This is the sermon I preached for the Remembrance Sunday Service at Broughton 2015:
Last night, I was just about to
write my talk for this morning's service when my eldest son asked me
to sit down to watch Doctor Who with him. I have to confess that I
don't like sci-fi, and I'd never watched Doctor Who before the
previous series. I wouldn't say that now I'm hooked on it but I do
quite enjoy watching it, even if I don't understand what's happening!
And so last night, instead of writing this morning's talk I watched
Doctor Who. So, although the Bible readings we've just heard are
great, I'd like to take as my text for this morning The Zygon
Inversion by Peter Harness and
Steven Moffat.
The
Zygon Inversion is the second part of a story where the Zygons, a
race of shapeshifting aliens, have been living in secret amongst us
on Earth, unknown and unseen - until now! A rogue gang of Zygons
start an uprising in the hope it will spark a war between humans and
Zygons. Now hopefully what I say next won't contain any spoilers for
those of you who haven't seen it yet. The climax of the episode
involves the leader of the rogue Zygons and the leader of the
international unit for extra-terrestrials. They have a choice to
make – the Doctor’s devised a game of chance to determine whether
they destroy themselves, or their enemies, a scale model of war to
make them think.
Whilst
trying to persuade them to keep the peace, the Doctor says to the
rogue Zygon “maybe you will win, but no-one wins for long. The
wheel just keeps on turning.” The Doctor puts his finger on the
problem of war that “Cruelty begets cruelty.” But he also knows
the solution saying: “The only way anyone can live in peace is if
they are prepared to forgive.”
And
there is the difficulty, because the jealousies and desires inside
each of us stop us from turning our swords and spears into
ploughshares and pruning hooks. Our desires to have the wrongs
against us righted mean that we cannot let go, we cannot forgive.
But to forgive and forget is not to say that the wrongs weren't wrong
or that justice doesn't matter. Instead we let go so we can let God
be the judge. And of course if we want the ultimate example of
forgiveness we look not to the Time Lord, but to the Lord of Time.
The things we do wrong make us
enemies of God and so we deserve punishment and ultimately separation
from God. But God loves us so much that in Jesus he took that
punishment we deserve when he died on the cross, so that we can be
forgiven. Jesus died for us when we were his enemies so that we
could become his friends. Amazingly, he died for everyone, even if
they choose to remain his enemies and separated from him because they
don't accept his forgiveness. But we can only truly forgive others if
we have been forgiven by God first.
The
Doctor, through his own experience of the horror and pain of war,
found that forgiveness was the only way to make peace. So he says,
“You know what do you do with all that pain?... You hold it tight
'til it burns your hand. And you say this: No-one else will ever
have to live like this. No-one else will ever have to feel this pain.
Not on my watch.” That's the spirit which inspired Remembrance
Day. Sorrow for our own sins, so we can forgive others, so it will
never happen again.
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