‘EVERY CASUALTY OF WAR WAS AN INDIVIDUAL WHO WAS LOVED AND REMEMBERED BY SOMEONE’ (WINTER 2025)
The Community includes St Peter’s Church in Budleigh Salterton, St Michael’s Church in Otterton, and All Saints Church in East Budleigh, where the Raleigh and Conant families worshipped.
The first thing to recognise is that Remembrance Sunday is not a Christian festival, it is a state occasion where the state church, the church of England, offers its willing support.
It is important to remember that, because we purport to speak, to commemorate, and to represent the war dead, a constituency that stretches far beyond the walls of this religion and nation.
We have been instrumental in framing the national commemorations, particularly as the monarch is also the supreme Governor of the Church of England, and I find I want to defend and extol that position. We are the national church commemorating a solemn national occasion, but I’d like to widen that scope outwards.
We are a Christian church, uniquely able to place the suffering, death and sacrifice of war within a redemptive framework.
That there might be a point to suffering, an outcome that belies the fear, mud, blood and apparent pointlessness of war, is a particularly Christian standpoint.
It is based on the fact that the Messiah we worship was also beaten, humiliated, brutally murdered and entirely innocent. His death was real, apparently point less, but is interpreted as having the greatest result for any death that had ever taken place before or since.
For Christians, the killing of Jesus was a willing self-sacrifice for the sin of the whole world.
His resurrection on Easter Sunday was the most unexpected and gloriously joyful event that meant that all people can inherit eternal life, and the Christian gospel says that “Life”, however it is lived or how it died is not restricted to being lived between our physical birth and death but is lived against an infinite horizon.
So from our viewpoint of being the national church, and from the Christian view point of the universal validity of the sacrifice of Jesus comes our particular contribution on this special day.
Suffering and death is never the final word. War and suffering are painful but contingent. Peace and glory are the final word.
Every single person, whoever they were fighting for, and for whatever reason, is covered by God’s love made concrete in Jesus Christ.
And on the national arena, we as the national church attempt to frame a diverse nation’s thoughts and aspirations using the Christian framework.
We also recognise extreme bravery, courage and valour exhibited by ordinary men and women thrown into the cauldron of war.
And also, of course, remembrance is the meat and drink, or should that be the bread and wine of the church. Today of all days, we remember people’s ultimate sacrifice in wartime, whilst every single Sunday, in fact every single Communion service, the church answers the command of Jesus “Do this in remembrance of me”.
It is an act of remembrance of what Christ did for us that strengthens the church of today.
In similar fashion it is in remembrance of what others did for us in wartime that strengthens us to do what?
At the very least it should tell us that war is a human scandal and that entering into war is a high-risk strategy that all of us should think twice about when even the rumour of war is mooted.
Whilst bravery and courage are some of the outcomes of human beings placed under extreme duress, the sheer numbers of people killed in the two world wars and all subsequent and current wars should make us think twice or three times before endangering the lives of those who are charged with fighting on our behalf.
So many thoughts, words, and concepts thrown up by Remembrance Sunday; we can talk about lessons learned, but in the end the one last and greatest thing we remember is that every casualty of war was an individual who was loved and remembered by someone.
A human being, who Christians maintain was also loved and remembered by God.
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