Imagine having somebody you love die because of war.
Imagine having somebody who has worn the same uniform as you, die alongside you because of war.
This is a pain and a grief that cannot be doubted and must be respected.
Some of us know that pain and grief directly.
Many more of us have had these feelings passed onto us as sacred memories which we continue to hold and respect on behalf of those who have gone before us.
This is the bedrock of truth of what is happening on Remembrance Sunday.
And we can add something to the pain and grief we feel about those who died and that is the pain and grief we feel about the suffering they endured before they died, the fear they felt.
And then we think of the suffering endured by those who did not die but returned from this suffering and continue to live among us bearing the physical and emotional scars of what they endured.
We often have funeral services in church. We know about pain and suffering and grief. There is a special dimension to these emotions on Remembrance Sunday.
And that is because of the nagging feeling we have that suffering resulting from war is unnecessary. Human beings have inflicted this suffering on themselves.
God created us to love each other and then we go and do this.
There are so many wonderful things about being a human being and yet war and the self-inflicted suffering it causes is a permanent part of our world.
This is the terrible truth we wrestle with on Remembrance Sunday.
And we come together once a year to wrestle with this truth together. We recognise and respect the feelings we have. We share our experiences and acknowledge the experiences of others.
And together we reflect on them. We reflect and we share, sharing with the younger generation, hoping that they will learn from what we know.
About 15 years ago I was sitting in an allotment garden near Leipzig in Germany. It was a very pleasant summer evening and I had been invited to play cards with a group of men, all teachers, celebrating the end of a school year. I had brought a bottle of malt whiskey with me which was going down really well and we were enjoying ourselves with the cards and the banter, occasionally swatting away the troublesome mosquitos.
We talked about this and that, and the conversation suddenly veered onto current affairs and one of these German teachers said to me, ‘Why is it that your country always wants to go to war?’ To be honest I was a bit nonplussed by this question. I grew up in this country and my childhood was full of stories about World War 2, a war that was famously started by the German government. Here was a German asking me why my country was so warlike.
I had to come up with an answer, so I said something like this. “Well, when we think about war we always think about World War 2 and in England the decision to fight that war feels like it was the right decision. In fact, we wonder whether if we had decided to fight it sooner when Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia, it might have been a shorter war and fewer people might have died.” And the man who had asked me the question said, ‘Fair enough’ and we carried on playing cards.
It was just a little simple conversation. It opened my eyes to how the memories of war we grow up with shape the way we think about war and the way we think about war shapes how we act when we are faced with the decision to ask our armed forces to fight, and to kill, and to die.
It’s 80 years since the Second World War started. It’s a long time ago. It still shapes the way we think about who we are and what war is.
It was the first time for this country that children were in danger because of war. Modern warfare meant that planes could drop bombs on cities and so at the start of war children were evacuated into the countryside in an effort to keep them safe. Look at the picture on the front of the order of service. Those boys are thinking about where they are going, what will happen to them, and whether they will ever see their families again.
Memories of evacuation and bombing live on in the people who were children then and are still alive now. On Monday night we had a showing of a wartime film, Mrs. Miniver. It included a scene of a family in a bomb shelter during a bombing raid, the parents were huddling their children tight. I wondered how people would feel about that scene and sure enough, after the film was over, people shared their memories of the bombing in World War 2. These memories have been shared with those of us born after the war, so that we know how terrible war can be. Even children are killed. And, of course, when we see news about wars in other parts of the world we know that children die in these wars also.
In our Gospel reading, Jesus warns his followers about the horrors of a coming war. He says, ‘Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing infants in those days’! What does he tell his followers to do about this coming war? Essentially he tells them to stay safe. What he says is, ‘Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.’ How many prayers must have been said in the bomb shelters of Europe during World War 2, that we would escape all the things that were taking place.
The people who came here to see the film talked about war like this. They talked about being frightened. They talked about staying safe. But when we talk about the Second World War in this country we don’t only talk about it in this way, we also talk about the decision to fight having been the right decision.
