Today, as I’m sure you all know, is Remembrance Sunday. It’s the day we set aside each year to remember those who’ve died in defence of this country in times of war, and to give thanks for their sacrifice. And it’s right that we should do that. If it weren’t for their sacrifice, who knows what kind of place our nation would be today? If it wasn’t for their sacrifice, we might live under a dictatorship, in a police state in which there was no real freedom of speech, expression or action. We might live in a nation in which our ethnicity, faith, political opinion or even our physical characteristics were, quite literally, a matter of life and death. It’s from becoming this kind of nation, and to try to free other nations from this kind of existence, that our servicemen and women have laid down their lives in war, and so we should be thankful to them and remember them. But as we remember those who’ve laid down their lives in time of war on this Remembrance Sunday, today is perhaps also a day to wonder just how many more lives will need to be lost in the future, until human beings finally learn their lesson and make war a thing we can only know about and learn about from the pages of history books.  

There is a saying, which I’m sure many of you will have heard, which goes, ‘The first lesson of history, is that people never learn the lessons of history’. And, as we read and watch the news, and see the state of the world we live in today, isn’t the truth of that saying clear to see? As we hear about China flexing her muscles in the South China Sea and South East Asia, in direct opposition to the USA, aren’t we reminded of the situation in the 1930s and 40s when another far eastern power, Japan, acted in a similar way? As we hear about China making land-grabs in surrounding countries, in India and Nepal, aren’t we reminded of the way Nazi Germany acted in Europe in the 1930s?  

And I don’t know about you, but as I’ve been reading about and watching events in the USA in recent times, I’ve sometimes wondered if I’ve been reading and watching a programme about the USA in the early 21^st Century, or a documentary about Germany in the 1930s. When we read and hear about armed militias wandering the streets, often with at least the tacit approval of the head of state, doesn’t that remind us of the SA, the Nazi Stormtroopers in 1930s Germany?  When we hear a head of state calling for journalists who criticise him to be sacked, and publications and broadcasters who criticise him to be closed down, doesn’t that remind us of the Nazi censorship and suppression of the free press? When we hear a head of state who openly demonises those who oppose him politically, and speaks of an Afro-American/left-wing conspiracy against not just him, but the nation itself, doesn’t that remind us of what the Nazis called the Jewish/Bolshevik conspiracy against Germany and the German people? And when we see a democratically elected head of state, using his power of office to try to interfere with free elections and subvert the very democratic process by which he was elected, and his politically party colluding in their leader’s nefarious activity, aren’t we reminded that this is exactly what Adolf Hitler and the Nazis did in Germany in the 1930s? It’s looking increasingly likely that these shenanigans will not affect the result of the US presidential election, and that a new head of state will be elected. Nevertheless, as things stand at the moment, the person responsible for all this has won about 48% of the popular vote; well over 70 million people have still voted for him. And so it really does seem that people never learn the lessons of history.

In one sense that’s perhaps more difficult to understand now than it was in the past because, through the internet, people today have a vast amount of information, quite literally, at their fingertips. And so people today ought to be much better informed than they ever have been in the past. That means that there’s no real excuse for not being aware of the lessons of history and people can’t really claim ignorance of what’s happened in the past as an excuse for repeating the mistakes of history. And whilst knowing more doesn’t make us more intelligent than people were in the past, it doesn’t make us any less intelligent either. So, on the whole, people today are much better informed than those who lived in bygone days were, and there’s no reason that people today should be less intelligent than people in bygone days were. So why do people continually repeat the same mistakes? Why do they never learn the lessons of history? Why can we not stop doing the things that lead to war so that we can draw a line under war, and the names on our war memorials once and for all? The answer perhaps, is that people lack what the Scriptures call ‘wisdom’.

We hear something about wisdom in our readings this morning and the parable of the wise and foolish bridesmaids that we read in the Gospel, tell us something about what the Scriptures mean by ‘wisdom’. There’s no suggestion in the parable that the foolish bridesmaids didn’t know what to do when they went to meet the groom because they took their lamps with them, and they had oil in their lamps. So they weren’t lacking in knowledge. But they didn’t think about what would happen if the groom was delayed. The wise bridesmaids, on the other hand, did think about what to do in that situation. So the foolish bridesmaids weren’t foolish because they didn’t know what to do, but because they didn’t do the right thing. The wise bridesmaids had no more knowledge than the others, they were wise simply because they did the right thing. So scriptural wisdom isn’t really about intelligence, it’s not a measure of how much we know or how clever we are. Scriptural wisdom is a quality rather than a measure. It’s a quality of knowing the right thing to do.

