REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY
10 November 2019
9.30am Solemn Requiem
Last Friday, Linda and I went to The Odyssey Cinema to see
the film Judy – its an incredibly well performed bio-pic of the later life of
Judy Garland, and based on Peter Quilter’s play ‘The End of the Rainbow’ which
we saw in London back in 2010. Do go see the film if you get the chance. It’s incredibly moving as it charts the final
months as she desperately clings to stardom in 1968 in a series of concerts at
The Talk of the Town in London – just 6 months as it would turn out, before her
death due to an accidental overdose of barbiturates.
Watching someone fall is never comfortable, but part of the brilliance
of the film is its frequent flashbacks to Garland’s professional beginnings
leading up to and from her role in The Wizard of Oz. Flashbacks to an experience which scarred her mentally and emotionally,
and laid the foundations of her struggles later in life. The manipulation she suffered at the hands of
the studios impacted upon her mental health as an adult and became the constant
shadow to the bright lights of her career.
Its perhaps a surprising way to begin a sermon on Remembrance
Sunday. You might think it a distraction
or an irrelevance. But I think it
resonates with today’s commemoration of those who have died in two world wars –
and also those who lived through them. We rightly remember the fallen. And especially here today we remember the 80
young men who lived in the streets around this church. Those young men in their late teens and early
twenties who left home to play their part in forging a road to a better world
and never came home. Not a yellow brick road, but a road of suffering, hardship, searing
pain and acute loss.
We remember those young men whose names are now illegible on
the Memorial outside, those names that will be heard again out loud as we
gather for the Act of Remembrance at the end of the service. But we need also to remember those who didn’t die. Those who came home – but carried with them
the horror and pain of all they had seen and borne. The dead at least found their rest. The living were tormented still.
If often tell people about Tommy. As a naïve young curate I was automatically
chaplain to the local branch of the Royal British Legion. I went to their monthly meeting and had a
couple of pints with them, and of course the major focus of the year was the
Poppy Appeal and the church service on Remembrance Sunday – for which I was
responsible. Every year, in the run up to Remembrance Sunday, as well as
standing outside Sainsburys in the cold and rain to collect money, Tommy would
take on an extra job. Every year he would lower the flag-pole outside the church,
sand it down and repaint it so that it was brand-spanking new and ready for the
Union Flag on Remembrance Sunday. But the thing I never understood – and if I’m honest the
thing that irked me – was that after all that work and all of that effort, he
never came to the service. After all my work to make the church service appropriate,
dignified and honouring – after all of that he wouldn’t bother to come.
So one day I asked his wife. ‘Why does Tommy do all
this work but then not turn up on Remembrance Sunday? I don’t get it.’ ‘He doesn’t need to come to remember Richard, because
Tommy has never forgotten. Every night he wakes in a cold sweat, or
crying or screaming because of the nightmares he has all these years later.” Flashbacks to an experience which scarred him mentally and emotionally,
and laid the foundations of his struggles later in life….. The dead at least
found their rest. The living, like
Tommy, were tormented still.
As I wrote my notes for this sermon it occurred to be that I
think I may have told you about Tommy before. Well I make no apology for repeating his
story today if I have. I think my
encounter with him will go down as one of the greatest lessons I have ever
learned. In today’s gospel, Jesus makes the bold assertion that God
is the God not of the dead but of the living; the God of Abraham, and Isaac and
Jacob. To be fair it sounds like double-speak. To assert that God
is a God of the living - and then to tie his name to three dead heroes. But of course that misses the point altogether. Jesus is succeeding in outwitting those who try to trip him
up – in this case Sadducees who had no belief in the resurrection. The point is not that God’s name is tied to
the departed, but rather that the departed are tied to him.
That is true for the 80 we will remember today by name, and
countless others whose names we do not know and probably never will. And its true also for those who came home,
and brought their suffering with them. It’s true for Tommy and thousands of
others like him.
God is not a god of the dead but of the living – because in
him and through him, they find life.
Rest eternal grant unto them O Lord; and let light perpetual
shine upon them. Amen.