In 1939 when our MP’s were talking about whether we should fight Hitler, they didn’t say very much about what a bad man he was and what terrible things he was doing. But as the war went on and after it was over this became a big part of how people talked about the war. It became part of our understanding of who we are and what we believe in. And it changed us.
Having fought a war to liberate Europe from an evil empire, we became a nation that retreated from our own empire and accepted the right of nations we had conquered to take control of their own destiny. Having fought a war against an evil racist ideology, we became a nation that confronted racism in our Empire and in our own country. Having fought a war in co-operation with other freedom-loving nations, we became a nation more willing to co-operate with other nations to build a lasting peace. Having fought a war against a system that reduced the value of a human being to the sum of their productive output, we became a nation that valued every member of society, enshrining that in a National Health Service offering free treatment to all.
But as well as all this, we were a nation with a memory of a decision to go to war that turned out to be the right decision, and this memory has made us a warlike nation, in the sense that it made us more ready to see war as the solution to a problem. Which brings me back to that question that I was asked over a game of cards, ‘‘Why is it that your country always wants to go to war?’
That game of cards took place in the summer of 2002 and it was a funny time in Germany. The German Prime Minister was a man called Gerhard Schröder. He wasn’t very popular and there was an election coming up. Schröder had sent German soldiers to fight in wars in Kosovo and Afghanistan and this was the first time German soldiers had been sent to take part in a war since World War 2 so it was a strange time for the German nation. Meanwhile the President of the United States was trying to build an alliance for a war in Iraq and he was asking our country and Germany to support this war.
In this country President Bush had the full support of our Prime Minister.
Germany was a different story. Everybody expected Schröder to back the war because he had backed the wars in Kosovo and Afghanistan. But suddenly he came out against the war. This was a popular move in Germany, his party went up in the opinion polls and Schröder unexpectedly won the election that year. Not going to war was a popular move in Germany which is why my card partner asked me ‘Why is it that your country always wants to go to war?’
Staying out of the Iraq war prolonged Gerhard Schröder’s career and it came to define Tony Blair’s career. He promised the US President he would back his war no matter what. Together our government and the American government tried and failed to secure a United Nations mandate, while presenting evidence of weapons of mass destruction which turned out to be incorrect. And then they went to war anyway.
The numbers of people who died in that war are estimated to be between 150,000 and 1 million; many of them children and other civilians who died in because of bombing. Today Tony Blair justifies the war by pointing out that it toppled the dictator Saddam Hussein and ushered in national elections in Iraq. It is an explanation that reminds us of the way in which our nation reflects on its role in World War 2 but we aren’t all sure about it. When the question arose about going to war in Syria, memories of Iraq kept United Kingdom conventional forces out of the war. Memories of sending soldiers to die for reasons that turned out to be incorrect shaped what happened next.
Jesus said we should be alert at all times, we should be aware that of the possibility that disaster can befall us. We educate our young people in what we have learned about the experience of war and how we build peace. We need to be aware that, as a nation, because of our history, we have a tendency to see war as the answer more quickly than most. Even in our current national debates, even when all we are talking about is how we will trade with the rest of the world, the language of war creeps in. The language of war is emotional. It distracts and confuses. It prevents listening and understanding. Not everything is a war.
To be able to make the decision to go to war, a nation has to have armed forces and armed forces are made up of people who have said they are prepared to go to war however the nation decides.
The people we elect take the decision for our armed services. Our armed forces are the ones who actually carry out the decision. They are the first to suffer, and the first to feel the guilt if the decision is wrong.
We don’t differentiate on Remembrance Sunday between soldiers who died in wars we agree with and those who died in wars we don’t agree with. They are all equal. They all deserve our respect. They all deserve us to reflect long and hard about what has happened in the past, so when we are called on to decide again in the future, we get that decision right.
Jesus said his followers should be alert at all times. Watch what is happening.
May our young people be alert. May they reflect on our sacred memories, the suffering and endurance of previous generations. May they learn from the sacrifices of previous generations and may they always keep the vision of peace before them. Amen.