Lord God Almighty, who has made
all peoples of the earth for thy glory, to serve thee in freedom and peace:
Grant to the people of our country a zeal for justice and the strength of
forbearance, that we may use our liberty in accordance with thy gracious will;
through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy
Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen
In Flanders Fields the poppies
blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the
sky
The larks, still bravely
singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns
below.
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset
glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we
lie
in Flanders Field.
Take up our quarrel with the
foe;
To you from failing hands we
throw
The torch; be yours to hold it
high.
If ye break faith with us who
die
We shall not sleep, though
poppies grow
In Flanders Field.
Colonel John McCrae, a Canadian
physician’s famous words are a good starting point today as we honor and
remember those who have fought and died during the wars of the last century.
We are particularly grateful
this morning to those who were members of the Allied forces that fought the
last two world wars and have always come to the aid of each other in places
like Korea, Vietnam, and now in Iraq.
McCrae’s moving poem reminds us
not only of the horrors and devastation of war. (He was moved to write the poem
after presiding at the funeral of a former student when a military chaplain was
not available.)
But we also remember that
whether we stand on Flanders field or on the beaches of Normandy and see the
lines of crosses and occasional stars of David that dot the landscape, the Dead
surround us and their sacrifice continues to call us to be vigilant when it
comes to protecting freedom for the people of this world.
There will of course come a
time, when the Lord will return to claim all of us who continue to struggle in
this earthly life.
This is part of the idea that
the writer of Micah is trying to capture when he describes the house of the
Lord being established in the highest mountains, and watching as peoples flow
to it and many nations come to it.
People come so they may, “that
the God of Jacob may teach us his ways and we may walk in his paths….they shall
beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war
anymore….
Micah’s vision of peace came
roughly six hundred years before the birth of Jesus. Micah’s times were little
different from ours. There were empires that rose and fell and sacrificed their
young men on the battlefields of this world in the pursuit of power and
conquest.
Yet Micah’s aspirations for
humanity are not ones of a triumphal conqueror. He could have just as easily
said, I hope the Lord returns, and makes all the nations of the world bow down
at the throne of Israel and that the Lord will crush those enemies that refuse
to acknowledge who God truly is.
Yet his hopes are that the cycle
of human violence will one day end and that all people will be able to put
aside their hatred and learn to live together in peace.
This is not a peace of
compulsion but a peace that has arisen from a genuine knowledge of what the
Lord requires from all of us as members of a world that has been created in
God’s image.
This is not always easy
especially for those of us who love peace and have a strong desire that all
wars should end.
At the same time, as citizens of
this fallen world and as a people who hold dearly to the ideals of freedom and
liberty for all God’s people, we must always be willing to persevere in the
struggle against the forces of darkness that seek to enslave humanity to the
false gods of totalitarianism.
Part of gathering this day is to
remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice for the presentation of our
freedom but to also remember the familiar words of Winston Churchill when
confronted by the Nazi menace of the last century.
As he watched the fall of France
and the evacuation of Dunkirk, Churchill could have easily thrown in the towel,
made his peace with Hitler, but on June 4, 1940, in Parliament he used the
following well-known words to remind his people that the struggle against evil
would never be extinguished.
I have, myself, full confidence
that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best
arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once
again able to defend our island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to
outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone.
At any rate that, is what we are
going to try to do. ….The British Empire and the French Republic, linked
together in their cause and in their need, will defend to the death their
native soil, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their
strength. Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous states
have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious
apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail.
We shall go on to the end, we
shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight
with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our
island, whatever the cost maybe, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight
on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we
shall fight in the hills and we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do
not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and
starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British
fleet, would carry on the struggle, until in God’s good time, the new World,
with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of
the old.
Churchill’s words to us this day, remind us that we must continue to be good stewards of the sacrifices that others have made in the past.
Churchill would not have
countenanced any kind of accommodation with tyranny, and we should continue to
be wary of those who may come to us in the present day seeking to make a utopia
on this earth.
It has been tried many times
before in the previous centuries from Russia to Germany to Korea to Vietnam and
to Cambodia, and the loss of innocent human life is always enormous as evil men
and women seek to put out the flame of liberty.
We are indeed blessed this day
that so many men and women from the Allied nations represented here by all of
you were willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to insure that that flame of
democracy and our civilization would not go out.
On the fortieth anniversary of
the D-Day invasion at Normandy, the late President Reagan put the sacrifice of
others in the following way as he himself stood on the shores of Normandy.
The men of Normandy had faith
that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity,
faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the
next. It was the deep knowledge—and
pray God we have not lost it—that there is a profound moral difference between
the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were
here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt
your cause. And you were right not to doubt it.
We too, who honor the memory of
those that came before us should not doubt their sacrifice either on this
Remembrance Day.
While remembering all the time
that as the threat of war passes away our task as Christians continues to be as
a people that seek reconciliation and peace for all the nations of this world.
In the his second inaugural address,
President Lincoln looked out on a nation torn apart by four years of brutal
bloodshed and violence during the American Civil War.
He could have looked
pessimistically at what the future held but as someone who trusted in God’s
greater providence he called his nation and his people to a deeper
understanding of what it meant to fight for your ideals but also to not lose
sight of our duty to love again once the sword had been sheathed.
His words are still worth
quoting today almost one hundred and fifty years later. “With malice toward
none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see
the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the
nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his
widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and
lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
Our task today remains still to
seek that peace which will insure the freedom of all God’s creatures never
forgetting that charity must guide our actions as we seek to navigate the
continuing dangers of life as citizens of this world and as we prepare one day
to join those that we honor today in the life that is to come.
Let us pray:
Almighty God, we commend to your gracious care and keeping all the men and women of our armed forces at home and abroad. Defend them day by day with your heavenly grace; strengthen them in their trials, and temptations; give them courage to face the perils which beset them; and grant them a sense of your abiding presence wherever they may be; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen