SERMON BY THE VICAR, REMEMBRANCE/ALL SOULS 2025

Today, we are commemorating Remembrance Sunday, established at the end of the Second World War to be the nearest Sunday to Armistice Day, November 11th. We salute and honour those who have died for our country on active service in our armed forces, right up to today. I can tell you first hand we are so privileged and fortunate to be protected by the amazing men and women of our armed forces. But today we remember the fallen. This is an act of remembering. We hold in the loving embrace of God all our loved ones, whom we see no longer. The act of remembering, whether it be in the special circumstances of honouring the dead who die in war, or own loved ones who have died, either peacefully in their beds at the end of a long life, or in tragic circumstances where life has been cut short, is the same. So, what are we doing when we remember? And how is remembering in this liturgical context different from a wistful nostalgia, where we long for things and people who have gone from us? I want to begin to answer that by using two words – one English, one Greek. The English word is – re-membering and the Greek is anamnesis.

The English word is re-membering, pronounced as two words, hyphenated. To re-member is literally to put things back together, joining up the pieces to make them whole. It is the opposite of dis-membering. We see the dis-membered in the innocent dead of war be that in Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine, or any of the other places of hot conflict in our globe. So, when we join up the pieces, we see the whole picture, and if we can say that of our lives, we are doing pretty well. The ability to do that is an act of-re-membering, putting together the pieces. Those who have lived on earth and do so no longer form an integral part of that picture. They have formed and shaped us in many and often unseen ways. The other current happening which calls for re-membrance, putting together the whole picture, is of course the refugee and migrant crisis, together with the testosterone fuelled war mongering in much of the planet. For our own country, one of the most challenging things which I experienced recently was sitting between two Chelesea pensioners at a dinner – both heroic veterans. Both said if they were asked to fight for their country now, they would not as they saw nothing to fight for. This is the lack of any overarching narrative and only the magnified me me me as the only narrative – and of course a narrative which begins and ends with me is called a nightmare.

Hence it is the refugee and the migrant who challenge that narrative of me and me alone. The UNHCR currently estimates that around 60 million people globally have been uprooted by war, violence, persecution, poverty, and the effects of climate change. This year, our religious leaders have continued to point out this bigger picture of re-membering to politicians. Pope Leo did this in his exhortation Dilex Te , as did Patriarch Bartholomew at the White House and at the Council for Foreign Relations in Washington. In that September address in Washington DC, Patriarch Bartholomew urged a return to faith as an anchor in the modern world and the path to reconciliation (or re-membering) between individuals and nations. He reminded politicians that (as Nietzsche said) if God is dead, everything is permitted. He went on to say that to be fully human is to know, love, and delight in God and to share in God’s life, as far as created beings may, and to protect the human dignity of others. We become fully human, therefore, when we re-member and therefore fully connect with others. The human experience of bereavement also defines and connects us to others as we become fully human. As the late Monarch Queen Elizabeth II said, “Grief is the price of love.”  

So, it is bereavement which connects the reality of those who die in armed conflict with the day-to-day reality of the death of those we love. Scripture reminds us “in the midst of life, we are in death.”  As we know, death can come peacefully at the end of a long life, or it may come painfully, suddenly, violently, and senselessly. This makes the pain of bereavement even sharper, and actually if we are honest, it never goes away. Time, we know is a great healer, and memories fade, but the reality of human bereavement is one which the Christian faith has always taken seriously and acknowledged. The orthodox Christian belief in the continuation of life after death gives it another perspective, but it doesn't take away the experience of pain and loss. It is not for nothing that the Litany of our Church prays for deliverance from “violence, murder, and dying unprepared.”  All of us pray for the grace to prepare properly for our deaths, and it is part of the privilege and duty of the priest to accompany people in this, their final earthly journey. So, we bring before God our own experience of bereavement and we offer it to the wider perspective of the healing love of Jesus Christ. Later in this service, there will be an opportunity to light a candle in memory of loved ones and place it symbolically on the cross. The cross, as more candles are lit, becomes then a cross of light.

This is the perspective which we bring to this service of remembrance today, which brings me to the second word, anamnesis. Christian remembering is rooted in what is called in Greek anamnesis. Anamnesis is very different from memory, and nostalgia is totally alien to it. Anamnesis is at the heart of Christian and Eucharistic theology. In anamnesis, the thing remembered becomes dynamically present to the here and now, as linear time falls away. We do not simply remember Jesus Christ as a historical figure, but Jesus Christ in this Eucharistic theology of anamnesis becomes dynamically present now in the Eucharistic assembly, you, and me, and in the bread and the wine. This is fantastically freeing, and it is the perspective which we bring to all our experience of bereavement and memory as we commemorate those who die in war, and all the faithful who have gone before us. We are set free to enjoy, in this sense, heavenly communion. Again, the symbol for this is the cross in light. By tradition, it was the Emperor Constantine who saw the cross in light as a pointer to his new life in Christ. The Cross in light was accompanied by the Latin words In hoc signo vinces – “By this sign conquer.”  You will find this cross in light with the same motto on the kneelers of this church. The cross in light is symbolically at the root of our prayer.

So, allow the liturgy of today to do its own work. Restrained liturgical words and symbols will do a far more effective work than hundreds of words of any preacher. So today on this Remembrance Sunday, we hold in the silent love of God those who die for their country in war, together with all those we have loved and see no longer. There is a tombstone in Cornwall which proclaims, “Where you are, I once was. Where I am, you will be.”   This reminds us that our destinies are bound together through the loving embrace of God in Jesus Christ as we race towards the grave. For it is Jesus Christ who has gone before all of us, though death to Resurrection, which enables us to pray in the words of the Russian Kontakion for the Dead which we will sing later, “ and weeping o’er the grave, we make our song.  Alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia.”