The Scriptures tell us that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord, and by that they mean reverence for God and his ways. So the person who has wisdom and shows wisdom is the one who knows and does the Godly thing in any given situation. For us, in the Church, we could say that wisdom is about knowing what the Christian thing to do in any situation is and doing it. And, of course, Christ told us that the two most important of God’s ways, are to love God with all our hearts and souls and minds, and to love our neighbour as ourselves. Knowing these things and doing them leads to wisdom, and the Scriptures tell us that wisdom itself leads to justice, mercy, love and peace. How very different that is to the ways that human beings have usually taken throughout history. Rather than the way of wisdom, people, very often thinking that they know better than anyone else, have followed the way of pride and selfishness that’s so often led to injustice, hatred, vengeance and conflict. How much happier, safer and more peaceful a place could the world have been, and might be, if only people had a little less pride in their own importance and intelligence, less arrogance about their own ideas and opinions, and a little more humility and wisdom.

But sadly, it seems that, rather than ‘wise up’ as the saying goes, people prefer to follow their own ways and repeat the mistakes of the past over and over and over again. And so, over the years, the members of our armed forces have been called upon time and again to take up arms, to fight, to suffer and to die in defence of their freedom and ours, their homes and ours, and their loved ones and ours. And as they’ve done so, the list of names on our war memorials has continued to grow ever longer as more and more members of our armed forces have been called upon to make that ultimate sacrifice and pay the ultimate price for the world’s lack of wisdom and humanity’s failure to learn its lesson.

Two years ago, in 2018, we marked the 100^th anniversary of the end of the First World War, a war that was so unlike any war that had ever happened before, and goodness knows there had been more than enough of them, but a war so much more terrible in its scale and in the death and destruction it caused, that it became known as the Great War. At one time it was thought that it would be the war to end all wars because surely, after such a war as that, no one would ever want to go to war again. Sadly, we now know that wasn’t the case. The First World War was merely the precursor to an even more bloody, and destructive, Second World War which ended 75 years ago, this year.   

The Great War has now passed from living memory and in the not too distant future, the Second World War will too. But let’s hope and pray that the sacrifice of those who fought and suffered and died in those, and so many other wars, will never pass from our collective memory. Let’s hope and pray that their sacrifice will always be remembered and that through that, the people of the world may finally learn their lesson and become just a little bit wiser. Perhaps then we could pay the greatest tribute possible to those who gave so much in time of war and say that it was through them and their sacrifice, that the world finally learned enough wisdom to do things differently. Perhaps then, the peace they fought and suffered and died for could finally, and lastingly, be ours and we could draw a line under the very last name that we would ever have to carve on our war memorials.

Amen.

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You will find the Propers for the 32nd Sunday of Ordinary Time (3 before Advent) here.

1st November 2020

I’m sure it can’t have escaped anyone’s attention that this year is the 75^th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. Over the last six years of course, we’ve had the 75^th anniversary of the events of that war and they’ve been marked by special commemorations and remembrance services as the anniversaries have come along. Last year’s commemoration of the 75^th anniversary of the D Day Landings is just one example of that. Had circumstances been more normal than they are, I’m sure that this year would have seen many similar things taking place to mark the anniversary of the events of the last year of the Second World War, leading up to the anniversary of the end of the war. But, of course, circumstances have been very far from normal this year and so any commemorative events that were planned have had to be very much scaled down, if they’ve been able to take place at all, and next Sunday’s Remembrance Sunday parades and commemorations will be very different, and much smaller, to those we’re used to.

Nevertheless, we’ve still been able to watch TV programmes about the Second World War. There are always lots of those to watch in any year but this year, because of the anniversary of the end of the war, there have been even more than usual. I don’t know about you but, I’m interested in history, so I find programmes like these, very interesting. But, having said that, I do think that the vast majority of them give a very limited picture of the events they show. They only tell a very small part of the story of the events they show. And they do that because, on the whole, they tend to speak about great events and the people, great people we might say, who were involved in causing those events, in planning them and trying to control them.

So, in these programmes we hear about political situations and the politicians involved in them. We don’t hear so much about how the politics and the decisions of politicians affected the everyday lives of the ordinary people who lived through those times. And when we hear about battles, we hear about battle plans about how the battles unfolded and about the generals and field marshals who planned the battles and gave the orders. We don’t hear so much about the troops who actually had to fight the battles.

