Sermon, Sunday 8 Nov: Remembrance Sunday

Today's sermon, on Remembrance Sunday...
picking up some events in the year of 1915:

READINGS: Psalm 46;  John 15: 1-17

As an Australian, the year 1915
is indelibly imprinted on my psyche:
and the reason for this can be condensed into one word -
Gallipoli.
Australia had become a nation in 1901,
and the campaign in Gallipoli
alongside the British Forces beginning on the 25th of April, 1915,
has been seen down the decades as the coming of age of that nation:
the first time that Australians fought as Australians...
And the 25th of April is our big time of commemoration each year -
it’s known as ANZAC Day.

According to family legend, on my mother’s side of the family -
my Great-grandfather, served in the Light Horse at Gallipoli...
although in this particular campaign, there were no brave charges on horseback;
this long-drawn out battle, lasting over 8 months,
fought on the beaches and scrubby cliffs of the Dardanelles,
was about digging in,crawling up steep hills,
shinnying through gullies under sniper fire...
having to deal with that most strategic of disadvantages
in trying to stay alive at the bottom of cliffs while your enemies
dropped shells on you from above.
It was the first time that the Lighthorsemen fought without their horses -
fighting alongside the infantry.
And in a way, this lack of charging horses signalled the end
to a centuries old style of combat:
the age of modern warfare had begun.

But there are some things that are age-less:
The stories of comradeship among the men who became
known as the ANZACS is legendary in Australia -
each looked out for the other:
the spirit of mateship was born on the beaches
of Suvla Bay, Anzac Cove, Cape Helles...
But mateship, love of friends, is not just the sole province of Aussies -
even though we might like to think we invented it.
Over many decades, I’m sure we’ve all had stories passed down to us,
or watched T.V. programmes, or read books about the Great War
in which that same spirit of comradeship - mateship - friendship,
was displayed quite strongly, heroically.

Our gospel text this morning talks of friendship:
God’s friendship with human beings
our friendship with God...
and our friendship with one another.
We are called to remain in God’s love,
and, we are called to love.

Last week we reflected a little on love, and I noted that,
in summing up the commandments, Jesus was, essentially saying that
‘all we need...is love.’
In our gospel passage today, Jesus talks of the relationship between
God the Father, and himself - the Son...
The early theologian, Augustine,
described the love of the persons of the Trinity -
Father, Son, and Spirit, as  being utterly undergirded by love -
each concerned with the other,
allowing space for the other to be...
In thinking of Father Son and Spirit, Augustine described the relationship as
the Lover,
the Beloved,
and the love that unites them.
One God, in a perfect community of love;
modelling for us, what love looks like,
how it should be,
and, that it’s about community...
Jesus, in John chapter 15, is teaching the disciples about a
theology of friendship - built upon the model of love shown by God.
 It’s a love of care and concern,
self-giving,
it’s joyful,
sacrificial;
recognising - as Marjorie Pickthall’s poem did* -
that we are the body of Christ...
and recognising the Christ within each one of us.

In the thigh deep mud of Ypres,
on battlefields all across Europe, Asia, Africa,
in the midst of bullets whistling past
and heavy artillery blasting craters where once grew barley;
in the bowels of ship’s engine rooms,
the claustrophobic conditions of submarines and tanks,
amongst the newly created flying squadrons...
I suspect that the words of Jesus:
‘greater love has no-one than this:
that one lay down his life for another’
took on a heightened perspective.
Friends did sacrifice their all for friends.
But even in the midst of fire, some combatants also recognised
that the ones they fought could, in another life, have been friends.

I recently came across a poem written by Charles Hamilton Sorley.
He was killed by a sniper at the Battle of Loos in 1915.
He was only 20 when he died, but his poem, ‘To Germany’
shows an incredible depth and maturity.
Sorley had spent some time travelling and studying in Germany
before entering Oxford, when war was declared.
His poem reflects his own feelings for a country which he felt had nurtured him,
but which is now ‘the enemy’.
He writes of the political ambitions of both Germany and Great Britain,
and of the soldiers on both sides, caught in the midst of it -
sharing the same experiences...
’groping blindly’ through the fields of battle.
He writes of peace - and that, when it comes,
these now enemies can be friends once more.
He sees, with great clarity, that those on the other side
are not monsters - but men like himself...
and in that understanding,
there is an empathy,
there’s pity in his poem...
and to have pity, is to have love - even for an enemy.

It is a powerful thing to have love enough to lay down your life for a friend...
but the way of love is more expansive still...
it is to learn love for those called ‘enemies.’
I think Sorley understood some of that, even if he couldn’t necessarily
have seen a way out of the great conflict he found himself in,
on the Western Front.
Here’s his poem:

'To Germany'
You are blind like us. Your hurt no man designed,
And no man claimed the conquest of your land.
But gropers both through fields of thought confined...
we stumble and we do not understand.
You only saw your future bigly planned,
And we, the tapering paths of our own mind,
And in each others dearest ways we stand,
and hiss and hate. And the blind fight the blind.

When it is peace, then we may view again 
with new won eyes each other's truer form
and wonder. Grown more loving kind and warm
we'll grasp firm hands and laugh at the old pain, 
when it is peace. But until peace, the storm,
the darkness and the thunder and the rain.
----------------------------------
As we remember those who died -
men like Sorley,
men from all corners of the once British Empire -
all those caught up in conflict in that first world war,
and all those wars since then...
how do we view the words of Jesus, I wonder?
Those words of complete self-giving -
of laying down our lives for our friends?
How do we work through a theology of friendship
and build a community of love,
as we follow the One who, in a few short weeks,
we will remember as the Prince of Peace?
For, in a sense, that is the legacy that those who fell in war have left to us -
and the task which Jesus calls us to:
to shine the light of love into all the corners of this world;
to walk in the ways of peace;
to be reconcilers -
as God, in Christ, reconciled humanity to him.
It is no easy task, and it’s a task that is not about
gaining glory for ourselves...
We seek to build a community of love and friendship that is expansive,
warm, and welcoming,
and we do this for God’s glory.
And so, to him, be the glory,
this day and always.  Amen.

[Marjorie Pickthall - her poem, 'Marching Men', had been read out earlier:
Under the level winter sky
I saw a thousand Christs go by.
They sang an idle song and free
As they went up to calvary.

Careless of eye and coarse of lip,
They marched in holiest fellowship.
That heaven might heal the world, they gave
Their earth-born dreams to deck the grave.

With souls unpurged and steadfast breath
They supped the sacrament of death.
And for each one, far off, apart,
Seven swords have rent a woman's heart.