Wisdom of Solomon 6.12-16, Matthew 25.1-13
Remembrance Sunday 8th November 2020 - online
Of all the demanding tasks for the soldiers on the Western Front, surely one of the hardest was being on sentry duty. At all times of day, sentries were posted to keep watch for enemy movements. Sometimes small trenches, called ‘saps’, were driven under the barbed wire into No Man's Land to watch and listen to whatever the enemy was up to. Being vigilant was essential: for it was seldom quiet on the Western Front. In the six months leading up to the Battle of the Somme in July 1916, although there was no major battle in progress, the British Army still suffered well over 107,000 casualties.
At all times, a sentry's duty was maximum alertness - and falling asleep on the job was potentially a capital offence. Sentries were forbidden to smoke, as it could attract unwelcome enemy attention. The writer ‘Saki’, H. H. Munro, a lance sergeant in the Royal Fusiliers, died at the Somme in 1916. It is said that his last words were ‘Put that bloody cigarette out!' before he was shot by a sniper.
At dawn each day, everyone was put on high alert, in total vigilance, in a daily ritual called ‘Stand To’. As the sun was rising, every man had to turn out and stand on the ‘firestep' of the trench with guns and grenades at the ready, in case the Germans, masked by the rising sun in the east, should choose that moment to launch an attack. It was the most nerve-shredding time of day. Once the sun had risen, the danger was deemed to have passed and the men ‘stood down' to cook and eat their breakfast. [1]
Alertness, vigilance - these were essential qualities of every soldier on every side in World War One, and remain so for everyone involved in armed conflict today. This is what Laurence Binyon alludes to in his poem ‘For the Fallen’, when he describes the young soldiers as ‘Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow… staunch to the end against odds uncounted, They fell with their faces to the foe’.
Alertness is of course a universally useful quality - for humans and all other living beings. It is described as the state of active attention by high sensory awareness such as being watchful and prompt to meet danger or emergency, or being quick to perceive and act. It is related to psychology as well as to physiology - in other words, it involves our bodies and minds working together. The word “alert" comes from the Italian “all’erta", meaning ‘on the watch’.
Of course, being constantly alert is more or less impossible. This is why during the Second World War, soldiers and aviators were given drugs to increase their alertness during long periods on duty. British troops used 72 million amphetamine tablets in the Second World War and the RAF used so many that according to one report, ‘it was Methedrine that won the Battle of Britain’. [2]
A lack of alertness is a symptom of a number of conditions, including narcolepsy, attention deficit disorder, chronic fatigue syndrome, depression, or sleep deprivation. But morally, as communities and nations, it is hubris which perhaps most often causes us to lose sight of what is happening around us. Hubris, meaning excessive pride or self-confidence: being so self-assured in our own ways that we get taken by surprise by events which, if we’d been more watchful, we might have seen coming and avoided. The hubris among economists was shaken in 2008 when the banks collapsed; the coronavirus crisis challenges our over-confidence in our abilities to limitlessly manipulate nature for our own gain. In Greek tragedy, hubris leads to nemesis - excessive pride towards or defiance of the gods leads inevitably to the downfall of a god, a person or a people. [3]
Is this why our Judaeo-Christian scriptures so elevate the need for us to be alert? Solomon wrote that “To fix one’s thought on wisdom is perfect understanding; those vigilant for wisdom will be free from care.” Jesus concluded the story of the foolish bridesmaids by entreating his listeners to ‘keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.’ And elsewhere he famously told his followers to watch and pray: "Keep watching and praying that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak,” he said. [4]
It may be hyperbolic to say that we are living in dangerous times, for every time in history has carried its own dangers. But we certainly should be ever-willing to learn from those who would teach us how to be alert, how to practice wisdom in the way we think and exercise it in the way we act. For the hostile tribalism and pernicious forms of nationalism which stirred the world to such excessive violent conflict in the Twentieth Century never went away in peacetime. These forces are powerfully present in altered but recognisable forms today, and we should be on lookout for them creeping into our own hearts and minds, or gathering influence in our own community.
We should be ready to protect against these powers by paying close attention to the voices of goodwill in our world; by attending to the wisdom in our scriptures and other inspirational writings; by offering prayers for protection and direction; by purging the evil from our hearts in penitence when we find it there; and protest it when we see it in the world around us.
Like those whose sacrificial ways we commemorate today, let us also work for the well-being of our world. As our day begins each morning, let us share the practice of ‘Standing To’.
Notes
[1] John D. Clare, Colour Photos of World War One; Wikipedia: Saki.
[2] Wikipedia: Alertness.
[3] Apple online Dictionary: Hubris.
[3] Matthew 26.41.
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