Remembrance Sunday - 11th November

This remembrance Sunday there will be few congregations, families, or streets where the worship will be led or shared by men and women who were on active service during world war 2, or any other war. What must it have been like in the 1950s when so many people had such a personal connection with the war? In schools, children were frequently taught by men who had known battle and had seen death and destruction at first hand. Places of work and business were populated by de-mobbed soldiers. Young men doing national service, would, no doubt, find themselves in the company of soldiers who had known war first-hand.

Life is very different now and remembrance Sunday is moving from the real to the abstract. This morning most of us are not remembering people that we actually knew who have died in wartime, but we wish to honour the generations who died nevertheless. Talking and reflecting today as I am on something that has not touched me in this personal way I’m mindful that I don’t really know , I mean really know what I’m talking about this morning.

But even though I have no personal memories of world war 2, it is massively present to me and always has been. It shaped my parents’ generation, and so in a way shaped mine too.

If you live in the UK you could leave your house right now and travel to a monument with a list of names on it of young men and women from your community who lost their lives in the two world wars. It’s heartbreaking to read in graveyards and cemeteries the ages of soldiers who died in the wars, the number who died is grievous to us, but the age at which their lives ended makes the horror more intense still. Can we imagine something like that happening now? Can we conceive of all the young men in our locality, in our college, at our place of work, all the men that we see everyday on buses and trains, walking down the street, in pubs and clubs, all being sent off to war?

It’s often said that the men who went to war and never came back ‘laid down their lives’ for their country, for their freedom. But that’s not what happened. The reality is that they answered the call to fight, that they did their duty, but they did not, for the great majority, volunteer to fight – they were subscripted to do so. The decision was taken for them than that they had to fight. There was no alternative in as much as they were ordered to join up, and they would very likely face prison and public shaming for refusing.

I can imagine young men receiving their call-up, full of dread talking to their parents about it,
confiding in them their fear of what they were to go through. I can imagine many young men saying to their parents ‘I don’t want to go, I’m scared’ and their parents hearing their distress, knowing that the danger was real but responding that there was no alternative, they had to go.

Our nation sent its young men into battle, government gave the order and ordinary men and women made the order effective with their assent. In a very real sense the parents of the nation sent their children into battle, knowing that many of them would be sacrificed as a result.

And that’s why the Old Testament reading today is the story of Abraham and Isaac. Of how God tested Abraham’s faith to its very limits by demanding that he sacrifice his precious child’s life: with no explanation of why; and holding out no prospect of making this terrible thing worthwhile or compensated for in some way.

Every parent I know fears more for the safety of their children than they do for themselves. What, I wonder, did the parents of the young men who fought in the two world wars make of this story? They would, I think, have recognised Abraham’s agony. ‘Take me, Lord, take my life, hurt me, maim me, kill me but leave my child alone!’ Isn’t that what we would all say? And parents today will equally be aghast at the notion of choosing death for your offspring in any situation, whether it’s in their cruelest nightmares, the darkest news items or even a story from the Bible.

What are we to make of this story? Can any one of us read even in the Bible about a man who is prepared to kill his child because of a message from God, and find him praiseworthy? Or even sane? Isn’t the kindest thing we can say about Abraham that he was highly delusional – that he was out of his mind?

The Christian philosopher Soren Kierkegaard became obsessed with the story of Abraham and Isaac – it challenged his faith at the deepest level. He could find no intellectual, spiritual or ethical support for Abraham and his willingness to sacrifice his son. What, he wanted to know, was this story telling him about Christianity? It makes no sense! And that, he decided, was the point of it. According to Kierkegaard the story of Abraham and Isaac made it clear that faith in God meant going beyond what seems sensible, rational or even good. The moral of the story, Kierkegaard, said was that faith must transcend the absurd. The story of Abraham and Isaac takes us to the very limits of faith, to explain the full measure, the full Biblical proportion of faith.

Philosophically and theologically speaking I like what Kierkegaard does with the story and where it leads him. Throughout his writings he emphasizes the ‘infinite qualitative distinction between God and man’ which is only right and proper and his philosophy forms a platform used to magnificent effect by the great theologian Karl Barth.

But I think there’s a much more obvious and less intellectual angle to take on the story that is very appropriate on this day as we remember all the young who died in two world wars.
After Abraham has shown himself to be willing to sacrifice his son God lists the blessings which will be his:

The angel of the LORD called to Abraham from heaven a second time
and said, I swear by myself, declares the LORD, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son,
I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies,
and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.


Are these blessings a one-off reward for a unique and outstanding demonstration of faith in God? Or are they a statement of principle, of the blessings that will naturally occur to one who is prepared to make such a sacrifice?

Now I’m not talking here about rewarding a grotesque murder now or at any time. I’m imagining these words of scripture being read by the early Israelites, a people living in dangerous times in which war was never far away. Didn’t they need to make the collective decision, that in some circumstances, for some principles or aims they would be prepared to do what was ghastly and horrific to them, namely to send their beloved children into battle.
I’m talking about the consequences of a society being prepared, or not prepared to sacrifice their children under any circumstances.

The hard nosed calculation is that if your enemies see that you have been prepared to sacrifice your children in this way then they will assume that you will be prepared to do it again – and so you will, hopefully, not have to actually do so. It’s the paradox, to make peace you must prepare for war.

That’s what happens to Abraham. Because he is prepared to sacrifice his son he doesn’t need to. And the list of blessings that will flow to Abraham and his people, the wealth, security and bounty that will be theirs, isn’t this story a way of persuading the Israelites, and now us, that peace and prosperity, security and well-being, will belong to nations who are prepared to make such a terrible sacrifice?

There are some things that matter so much that we should be prepared to sacrifice our lives for them. And there are things that are so precious, so sacrosanct that we must even sacrifice our children to defend them.

And today, we in the UK live in a free and prosperous society, in no small part, thanks to the sacrifice that was made in the war. Could not this story speak to us now in reminding us that the service men and women who lost their lives played the part of Isaac – willing and courageous, but the part of Abraham was played out too, by the older generations who sat in government and in their own families sent their children off to war.

We look back at the horrors of Nazism, of the Holocaust, and say that there was in those times something present in the world so evil, so repellent and so deadly that the sacrifice was necessary - that previous generations were right to take the part of Abraham.

But there have been wars where the story of Abraham and Isaac have been played out for no good reason. How terrible to play the part of Abraham, and how much more terrible to demand the sacrifice needlessly.

Today we remember primarily the men and women who were like Isaac, answering the call of their country, trusting that the sacrifice would not be asked for unless it was necessary.
And we remember too all those people who have sent young people into war and we pray for them. And we pray for those who will take part in the story of Abraham and Isaac this coming year, sending and being sent into battle, into danger and sacrifice.

All those who find themselves in situations where sacrifice is demanded we commend to God. It’s a situation, a prospect, a memory that is so intense that they feel isolated, separated from the rest of us who have never been there. We pray for them this morning and remind them that there is one from whom they can never be separated or isolated, who has known all that they know and who will lead them on into light. That’s the second reading, and I think it’s appropriate to finish by re-reading the words from John 14 in which Jesus comforts his disciple. May these words be powerfully true to all who are affected by sadness today:

Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me.
In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you.
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.
You know the way to the place where I am going.