Remembrance Sunday 2011
[Canon Gordon Manley at St Mildred's, Canterbury, 13th December 2011]
I am sure that a good number of you have been watching the television drama ‘Downton Abbey’, with some of its episodes set in the First World War, when the great house was converted into a military hospital.
I saw it pointed out recently that the characters in the story, two in particular, who had been out on the Western Front and had been wounded – thay made a relatively safe and speedy return to nursing care in this country so that the story could continue around them. Whereas you and I know that many who were remembered in the years that followed the Great War – for many of them their story ended with a grave in one of the war cemeteries in Flanders or on the Somme, or in the case of thousands where the body, blown to pieces as it had been or lost in the vile mud, - where it could not be traced, their names were recorded on one of the great memorials. That was all that could be done.
Today, of course, we remember not only those who gave their lives in that war, but a generation later in the Desert, or in Normandy, or in the Far East. Those whose ships went down in the Atlantic, or whose aircraft failed to return. And with them we remember all who have died in the more recent conflicts of our lifetimes – a National Serviceman remembers those who were in action in Korea and now there are the deadly pathways of Afghanistan..
What do we want to say about those who we remember? What was the point of their giving up their lives. It may not have been something they were thinking much about in all the hours of hanging around – or when they were finally in action. But the truth of it was that there was a freedom, there was a better world for which, if they were asked, they would have said they believed it was worth making a sacrifice. ‘To cling on to life is to lose it’, said Jesus. ‘He that spends his life for my sake will find it’. That is the law of life which God has given us, and which his own Son obeyed completely. So, as you and I remember the fallen, we can look up to God with confidence, knowing that no sacrifice is wasted, as someone has said, because like a piece of silver it has a hallmark, the hallmark of Christ himself.
But in this day the question is always ‘How do we make something of honouring the dead? How do we honour them? I believe it means looking hard at the life of our nation today. Despite so much relative prosperity, for so many people life seems empty of any real meaning or purpose. And the pity of it is that men and women can diagnose that emptiness by every name except its real name – which is alienation from God, an absence of God in their lives. We have to recognise that for the most part Western society lives unashamedly without any apparent recognition of God in the way that men and women conduct their business and their relationships. And in the media, particularly in the papers, we are all too familiar with their scorn for organised religion. Why? One reason is, I am sure, because the Church is the one institution which stands for a different and often inconvenient set of values.
I said a moment ago that at least some of those who died in battle supposed that they were caught up in a struggle to make the world a better place. And politicians today sometimes imply that they really do want to make the life of the nation better. But on what basis? If people suppose that all we need for progress is a better environment – a better health service, better schools, better public services in every way – in other words a bigger and better Garden of Eden – if that is all we need then, yes, Christ is irrelevant and he gets in the way.
But if the old story of Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost is correct – if something can go wrong with life however perfect the environment, then there is something else we need apart from physical and material well-being.
Have you and I got the energy to do anything about it? This is perhaps where today’s Gospel reading comes in.
When Our Lord first told the story of what became of the different investors, the talent was a coin in the local currency. What the rate of exchange was in that Roman province, and what the equivalent would be today in pounds, dollars or euros – it doesn’t really matter. Because, although it was a story about trading, it was a story about faithfulness rather than about finance.
Today is otherwise the Second Sunday before Advent and this is one of the coming-up-to-Advent parables. It warns us of the coming of Christ to ask each one of us , ‘What have you done with the Gospel that has been entrusted to you?’ ‘What have you done with it?’
In what happened to the third servant who had done nothing with his investment but had just buried it in the ground, Jesus is saying to his hearers that unless they make something of their privileged responsibility as God’s people – unless they make something of it, that privilege will be withdrawn. The Jewish leaders had hidden away God’s love beneath all their religious requirements and attitudes to other people. They had hoarded away their knowledge of God like the man who had hoarded away the investment with which he had been trusted.
And, my brothers and sisters, there is an extent to which we stand where the religious leaders of our Lord’s day once stood. The same Christ asks us what have we done with the spiritual wealth he has trusted us with. What have we done with it? How far are we, as the whole church, being faithful stewards of the Gospel? How far are we being agents of Good News to those for whom life is without much meaning, in a world that is full of fear? Or to those for whom life seems vibrant and satisfying as it is? Are we doing enough in their direction with the investment entrusted to us, the faith which we possess. ‘Trade till I come,’ says the Lord. Trade till I come.
If you and I are content just to possess our faith for ourselves, if that is where it stops, we may never discover its real power. It is when we are ready to venture out in the name of Christ and make contacts and take risks, it is then that at the end of the day, please God, we shall hear his words of welcome for ourselves.
Meanwhile – yes. ‘Trade till I come’ he says. And in that way I believe we shall best honour the memory of those we remember today, and what they stood for.