Should we still remember?

Here is my sermon from this year's Remembrance Sunday service at Broughton:

It's now over one hundred years since the first Remembrance Sunday took place at the end of the First World War; this year we commemorated the 80th anniversary of D-Day; next year we'll celebrate the 80th anniversary of VE Day – and very few of those who remember those events are still alive today. So it might be reasonable to ask the question, do we still need to carry on remembering? After all we don't still remember the battle of Waterloo in the same way, and that too was a war to stop a dictator taking over Europe.

It seems to me that Remembrance Sunday is important especially for those who don't believe in God but still want to hold on to the idea that there are moral absolutes – that some actions are right and others wrong; that some actions are good and others are evil. Without God to define what is right and what is wrong it is necessary to come up with another standard for morality and so the moral and ethical code for many in our society is summed up in the golden rule: “Don't be like Hitler!” And so Remembrance events are annual reminders of that secular basis for morality.

This, however, makes our sense of good and bad a matter of comparison: “I may not be perfect but I'm not as bad as Hitler”! As the old joke says, if you're in a place with bears you don't have to be able to run faster than the bear, you only have to be able to run faster than your companions! As long as you're not the slowest, you'll survive. And that's the way morality is seen too: as long as I'm not the worst I'm OK. We compare ourselves with others, even those around us, and as long as we are better than they are, we satisfy ourselves that we are good. And even if we've got no-one around us who is worse than us, we are still good because we're not Hitler.

In our second Bible reading (Mark 10:17-27), a man comes up to Jesus to ask a question and calls him “Good Teacher.” “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone.” In doing so, Jesus was making a point about himself – in calling him 'good' the man recognises that Jesus is divine; but Jesus is also making a point about us – we are not good. Even if we obey a lot of the Ten Commandments like the man had, we are still not good. The man was relying on his good deeds for his salvation, for his reputation of being good, but Jesus reminds him and us that it is impossible for us to be saved, to be good by our own actions.

The problem is our perspective. When we compare ourselves with others we will always find people worse than ourselves: even Hitler thought he was morally better than others – which is why he put so many into death camps. Unlike the Mitchell and Webb comedy sketch, the Nazis didn't look at themselves and ask “Are we the baddies?” - they thought they were the goodies. We may think that morally we are as far away from the Nazis as we are in distance from Australia, but we are looking at it from ground level. Jesus reminds us that the moral standard is God himself – only he is good. And when we compare ourselves with him, we are as far away from him morally as we are in distance from the edge of the universe. And from the edge of the universe, the distance between us and Australia is ultra-microscopically small. Compared with God we are as bad as Hitler.

A film came out last year called “The Zone of Interest” about Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss and his wife Hedwig who strive to build a dream life for their family in a house and garden beside the camp. But what makes this film different to other Holocaust movies is that instead of getting us to identify with the victims, it wants to show us our similarities with the perpetrators.

So while Remembrance events are good for reminding ourselves to not be like Hitler, it is Remembrance Sunday that teaches us the most important lesson: peace will never come through human effort. Because all of us share that inner sinfulness that is only a step away from committing the horrors we see in war. We need to be reminded not to be like Hitler because we are like Hitler. The Commandments Jesus doesn't mention in his list are Commandments about putting God first in our lives, and by failing to do that our inhumanity towards humanity will continue. But the good news that introduces the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:2) is that that God saves us not on the basis of our good deeds but on his love for us – which is shown supremely in Jesus' death which takes the punishment for our sins and attributes to us a goodness that we could never achieve ourselves.

Our first reading (Isaiah 2:2-5) tells us that one day those who are willing will learn God's ways and walk in his paths, and that is a good thing to start doing now. But it is only through Jesus that peace will come because he is the good one who will judge between the nations and settle the disputes for many peoples. That is why he is called the Prince of Peace; that is why the peace doves we have here today come out from the cross.

Facing the empty chair

Here's my article for November:

The Prayer Spaces that we'll be running this month in the schools will be themed around 'Remembering' – not specifically on wars and conflicts, but more generally on remembering loved ones and others who have died. One of the activities will be around an empty chair representing the gap that is left in our lives after the death of someone close. The children will have the chance to express a bit of how they feel, and reflect on the good memories, but it also allows for, and affirms, the sad ones.

The grieving process is different for everyone, and there are many rituals and practices that are recommended by different people to aid the process. Some of these are more helpful than others, some are well-intentioned but actually hinder healing. It seems to me that the most unhelpful ones are those that encourage our natural desire to 'hold onto' our loved ones and in some way to deny the reality of death – a desire that Canon Scott-Holland parodies in what has now become the poem “Death is nothing at all.”

It is very common to 'talk to' loved ones who have died, and there is nothing necessarily wrong in doing that. However, if we expect a response from them we turn a cathartic action into one that keeps the wound open. I sometimes stand at the graves of my predecessors and 'ask' them about what's happening in the parishes, but I don't expect them to answer, and nor do I even think they can hear me. I talk to them in the same way I talk to objects – not to communicate with them but just as a sounding board to express my thoughts.

The recent popularity of letterboxes for “Letters to Heaven” is a practice that treads this distinction. Carrying on the habit of sending letters and cards, at least shortly following a death, can be cathartic, but it seems to me that if it is done so as not to let down or disappoint the one who has died, it becomes something that hinders the process of letting go. And for children it might be especially unhelpful if because of a lack of reciprocal cards they think their loved one does not love them any more.

I've written previously of the dangers of mediumship as it opens us up to malevolent spiritual forces beyond our control, but it is also unhelpful because it falsely claims that the dead can communicate with the living.

So what can we do when faced with the empty chair? Recalling memories, both happy and sad, is a very important part of the grieving process, but the aim of the process is to let go – to be grateful for life whilst acknowledging the reality of death. However, our deep desire that life continues after death should point us to the One who offers exactly that: Jesus promises: “Those who believe in me will live, even though they die; and those who live and believe in me will never die.” (John 11:25-26).