Sermons

Remembrance Sunday
Sunday 12 November at 10am

Lesley Ashton
Readings: Jonah 3.1-10 Mark 1.14-20

In this morning's gospel reading we hear how Jesus called some of his disciples. Men who were getting on with their everyday work of fishing were called to leave it all behind and to follow Christ. We learn that Simon, Andrew, James and John left everything they had and followed Him.

Jesus had shown them the possibility of a new way of living their lives. He had spoken with them and fired them with an enthusiasm for something better, that promised land that they had been hoping and dreaming about. He didn't promise them an easy lifestyle, a life filled with luxuries or positions of power and authority. He offered them a new way of living that was based on the values of God's kingdom.

Perhaps the disciples were naïve and we certainly know that they often misunderstood Jesus and that they got things wrong but the possibility of something better drew them away from all that was certain and secure. They left their jobs and what was familiar and did what they felt in the hearts was right. Maybe they hoped for adventure, a different way of being, a change from the ordinariness of life.
Perhaps they did not realise that by following Christ they would put themselves into danger, that like him they would be despised and that some would eventually die for the cause and beliefs they had chosen to follow and put first in their lives.

Today we come together to remember men and women from the first and second world wars and from all the other conflicts that have followed. People who gave up all they knew to fight for a cause that they believed would make life better, not only for themselves but for the people alive at the time and those who would come after them.

Perhaps like the disciples they were not quite sure what they were getting themselves into, but it would soon have become evident that the path they had chosen or been asked to follow would lead to suffering, isolation from their loved ones and for many it would mean death. Those who were left behind, too young or too old to join up also carried a responsibility for supporting those who had gone to fight and for holding together homes and families for those who were fighting for their country.

It is hard for those who were not alive during the world wars to really understand and appreciate all that happened during those times and those who have lived through one or both world wars are growing less in number, their stories are not told so frequently and there are other sorts of wars and terror that tend to occupy our thoughts..

One of the things we do week by week here in Church is to keep alive the memory of the faith we share. We do this through the hymns we sing, the readings we listen to from the bible, the words we say in services, through prayer and by simply being together as a community. Without these words and actions it would be hard to remember and to keep alive the faith we share. We have relied on those who have gone before us to hand on the stories of their faith in order that we might enjoy and be held in the Christian faith today.

In a similar way the children and young people in the uniformed groups have relied on their leaders to teach them the values, skills and history of their organisations. People who simply week by week have been willing to give time and attention to a cause they believe in, to help both individual young people and the larger community.

Today and in the years to come the people who gave their lives or lived through the war years will need to rely on others to tell their story. It is a story of courage and bravery, a story of loss of family members, and of homes and possessions, a story of how very ordinary men and women gave up jobs and careers, left family and friends to fight in a war, with the hope that there might one day be peace and freedom from fear.

Each year we hold this service to remember those who gave their lives for the sake of this country's future, it is right and good that we do this. Maybe we also need to be aware of our other responsibilities, ones that honour not only the sacrifice they made on our behalf .but which also help us to work for a future that is based on the values they helped to uphold.

We need to keep ourselves and others informed about the past so that we can be wise about the future.

We must continue to tell the story that has been entrusted to us by our parents and grandparents and great grandparents; remembering that the cost of the freedoms that we enjoy today was secured by people from these generations.

And as Christian people, we must like those first disciples seek the values of God's kingdom. We must continue to live lives that uphold peacemaking and reconciliation as a core component of our faith and the way we live out our lives.

As Christians we are well used to looking back to the life of Christ so that it might inform and influence our lives today.

May our remembrance today and in the years ahead be based on a deep desire to seek a future that resonates with the hope set before us in Christ; first shared with those first disciples who simply left all to follow Him and the good news he gave of God's kingdom.

Amen

© St Edmund's Church, Roundhay