Today is about
Remembering.
Remembering the
fallen.
Remembering the
wounded and the broken.
Remembering those who
were willing to serve in uniform and stand on the battle lines to defend
something that many of us may not fully comprehend much less understand.
Today we recount the
battles of the past, and the bittersweet glories of places with names like
Kandahar, Kapyong, Juno, Hong Kong, Cassio, Vimy, Passcendale and Yrpes … as we
pause to remember the fallen – those who lie in foreign battlefields far from
the villages and hamlets they once called home, we are also challenge to
balance our pride and our ego as we approach these moments of remembrance …
It is easy to get
caught up in the patriotism of the moment and wrap ourselves in the flag for
God, and Queen and Country, and lose sight of the simple fact that Remembrance
Day is not about the glory of the battle, it is about the horror of the battle
and the quiet almost desperate prayer that echoes across time, that we may
finally learn from our past, and not repeat ad nauseum into the future …
Remembrance Day is
about our living memory … and our enduring hope.
Remembrance Day is
about having the courage to live with that hope that the sacrifices of the past
– the fallen – the broken – the wounded, those forever changed, will help us
find a better way …
The flood of memories
is not about standing proudly like those Jesus was citing in our reading from
Mark – those who stand with their glorious and flashy robes saying “Look at me
… look at how faithful I am … look at how religious I am …” Instead Jesus cites
the woman who quietly and with any ceremony or recognition steps up and offers
herself …
That is the lesson of
remembrance day. To hear the story of the ordinary men and women who put on
uniforms and who in their own opinions ultimately really didn’t do anything
extra-ordinary, but simply dis what was asked.
I remember sitting
with a veteran of Vimy ridge who dismissed the suggestion that his role in the
raging battle of an April morning decades earlier constituted anything heroic …
he was simply a soldier doing what he was ordered, and he was lucky enough to
survive while hundreds of others did not.
Or, another veteran
of a place called Cassio who took pride in saying “I was no hero. While others
were fighting at Juno I was as far away from there as I could be …” his humour
was a counter balance to the dark memories he carried of a long drawn out and
bloody Italian battle six decades earlier …
Neither man, nor any
of the heroes I’ve been blessed to meet in the last twenty years of my ministry
ever stood up and said “Look at me …” Instead on Remembrance Day they quietly
and very proudly wore the tiny red poppy and struggled to stand at attention,
their quivering hand firmly held in a salute at the remembrance of brothers –
literal and figuratively who gave everything they had in service to God, the
King and country on bloody battle fields decades earlier.
The true heroes don’t
look for adulation … they have simply earned it. And our task on days like this
in our action of Remembrance is to honour that willingness to sacrifice … to
honour those who risked so much … to honour those who have never forgotten.
The balancing act we
are called to live is using our memories of the past without being overwhelmed
by them and allowing them to be the place we reside …
A friend and
colleague put it well today when he shared the following prayerful appeal:
Perhaps
today will be the day that Remembrance translates into doing.
Perhaps today is the day we who never went and never fought will finally see the demands we made on generations past and present.
Perhaps today will be the day that we decide that sending future generations to die is our taking their lives for granted and proving ourselves to be unworthy of such sacrifice.
Perhaps today is the day we who never went and never fought will finally see the demands we made on generations past and present.
Perhaps today will be the day that we decide that sending future generations to die is our taking their lives for granted and proving ourselves to be unworthy of such sacrifice.
Perhaps today will be the day that we acknowledge that there is no greater love than to lay our lives down for others and no greater offense than to demand others to take lives on our behalf.
Perhaps today will be the day that we rise up and declare that the insatiable appetite of the grave will find no easy meal amongst our nations.
Perhaps today two minutes of silence will finally be enough for us to actually remember and not repeat the failures that rob our brave sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, friends and neighbours of their humanity or their lives.
The only thing preventing today from becoming such a day is our craven selfishness. (source: rev. john maich)
In our
remembrance today, and in the coming days – may we have the courage to learn
from the past and to recreate the future as God yearns it to be.
May it be so – thanks
be to God … Let us pray …
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