Remembrance Sunday 2026

Audio in case the YouTube recording isn't clear!

 

Remembrance Sunday.
It really isn’t an easy day, is it?
What are we actually doing, with our poppies and our two minutes’ silence?

It’s not just about those who died in the first World War, although that’s how it started, way back in 1920, over 100 years ago.
That war, known then as “The War to end all Wars”, was seriously terrible for those who participated in it.
Many millions of young men went to their deaths in the killing fields of France and Belgium, of Gallipoli and of other battlefields,
and barely a family in those countries that were part of it did not lose somebody.
Both my grandfathers were involved in this war, and each lost a brother.
In fact, one of my grandfathers was only just recovering from a very serious wound when the news came through that his brother had been killed.
The family could easily have lost both its sons.
Indeed, many families did lose all their sons –
it was a hard time.
And the flu epidemic that came immediately after caused yet more deaths and unhappiness.

It wasn’t just British soldiers, of course!
Quite apart from our European allies and enemies, soldiers from all five continents fought and died.
Many countries of what was then known as the British Empire fought for and with us; there were well over a million from India alone.
Sadly, those who were not White were not treated as equals.
They were allowed to practice their own religion, and to observe their own dietary requirements, but they weren’t allowed to be officers, and British nurses weren’t allowed to look after them.
I believe Indian troops who were wounded were warded in the Brighton Pavilion, of all places!

But the First World War was long ago in history, and I doubt anybody now alive was even born then.
But it has given us a template for remembrance, which we still observe today.

They called it “The War to end all Wars”, but of course it wasn’t.
I mean, you just have to listen to the news of a morning to know that! Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan….
Places like Syria and Somaliland where there is sort-of peace, but so fragile the people living there don’t dare breathe hard in case it fractures!
Britain is only just not at war, and who knows how long that will last?
We’ve been involved in dozens of wars and conflicts in my lifetime, and I’m sure we will be again.

So, we wonder, where is God in all this?
What have all these events to do with God?
Or, indeed, why, as Christian people, should we be paying tribute to those who were involved in some of these hideous things –
for whatever we our taught, our own side usually does just as dreadful things as the other side;
well, we know that, don’t we –
it was Britain who invented the concentration camp, after all, back in the Boer War.
And a few years ago, some soldiers were convicted of torturing Iraqi prisoners.
And who knows –
that may just have been the tip of the iceberg,
if there was a culture of treating prisoners with disrespect....
and then people wonder why you get extremist organisations like Islamic State, which, although it has dropped from the news now, is still active in many places.
I know, and I know you know, that the vast majority of Muslims feel just as much horror and despair about Islamic State and similar terrorist organisations as we do,
but I can also see, and I expect you can, too,
just how they got pushed into extremism by the behaviour of some of our troops, and the attitude of not only our troops, but also our governments.
That’s usually how terrorist organisations arise – struggling for a better and fairer world.
Many have a certain amount of right on their side, of course, although armed conflict doesn’t really solve anything.
But don’t they say that at one stage the main qualification to be a leader of a newly-liberated African country was to have served time in a British prison for terrorism!

It’s difficult, isn’t it.
“Blessed are the Peacemakers”, said Jesus.
But he also said that there would always be wars, and rumours of wars.
We are told to make peace, even while we know we will be unsuccessful.

Robert and I visited New York less than a fortnight after the World Trade Centre was destroyed, back in 2001. Twenty-five years ago.
We had planned our holiday months earlier, and decided not to allow terrorism and war to disrupt our lives more than was strictly necessary.
Besides, what safer time to go, just when security was at its height?

Anyway, the first Sunday we were there, we felt an urgent need to go to Church, to worship with God’s people.
Not knowing anything about churches in Brooklyn,
we went to the one round the corner from where we were staying,
which turned out to be a Lutheran Church.
And I was glad we went –
the people there were so pleased to know that people were still visiting from England.
They knew they faced a hard time coming to terms with what had happened, and that the future was very uncertain,
yet they knew, too, that God was in it with them.

And God is in it with us, too.
Whatever happens.
God was there in the trenches with those young men in the first War;
God was there in the bombing and occupations of the Second War.
God was there in the Twin Towers that day, and in the hijacked planes, too.
God is there in Ukraine and Russia, in Gaza and Israel, in Sudan, and in all those countries where there is no peace, and life is very frightening.

We, who call ourselves Christians, sometimes refuse to fight for our country, believing that warfare and Christianity aren’t really compatible.
I am inclined to agree, but for one thing –
do we really want our armed forces to be places where God is not honoured? That’s the big problem with Christian pacifism –
it leaves the armed forces very vulnerable.

But we must do all that we can to make peace.
I can’t judge the rights and wrongs of most of these campaigns. What may seem obvious to me has been fed through the biases of various news outlets and social media.
I do know, though, that people are suffering, through no fault of their own.
People are still suffering, not only in the obvious places, but in countries where there has been armed conflict and they are still dealing with the fallout.
They are suffering in other places where Muslims are despised because of their faith –
and, indeed, in places where Islamic State or Boko Haram has any say in the matter.

War causes suffering.
It is never noble, or glorious, and I’m not quite sure whether it is ever right.
Even if it is, it is horrible.
And inevitable.
And we Christians must do all we can to bring peace, and we must wear our poppies and remember, each year, those who had to suffer and die.

For who knows when it will be our turn?

The foolish virgins in Jesus' story were the ones who reckoned it would never happen, and failed to make preparations. And then they were left out of the festivities. My father used to claim he had heard of a preacher who concluded his sermon on the Gospel passage we have just heard read by asking his congregation
“Would you rather be with the wise virgins in the light,
or with the foolish virgins in the dark?”
But that is not quite the point! The point is, we need to be ready, as we do not know what will happen.

The Government has been reminding us that we should stock up on tinned food, and so on, in case of emergency.
Here in London things are less likely to be badly disrupted that in many parts of the country, as our power lines are mostly underground, so power cuts are less likely in a bad storm.
Disruptions do happen, of course;
just this week the water to the bathrooms in our block of flats was cut off due to a pump failure.
Luckily the kitchen cold tap is fed from the rising main, so it wasn’t desperate, but it was massively inconvenient.
Still, we are privileged to have safe drinking water on tap,
and even more so to have 24-hour hot water available most of the time.
Power cuts do occasionally happen, too, and it’s sensible to have a torch, a power bank and maybe a battery-operated radio just in case.
And keep our devices charged –
which is basically what the foolish virgins signally failed to do!

But St Paul, from our first reading, reminds us that those who died in Christ will be raised from death. There is hope; we grieve, of course we do, when someone we love dies, from whatever cause. But we believe that they will be with God in heaven, as, indeed, will we some day.

We must and we will remember those who died in war, in any war, for any side,
but we will also remember that we have asked God to be in control of our lives.
So we must be ready for whatever He might ask us to go through.
And always, always be prepared to help make peace.
Amen.