Sermon Sunday 3 August 2014 Lessons Romans 12: 15 21 St Matthew 5: 21 24 One hundred years ago, on 3 rd August 1914, Sir Edward Grey, the British Foreign Secretary said, The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime. The following day, 4 th August, at 11pm our time and midnight in Germany, the British Empire was at war with the German Empire: Britain s ultimatum had run out. In the House of Commons, Sir Edward said, We are going to suffer, I am afraid, terribly in this war, whether we are in it or whether we stand aside. In this month s edition of Life & Work, writing of the commemoration of the Great War, the former Moderator of the General Assembly, Iain Torrance, says There is certainly lamentation for loss, but also a need to confess human pride, violence, impetuousness and greed. The total number of casualties in World War One, both military and civilian, was about 37 million comprising of 16 million deaths and 21 million wounded. Of the 16 million deaths, over 9 million were military personnel and the remainder were civilians. One of the worst battles of all was that at the Somme in a confrontation between 1
the empires of France and Britain and the German Empire. From 1 st July to 18 th November 1916, just four and a half months duration, over 1 million men were killed or wounded. In that time, the French and British advanced six miles. The American historian, Paul Fussell, himself an infantryman in the Second World War, said that the legacy of the Great War was of a society and culture utterly transformed. Fussell said that the war blew away the 19 th century pieties of class, duty and deference and replaced them with a skeptical modern sensibility. 1 The trenches, said Fussell had brought realism to ordinary men, who had grown deaf to Victorian patriotism and the absurd demands of authority. 2 In his book on the First World War, the historian and former infantryman wrote: Every war is ironic because every war is worse than expected. At first it was fun. And then all of a sudden one realised what the infantry was for: it was for killing the maximum number of young men like you. We are indebted to the work of Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves and Wilfred Owen. Perhaps the poem which remains with me is that of Owen having first encountered the work as a teenager. His work, 1 From Ben Macintyre s article in The Times. 2 Ibid. 2
Dulce et Decorum est, is a response to the Roman poet Horace who said it was glorious and seemly to die for one s country. The poem was drafted when Owen was recovering from shellshock at Craiglockhart War Hospital. Drawn from his experience of the trenches, Owen wrote: Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock- kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots But limped on, blood- shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of tired, outstripped Five- Nines that dropped behind. Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; But someone still was yelling out and stumbling, And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime... Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. If in some smothering dreams you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth- corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est Pro patria mori. 3
In the Bible, through their experiences of the Exodus, the many battles fought by David and the Exile, there is much suffering and lamentation. In the Book of Isaiah, the prophet dreamt of a time when swords will be beaten into ploughshares and spears into pruning- knives, and nations shall no longer learn war. In the Book of Lamentations, Jerusalem, once full of people, sits like a widow weeping bitterly in the night with tears on her cheeks, her friends have dealt with her treacherously and have become her enemies. The violent, harsh reality of life is there in the pages of Holy Scripture. In the Old Testament, at least in the earlier writings, there is a sense that trouble, suffering and violence have their origin in God. The prophet Joel wrote: Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming, it is near a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness! In Christianity, our supreme image of God is found in Jesus, the Christ broken on the Cross. For us, God is present in the suffering and only a cold theology would suggest that God put Christ there. The best we 4
can say is that, in all the trouble, suffering and violence of this world, God is present in the suffering. We are extremely prone to violence. It is bizarre when the New Atheists try to argue that religion is the cause of evil and violence in the world. The hard, even unpleasant, truth is that human beings are prone to selfishness and inflicting injury. Britain has been involved in a conflict somewhere in the world in almost every decade since the Second World War. There is violence in the human heart. Violence starts small. Yesterday, I was at Cameron Toll shopping centre and was struck by a number of mothers who dealt with their young children in an emotionally, intellectually and physically violent manner. I have no doubt that the mothers were under stress but it was the humiliation they inflicted or force they used which was shocking. From these small, seemingly publicly acceptable forms of behavior, we have nations prepared to inflict violence on other nations. We are all, I m sure, distressed at what is happening in Gaza, Israel, Syria and the Ukraine. Are we incapable of peace and finding peaceful means for resolving differences? 5
In theology, we must always be cautious about the claims we make of God. In prayers, we must be careful what we ask for. Writing a decade or so before the First World War, Mark Twain penned his War Prayer. It begins in great excitement: a country up in arms, a country at war; in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism. Then, Sunday morning came and the battalions due to leave for the front the next day were present at worship. Of the long prayer, the prayer of intercession, Twain wrote: The burden of its supplication was, that an ever merciful. Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honour and glory At the end of the prayer, a stranger mysteriously appeared in the pulpit standing beside the preacher. The stranger said, I come from the Throne bearing a message from Almighty God. He has heard your prayer and will grant it if you understand its full import. The stranger said, I am commissioned of God to put into words the other part of the prayer that part which the pastor and you in your hearts prayed silently. The stranger said: 6
Listen! O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle: be Thou near them. Go with them to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead..help us to lay waste their homes with a hurricane of fire..help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever- faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen. After the stranger has spoken, there is silence in the congregation. Twain closes the poem, saying: It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said. Through irony, Twain makes his point very powerfully: we must be careful in every prayer, not least in prayers which involve conflict, war and suffering. In all the mess and complexity of war, our politics and the motives of the human heart, Jesus continually calls us back to His suffering love. Often it is in our moments of greatest weakness and failure that we discern the presence of Jesus, the Living, Risen Christ in a manner never before encountered. We must pray for peace, work for peace, honour those who oppose us, seek to understand why they oppose us 7
and, insofar as we can, do not diminish ourselves or the image of Christ within us, however much we are provoked. I think that the only way we can reasonably commemorate 37 million casualties is to stand for a moment in silence. Let us stand. 8