Sermon, Remembrance Sunday: Re-membering

Remember, remember the fifth of November -
Gunpowder treason and plot.
We know no reason why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.

Last weekend saw the usual celebrations of November 5th. Fireworks going off, bonfires...... But what was it really about? Were we really remembering the events of 1605, when Guy Fawkes and his associates tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament? These days, November 5th is for many it’s more a day to mark the move from Autumn towards winter than anything else. But until a little over 100 years ago, the Church of England had a special set of services in the Prayer Book, under the heading 'Gunpowder Treason,' to ensure that we continued to remember Guy Fawkes and that England remained staunchly Protestant. Times change, and - thank God - November 5th is no longer treated as an occasion for Protestants to vent anti-Catholic feeling.

But we still talk about remembering. We keep the day as special, and our children – and their children - grow up 'remembering'. Of course, none of us actually recalls anything of the events of 1605—it was over 400 years ago. But personal memory and ‘remembering’ are quite different.

When I was a child, I couldn't get my head around Remembrance Day. The wars—even the second world war—had happened so long ago, and to other people. It ended 19 years before I was born, and although both my parents had lived through it, and my father has vivid memories of watching the Battle of Britain from his back garden, it was all in another age – it was another world.

I wasn't there, so I couldn't remember - so what was the point of Remembrance Day? Then in the 80s and 90s the situation changed. There was the Falklands War, the Gulf War, and conflicts in Bosnia, the second Gulf War. These were events which were part of my time – and it was now my contemporaries - people I knew - who were actively deployed in military service (I remember, as a curate, the army chaplain who lived in the next street to us talking at first-hand about the horrors of Bosnia). Things were now closer to home. But Remembrance Day still had nothing to do with my personal experience or memory.

And then I realised I'd got it wrong. I'd been assuming that remembering and memory are about the same thing - when they're not. Yes, for some people, Remembrance Day is about personal memory. There are those who will be in church today for whom active war service is an important part of who they are - those who have given of themselves to serve their nation - those who recall the colleagues alongside whom they fought, some of whom did not survive - who gave their lives in the cause of freedom and right. The ones whose memory we honour today.

But as combat becomes an increasingly specialised activity - the number of those involved in active service continues to diminish. There will be fewer people with personal experience and personal memories of armed conflict - but the wars continue and the remembering does and must go on.

So what is remembering? Perhaps we should pull the word apart, and talk about 're-membering' - putting back together the separated fragments - the bits - so that they make a whole - a whole that can make sense and can have something plausible to say to us here and now.

Take the gunpowder plot. What are the essential pieces? That it was an act of terrorism. That it was a plot to overthrow Parliament. And there are other details about the personal beliefs and convictions of those involved. In re-membering, we put those pieces together and, hopefully, we come up with something which has significance and which speaks to our own day. (If not, then the remembering really is a waste of time.) And so, while, 400 years on, we might not be over-bothered about the personal motivations of the conspirators – whether they were Catholic or Protestant - we can say that November 5th is a chance to remind ourselves that, as a nation, we are committed to - and must continue to be committed to - a democratically elected Parliament, and that we don’t tolerate acts of terrorism. These are essential values for the well-being of humanity - as relevant now as then.

Or take the two world wars. Here, because of the enormous scale of the events, there are literally millions of fragments to assemble, to 're-member'. But what do we get when we put them together? An affirmation that, at all costs, evil must never be allowed to triumph in the affairs of nations; that we must hold fast to the truth that God has not created some people and races superior to others; and that fighting for these values is immensely costly in terms of human life. And so Remembrance Day points on the one hand to thanksgiving for those who suffered and died in that cause; and on the other to a renewal of our own resolve to overcome evil in the world.

If we give up on remembering, then we’re in danger of forgetting those basic values, and ignoring the need to learn from history and from the errors of the past. And God knows we need that more than ever in the current global situation. The point of remembering is to be better fitted for living in the present: and that includes our current military presence in so many places around the globe. As Christians, our re-membering will almost inevitably lead us to a place of tension, between (on the one hand) our determination to fight evil, and (on the other) Jesus’ call to be peace-makers. This is not the day or place to debate the call by some Christians to pacifism, or by others to military action – merely to note that there are no easy answers or solutions – only costly ones.

But the Christian faith as a whole is about 're-membering' – it’s about putting together the pieces. This has been going on now for 2000 years. The first Christians had the advantage (as do our remaining war veterans) that for them, 're-membering' involved their own personal memories. We owe them a great debt. Without them we wouldn’t have a record of the pieces of the puzzle: a first-hand experience of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

Over time, although the personal memory has receded into the past, the remembering continues. Down the centuries men and women have assembled the bits to create a whole picture - a picture which isn’t fixed for all time, but which changes and develops as new experiences, new insights and new memories are added – as the Holy Spirit continues to lead us into all truth - and something real is made for the present - here and now. 

And just as Remembrance Day is not about re-living 20th and 21st century conflicts, but about re-membering the past in order to live in the present, so is our faith. Our Christian re-membering helps us build on the foundations of our historic faith so that we can live lives today in which we know and prove the presence of God and the power of the Holy Spirit to inform and direct our actions. 

If we stop remembering as Christians, then quite simply we lose the plot. It’s for that reason that, year after year, within our worship, we re-read our Scriptures, and we revisit the seasons and Christian festivals: Advent, Christmas, Lent, Good Friday, Easter, Pentecost. And each time we revisit – we all bring another year’s experience of Christian living to our remembrance. 

On this Remembrance Sunday, we recall those who died in the service of their nation - we give thanks for them: for their courage and dedication, and for their legacy - the peace and freedom we enjoy, the good relations with our allies - but which we know to be so fragile. And likewise, in this Eucharist, we recall that the life, the peace and the freedom that Jesus offers each of us, was also won at a price - the price of his own life as he died for our sake on the cross.

Re-membering matters, if we are to live in the present with an eye to the experience of the past. May God, through his Holy Spirit, give us the wisdom we need to interpret our remembering and to live according to his mind and will. Amen.