So, for example, these programmes will say things like, ‘Mussolini brokered a deal which Hitler, Chamberlain and Daladier signed to allow Germany to annex the Sudetenland’: we don’t hear much about the Czechs who weren’t even at the meeting when their lands were being discussed and given away. We hear things like, ‘Hitler invaded Poland’: actually, he didn’t, Hitler was in Berlin when German troops invaded Poland but we don’t hear so much about them, and even less about the Polish troops who tried to defend their homeland against them.

And it’s the same when we hear about battles. Then we hear things like, ‘Montgomery defeated Rommel and won the Battle of El Alamein’. Well, they were the men in charge, they were the ones who made the plans and gave the orders, so in one sense that statement is right, but surely the real ones who did the winning, and losing, were the soldiers who did the fighting and dying? But we don’t hear anywhere near as much about them as we do about those who were in charge, who made the plans and gave the orders.

Now, I’m not criticising Montgomery, very far from it, I’m simply saying this: Field Marshall Bernard Law Montgomery, 1^st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, Knight of the Garter, Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, winner of the DSO, member of the Privy Council, to name just a few of his titles and honours, is famous for commanding men in war. Most people here will, I’m sure, have heard of him. But how many of you have heard of Charlie Baker or Jack Baker, or Fred Sidebottom, or Alec Ward? Those were all either members of my family or family friends who fought under Montgomery during the Second World War. You’ve probably never heard of any of them. But where would Montgomery have been without them, and tens, or hundreds of thousands, like them? If it weren’t for them, we’d have probably never heard of Montgomery either. And the same could be said of any commander, on any side, in any war. And it can be said too of the war that Church has been fighting for the last 2,000 years.

Our commander in chief of course, is Jesus; he’s the one who, ultimately, gives the orders in the Church (or at least he should be and if we’re not following his orders but someone else’s instead, we’ve got something very, very wrong and have ended up on the wrong side in the war). But there are also, in the Church, those who are there to remind us of who’s side we’re on and to make sure that we do follow Jesus’ orders. We might say that these people are next in the chain of command, and these are the people whom we often call, the saints.

And saints often have had that kind of role in the Church. We regard the Apostles as saints. They’re the ones who received their orders, if you like, directly from Jesus, and who first took those orders into the world. The group of people whom we call the Church Fathers are regarded as saints. They’re the ones who received Jesus’ orders from the Apostles and who then passed them on through time to make sure that what the Church does and what Christians believe, is in keeping with what Jesus intended. We regard many Church leaders, people like bishops and the founders of monastic communities, as saints because through time they’ve tried to keep the Church faithful to Jesus orders. And we regard martyrs as saints too because they’re the ones who’ve lost their lives in the Church’s ongoing war against sin and evil.

The Church has been fighting this war for a long time, almost 2,000 years so, as you might expect, there are a lot of saints. The Church of England doesn’t have many saints of its own, so to speak, but it does recognise as saints those who were canonised before the Reformation, so there are a lot. The RC Church recognises about 10,000 people as saints. The Orthodox Churches recognise many more, about 23,000 people as saints. Some of those are recognised as saints by everyone, but some aren’t. So there are a lot of people whom the Church considers to be saints. But the numbers I’m talking about here number in the tens of thousands, and whilst that is a large number, it’s hardly the “great number that no one could count” that we heard about in this morning’s reading from the Book of Revelation, is it? So who are all these people who praise God in heaven? They must be saints, holy ones, but there are an innumerable number of them, far more than those whom the Church has canonised and calls saints. So who are they all?

The Scriptures tell us that a saint is a holy person, someone who’s dedicated their life to God and to Jesus. Some of these people we know, by name, but there are a countless number of others who’ve dedicated their lives to God and Jesus through the years, whose names we don’t know. These are the majority of those who stand before God’s throne in heaven, praising him. So one way to understand who these people are is to see this great number in heaven as the troops who’ve fought in the Church’s war against sin and evil. Those the Church regards as saints, whose names we know, will be among them, we could perhaps call those the officers. But there will be an innumerable number of others whose names we don’t know. And really, today, All Saints Day, is about them.

The saints we know by name, have their own day in the Church’s calendar; that’s when we remember them and their life and example. That’s when we remember and give thanks for the part they played in the Church’s war against sin and evil. That very often involved leading others. But those who were led and who carried out Jesus’ orders faithfully and to the best of their ability, are very often unknown to us, and they have no saints day of their own. So All Saints Day is the day when we remember and give thanks for their lives and example too. And it is very important that we do remember and give thanks for the lives and example, and sacrifice, of these unknown soldiers of the Church’s war, as well as of those more famous saints who’s names we do know.

