Remembrance Sunday and what we might be forgetting

Having served in military chaplaincy at the height of a bitter guerrilla war some years ago, I guess I have a stronger sense of the significance of Remembrance Sunday than many in today’s generation. That’s unsurprising. What is more puzzling to me is how many churches either largely ignore the occasion, or regard it as an intrusion into their carefully planned preaching programmes.

Yes, the church calendar has increasingly been irritatingly filled up with Sundays that are designated for commemorating any and every good cause, but for me – perhaps it’s the evangelist coming out in me – Remembrance Sunday offers huge opportunities to reach unbelieving people. People who rarely put foot inside a church will often turn out and brave the inhospitable November weather around a Cenotaph, or attend a church service that, at the very least, observes a two minute silence, recalling the sacrifice paid by countless numbers who have gone before us who fought for our freedom today.

People are still concerned that the sacrifice of their forebears should not go for nothing, and in theory, at least, to live in such a way that it could be said that the sacrifice of the fallen is not forgotten, ignored or wasted. The inspiring example of the people of Royal Wootton Bassett is testimony to that. It seems to me that there is scarcely a better time than this to remind people that we should be equally concerned that the sacrifice of God’s own Son on the cross should not be forgotten, ignored or wasted either.

In some people’s minds, Remembrance Day raises questions about how they can believe in a God of love when they see such evil, wickedness and suffering in the world. Platitudes and trite answers are not what’s needed. But it is the Church’s role to remind people of certain spiritual things which society constantly tends to forget.

Politicians and analysts are all attempting to diagnose and prescribe solutions to the global financial crisis, to promoting economic growth, to combating terrorism and the like, but they almost invariably begin from the starting point that the current state of the world is indicative of a systemic problem, rather than a moral and spiritual one. That’s what the world has forgotten, and why Remembrance Sunday provides such an opportunity – not to indulge in vague generalities, or to re-enact ceremonies of sentimentality – but to remind people as Abraham Lincoln did in 1863: “We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God”.

There is an old saying that was instilled into me from my youth: that all it needs for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. And certainly the purpose of Remembrance Sunday is to pay tribute to generations of brave people who didn’t stand by and do nothing when confronted with evil in whatever form. But then neither was God a Creator who would stand by and do nothing in the face of evil. Into a world that was bent on self-destruction, He sent His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ to pay the supreme sacrifice so that sin and evil would be defeated. No one can point the finger at God and accuse Him of standing idly by in the face of evil.

We have all, without exception, reaped enormous benefits from the sacrifice of soldiers who have died. But the Church’s role is to remind and challenge people with this simple question: Have you asked Jesus to take the bullet for you? Have you ensured that you receive the benefits from the death of Jesus’ sacrifice? We can admire, we can respect, we can even remember Jesus’ words that “Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends”. But unless we do something about it, unless we experience the freedom He won for us by placing our lives in His hands, we squander a gift and a legacy which entailed the costliest sacrifice of all time.