We pause to remember, to be still and know that God is God.
Amen.
Text: Psalm 46; Matthew 5:1-12
I have a picture on my desk in my office, and as messy as it can be at times, this picture has always remained where I can see it. I don’t remember exactly when it was taken, but I know that it was prior to the Margaret Terry Room being renovated. In the picture are seventeen people, all of whom served in the Second World War, and all of them members of this congregation. By the time that picture came into my possession, a good number had already passed away… and with each passing year, I am looking into the eyes of fewer and fewer of them. From the seventeen faces in that picture, I can now count the people who are still with us on one hand. It is a lament, to be sure, that the generation that brought us through the most horrific conflict that the world has ever seen is steadily shrinking year after year. Over this past year, the very last Canadian veteran of the First World War died… and in four years time, we will mark the one hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of the conflict that brought us the poppy as a symbol. As someone who wears a poppy without a personal living memory, what happens when those living memories are gone? It seems we wear a poppy at the crossroads… wondering what it now means for us for those of us who never endured the hardships of war.
It is very important to note that I certainly do not forget the mission in Afghanistan. Canada has lost 152 military personnel and 5 civilians to that conflict. We should also remember that in addition to these casualties, there have been more than 530 wounded in action, and another 900 injured outside of combat. Yet their work, their sacrifice is not something that we personally experience here. If it wasn’t for the news keeping us up to date… many of us wouldn’t even know what’s going on. It is only the families of those soldiers who are over there who bear this burden… sometimes a lonely burden, because it is half a world away.
I think it is a lonely burden because even with Afghanistan, our whole society is losing this living memory. My generation certainly has no memory of what it was like to live in the highly regulated system of rationing when the entire industrial might of western nations was poured into combat. We don’t know what it is like to live in a country whose whole being and identity has been overcome and so dominated by the spectre of war.
So we wear a poppy at the crossroads… wondering what this tradition will mean when the living memories are gone. We say “lest we forget” as a way to remember those who died in war, that age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn… but how can we say “lest we forget” when we never had those memories to begin with?
I think that perhaps now, more than ever, the ritual of Remembrance has a great value for us. We wear a poppy that grew in Europe amidst the soil tilled by artillery fire and fertilized with human blood. We stand in silence for two minutes, symbolic of the two world wars… and in that silence, maybe we begin to learn something in the stillness.
“Be still and know that I am God…” part of Psalm 46… but a part that follows this line that says,
“Come, behold the works of the Lord;
see what desolations he has brought on the earth.
He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;
he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear;
he burns the shields with fire.”
And then it follows…
‘Be still, and know that I am God!
I am exalted among the nations,
I am exalted in the earth.’”
God makes wars cease to the ends of the earth… be still and know that I am God.
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.
Wearing a poppy at the crossroads, maybe that’s something that when we pause for those two minutes of Silence… to be still… and to realize that out of all things God calls us to peace… to work for peace on a personal level. Those two minutes of silence where we are still remind us of the lesson that the costs of war are too high… that no society can sustain itself by violence and injustice. We started to learn that in 1914… when the arrogance of world leaders meshed with the naïve enthusiasm that war was somehow “glorious” and “manly.”
The lesson goes back further than that. During the opening months of the American Civil War, there was a battle that has come to be known as “Bull Run” where as the armies of the Confederacy and the Union arrayed against each other, civilians actually came out to watch it all unfold as if it were a sporting event!
How things have changed. Bull Run was so bloody, so devastating, and those who did come out to “watch” quickly found themselves in the crossfire… and the War Between the States continued to teach that lesson in blood. Yet forty years later, in the lead-up to the Great War in Europe, the lessons of the Civil War were dismissed as the antics of uncivilized colonials. Europe would learn the exact same lesson the hard way.
Be still and know that I am God… who makes wars to cease to the ends of the earth. Maybe that’s a lesson that we still haven’t learned.
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 at the crossroads… Peace starts when we are still, listening for the presence of God when we remember those who died.
Our call through this act of remembrance is 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 we may be God’s agents of peace. We pause to remember, to be still and know that God is God.
Amen.
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