Commanders in any war, are only remembered because they had troops who were willing to follow their orders, and it’s the same in the Church’s war too. If no one had been prepared to do what Jesus said, there would have been no Church in which to remember and carry out his orders. Later, if there had been no one willing to listen to the Apostles and carry out their orders, they’d have been forgotten because the Church would have died when they did. And so on through the Church’s history. The saints we know by name are only remembered because there have been countless others in the Church who’ve been just as willing to dedicate their lives to God and Jesus, but whose names we don’t remember.

And, if we’re going to be remembered in and by the Church, it will almost certainly be as amongst those countless others. It’s very unlikely that we’ll be remembered by name and be made saints of the Church in the way that the Apostles or Church Fathers have been, but we still have an important role to play in the Church’s war against sin and evil. If we can dedicate ourselves to God and Jesus and be saints, albeit unknown by name, we’ll help to make sure that there is a Church to continue the fight. We’ll help to make sure that Jesus’ orders are remembered and passed on. We’ll help to make sure that the lives and example of the saints are remembered too. And we’ll help to make sure that there is a Church in which we’ll be remembered, and in which people will give thanks for our lives and examples on All Saints Days to come when, God willing, we’ve gone to take up our place among the multitude praising God before his throne in heaven.

Amen.  

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You will find the Propers for All Saints here.

This morning is one of those days when the readings in the Missal are not the same as the C of E readings. The only reading, in fact, that is the same is the Gospel, and even that, only in part. The Gospel reading in the Missal today is about the great commandments to love God and love our neighbour, but in the C of E readings, we have another 6 verses of the Gospel in which Jesus speaks about the relationship between the Messiah and king David. And so this morning I’ve decided to use the longer Gospel reading at both St Mark’s and St Gabriel’s because I think what Jesus says in those extra verses is a useful commentary on what it means to live out the two great commandments.

There’s no doubt that one of the greatest heroes of ancient Israel was king David. We know that David wasn’t the first king that Israel had, that was Saul, but he was certainly seen as the greatest king they’d ever had. According to the Scriptures, David was the first king of Israel to rule in Jerusalem. He was a great warrior who defeated and subjugated many of Israel’s enemies. And he was a skilled musician, the “sweet singer of Israel” as he’s called in 2 Samuel, who wrote many of the Psalms that we still read and that are loved by so many people today. As well as that, it was prophesied that David’s line, his family, would reign forever and so it was believed that the Messiah would be a descendant of David.

And so, as David’s reign was looked on as a ‘golden age’ of ancient Israel, it’s no surprise that the common belief among the Jews was that the coming of the Messiah would mark the beginning of a new golden age for Israel, and that the Messiah would be just like David. He’d be a warrior king who’d defeat Israel’s enemies, restore the kingdom of Israel and rule over it from Jerusalem, just as David had done. So the Messiah would be the Son of David in more ways than one; he’d be of David’s line biologically speaking, and he’d be a chip off the old block too.

Once we understand that this was the common belief amongst the Jews of Jesus’ day, we can perhaps begin to understand how radical, how disturbing perhaps, Jesus’ words were when he argued that the Messiah couldn’t be David’s son but rather, the Messiah was David’s Lord.

What Jesus was saying was that, far from the Messiah being just like David, a chip off the old block, he was superior to David. 

The implication of that is that, contrary to popular belief and understanding, the coming of the Messiah wasn’t going to mark the beginning of a new golden age, that was going to be like the golden age of king David, but the beginning of something different under a king who wasn’t like David; the beginning of something better because it would be ruled over by a king who was greater than David. And the fact that Jesus said this immediately after his conversation about the greatest commandments, suggests that the two things are linked. That the superiority of the Messiah over David, has something to do with these two great commandments.

Jesus links the commandments by saying that they are alike. So, to love God with all your heart and soul and mind, is like loving your neighbour as yourself, and in fact we believe that one of the very best ways to show our love of God is to do as he asks and love our neighbours too, and ideally, to love them as much as we love ourselves. And this is one way in which we see that the Messiah is greater than David, and the Messiah’s kingdom is greater than David’s kingdom.

As we read David’s story in the Scriptures, there’s no reason to doubt David’s love for God, and we see his love for God expressed in the words of the psalms David wrote. But something else that becomes quite clear as we read and think about David’s story, is that he didn’t love his neighbours anywhere near as much as he loved himself.

Much of what we read about David in the Scriptures is written in an apologetic style ; it’s written as though David’s actions were being defended, and you don’t usually write in that way unless there’s something in a persons actions that needs to be defended. And there is quite a lot in David’s story that needs defending.

