Remembrance Sunday, 11 November 2018
Austwick, Clapham, Keasden
The 1918 Armistice is at the heart of our commemorations today, as we recall those images of troops returning home in scenes of great celebration. What did they bring back from the war - those who did return? Some came back with heroic stories, of bold actions which won battles and rewarded medals. Some with stories of the camaraderie and comradeship they had found in battle - a new community which for many stretched even across enemy lines, with a sense of solidarity with the troops from the other side too.
Some returned from the battlefield with a heightened sense of right and wrong, a politicised view of life, as never before critical of God and of State. Some brought back forms of madness, shell-shock, despair, anger which would never heal. And yet others brought back silence; as if all they had experienced had numbed them. And the families of these combatants developed the skill of listening to the gaps, learning from what went unspoken.
My great-grandfather, John Cyril Davies, was a ship’s carpenter on the Cunard passenger liner Lusitania, torpedoed by a German U-boat off the coast of Ireland in May 1915. 1,198 passengers and crew lost their lives that day, but John Davies was one of the 764 who survived.
As one historian wrote, ‘The world was shocked in 1912 by the loss of the Titanic to an iceberg, but the shock bore no parallel to that felt by the loss of the Lusitania, which was needlessly sacrificed to the insatiable gods of war.' [2]
My great-grandfather never spoke of these events, and so his silence raised many unspoken questions for us. Like: Where was God in all this suffering? That’s a hard question to answer. In the loss and anguish of war it’s easier to see where the Devil is.
For I put it to you that the Devil is in the ideology of the Nation State, wherein nationalism displaces God as the focus for a people’s faithfulness, where the flag displaces the cross, the anthem drowns out the hymns of devotion: an ideology which drives so many of the conflicts of our times. [3]
I put it to you that the Devil is in the pursuit of religious and political utopias, whose devotees are convinced that the use of force is necessary to ensure the power of the good. [4]
And I put it to you that the Devil is in the idea that violence fixes violence, when we all know full well that an eye for an eye, being taken to its extreme, is making the whole world blind. For like the ideology of nationalism, and like the pursuit of utopia, the belief in the power of redemptive violence is an idol of our times. [5]
The most devilish detail of all is the mistaken view that our God supports such idolatries. This angry, vengeful God who demands blood sacrifices of his subjects and judges in blood and fire - this God of the old scriptures, this God of violence: is the God before the Gospels; the God of the old news; the God of no good news.
In the words of a great contemporary prophet, the philosopher René Girard,
"Violence is a slavery; it imposes upon people a false conception of God as well as everything else. This is why is is a closed kingdom. To escape from violence would mean to escape from this kingdom to enter another kingdom that most of us cannot even imagine: the kingdom of love which is also the kingdom of the true God, this father of Jesus of whom the prisoners of violence don't have the slightest idea". [6]
So where is God in all this? Who is God in all this?
I put it to you that our God is a suffering God, who struggles alongside soldiers in the trenches and other arenas of war, and who then accompanies them home. “War is the crucifixion of God, not the working of His will” said the WW1 Army chaplain Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy, aka ‘Woodbine Willie’. “Human strife is not God’s method, but His problem,” he said. [7]
This suffering God sits with those at home, waiting anxiously for their loved ones’ return. A God of modest things, whose great skill is to help humans to learn to be humane in the everyday exchanges of ordinary life.
A God whose kingdom is very much of this earth, as taught by Jesus to ordinary people in everyday places - the dining table, the mountainside, the sea shore. See how he called the fishermen Simon and Andrew, James and John to join him in proclaiming the good news of this kingdom, a new way of life which he inaugurated at that time, to grow like a mustard seed from that very moment on, and to last for all time.
Mark how in the story of Jonah, the errant prophet was salivating over the prospect of an angry God wreaking his violent judgement on the people of Nineveh - but how God rejected the way of destruction and offered them salvation.
At the very end of the book of Jonah God says, ‘Should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left…?’ [8] And in response to God’s grace, the king of Nineveh said, ‘All [of us] shall turn from [our] evil ways and from the violence that is in [our] hands.’ [9]
This is good news for every society - ever; the king and the people of Nineveh caught a glimpse of a different kingdom, a new way of living, a release from the slavery of violence, and they embraced that gift gratefully.
What did they bring back from the war, my great-grandfather, the ones you remember today, those whose lost lamented comrades in arms our poppies represent? Most brought a desire to move on, to turn from that violence and to live now in peace. To find love, to make a home, to build families, to apply themselves to neighbourliness and community.
I believe that God was with them, as they went about the humble, but noble, task of making the peace. Because peace-making is the everyday detail, the real-time values, of the kingdom of God.
And so in this hour, let us honour the memory of those whose lives were lost to war; and let us embrace the spirit of those who were forever changed by war: by considering if and how we can renounce violence in all its forms and commit our lives to the humble, but noble, task of loving God, loving our neighbour, loving our enemies - of making and keeping the peace.
Notes
[1] A rewrite of What did they bring back from the war? (The Jonah version) preached in West Camel and Weston Bampfylde in 2015. Based on the sermon What did they bring back from the war? Reflection for ‘Till the Boys Come Home’ preached at Corton Denham, 30 November 2014.
[2] Patrick O'Sullivan, The Sinking of the Lusitania, p.29. See also my blog post The silence of John Davies, my great-grandfather, Lusitania survivor.
[3] ‘Blair believes in the power of force to ensure the triumph of the good.’ John Gray, Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia, p.137.
[4] Craig M. Watts, Daring to Call it Idolatry: Nationalism in Worship. Red Letter Christians, January 11, 2013.
[5] See my James Bond, ISIS, and the myth of redemptive violence, after the work of Walter Wink.
[6] René Girard, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, p.197, paraphrase.
[7] Christopher Craig Brittain, Religion at Ground Zero: Theological Responses to Times of Crisis. Chapter Two, Religion in the Trenches: Chaplains in the Great War.
[8] Jonah 4.11
[9] Jonah 3.8
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