We read that David fell out of favour with king Saul because Saul was jealous of David, and afraid that he wanted the throne for himself. The story denies this of course, but the fact that David managed to get an oath of loyalty from the king’s own son, Jonathan, while the king was still living, suggests that Saul’s fears weren’t totally without foundation. We read about David’s time in exile from Jerusalem and we find that he served Israel’s enemies. The story tells us that David never actually raised his hand against Saul and Israel during this time, but he certainly used it for political, and financial manoeuvring on his own behalf. He was possibly a mercenary and certainly led what we might call a band of armed terrorists during this time. The story tells us that David took no part in the battle at Mount Gilboa when Saul and three of his sons, including David’s beloved friend Jonathan, were killed and so he’s absolved of any involvement in their deaths; but he didn’t do anything to help or to try and prevent their deaths either, and he certainly exploited the situation for his own benefit because within a few days he became king of Judah. The story also tells us that David had no involvement in the assassinations of Abner and Ish-bosheth that cleared his path to the throne of Israel, but the apologetic nature of the story suggests that there was at least a suspicion that he had. And perhaps the most shameful of all his antics are found in the story of David and Bathsheba. For those who aren’t familiar with the story, David watches a married woman, Bathsheba, bathing and he likes what he sees. So he has her brought to him and duly impregnates her. Then, to cover up what he’s done, he calls Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, home from battle in the hope that Uriah will sleep with his wife and think the child is his own. But then, when that doesn’t work out in the way David wants and expects, he arranges for Uriah to be killed in battle and then marries the now widowed, Bathsheba, so that no one will be any the wiser about his shenanigans.

David may well have been one of the greatest heroes of ancient Israel. He may well have been regarded as Israel’s greatest king. The time he ruled over may well have been regarded as a golden age for ancient Israel. He may well have had a great love for God, and the psalms suggest that he did. But one area in which David did appear to be sadly lacking, was in love of his neighbour and his story, even in the apologetic way it’s written in the Scriptures, is ample testimony to that.

And so, whilst Jesus, the Messiah, may well have been related to David biologically speaking, he was certainly no son of David in terms of character or behaviour: he was in no way a chip off the old block. He was better than David, greater than David and he was David’s Lord. And, of course, Jesus, the Messiah, is our Lord too.

The question we have to ask ourselves is whose sons and daughters are we going to be? As Christians, we call God our Father and so we must regard ourselves as God’s sons and daughters. But having said that, do we take after God our Father, are we chips off the old block in that respect? We can’t see God, of course, but Jesus said that to have seen him is to have seen the Father and so we know what we have to do to take after him, to be chips off that old block; we have to be like Jesus. That means we have to love God will all our hearts and souls and minds, and we have to love our neighbours as much as we love ourselves.

I’m sure that none of us fail in that respect to the extent that David seems to have done. But I’m also sure that none of us are as good at loving our neighbours as we should be as sons and daughters of God. We don’t, and probably never will, get the opportunity to indulge in the same plots and schemes that David did. But we can fail to love our neighbour in the same kinds of ways that David did. We will probably never be able to plot and scheme against a king, or queen, or government, to usurp their position and authority; but do we try to elevate ourselves over others in other ways, and plot and scheme to bring that about? We will probably never be in a position to exploit political turmoil and problems to our own advantage; but do we try to exploit other situations to our own advantage, regardless of the consequences for others who may be involved? I’m sure none of us would ever think of letting someone die so that we could benefit from their death in some way; but do we always do what we can to help others when helping them might mean that we have to put what we want on hold for a while? I’m sure none of us would ever want to be involved in assassinations; but do we ever assassinate people’s character through our words against or about them? Do we ever deliberately kill their hopes and aspirations because we don’t agree with what they want, regardless of the rights and wrongs of the situation?

Do we ever assassinate and kill people in these ways for no other reason than that we simply don’t like them, or because we like someone else more? I hope none of us have ever been or will ever be in a situation like the triangle of David, Bathsheba and Uriah; but how many times have we all done things we know we shouldn’t have and then lied and schemed or tried to blame someone else, to cover up what we’ve done?

If we really want to be sons and daughters of God our Father, we have to love God with all our hearts and souls and minds, but we can’t truly do that unless we can love our neighbours as much as we love ourselves. It’s not easy because it means we can’t do what often comes so naturally to us and put ourselves first, but we have to at least try to do it.

Jesus said that he couldn’t be the son of David because he was David’s Lord, and he was certainly no son of David’s in terms of his character and behaviour. Jesus is though, God’s Son, and in terms of character and action, he is just like God, his Father and ours. And he is our Lord too. So if we’re going to be chips off anyone’s old block, let’s at least try to make it his.

Amen.

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You will find the Propers for the 30th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Trinity 20) here.