Remembrance Sunday 10 11 24
FIRST READING: Micah 4:1-5
NEW TESTAMENT: I Corinthians 15.50-end
GOSPEL: Luke 24. 1-9
Today the second Sunday of November we observe the Remembrance Sunday being the Sunday nearest to Remembrance Day on the 11th November the anniversary of the end of the hostilities of the First World War at 11 a.m. in 1918.
Remembrance Sunday gives us an opportunity to pay our respects to all those brave soldiers who have laid their life for the safety and security of our nation in the First World War and we also take this opportunity to remember and recognize all the soldiers who have laid down their lives in various wars.
We take this time to revisit the stories of great soldiers of extraordinary courage. Chrissie Lacey the Anglican RAF Chaplain writes,
It’s important to remember those before us, to honour and learn from them. Here’s the story of Flying Officer Cyril Barton.
Cyril Barton was motivated by his values, to join the RAF in 1941. He had grown up with a rhythm of faith in his life, and this was evident in his leadership of his eight-man Halifax bomber crew. A rule of no swearing during the flight to enable an attitude of calmness; on the ground cheekiness and fun displayed his deep-founded joy and the prayers he would say by his bed at night, a discipline which he grappled with in the face of the danger and difficulty of war, but he clung on to the ritual as it brought him hope and peace. Cyril’s conviction in his identity as loved by God, enabled him to be calm, caring, content and courageous.
On the night of 30 March 1944, during a bombing raid to Nuremburg, Cyril’s courage was tested. With a damaged aircraft en route to the target, three crew mistakenly bailing out, a huge loss of fuel, no communications and a navigator no longer on board, Cyril made it the 800 miles home. Avoiding houses and ensuring his remaining crew were in the safest crash positions Cyril belly-landed in a field… the impact killed Cyril, but his crew survived.
Cyril was posthumously awarded a VC ‘for an act of “unsurpassed courage and devotion to duty”’. Cyril’s values and certainty in his identity were his motivation. He writes about it in his final letter to his mother.
‘All I can say about this is that I’m quite prepared to die, it holds no terror for me… I have the sincere conviction as I write, a force outside myself and my brain, that I have not trusted in vain. All I am anxious about is that you and the rest of the family will also come to know Him.’
It is a quite perplexing, that in such a beautiful world, we have this dreadful reality of war. We have to struggle with this reality and have to live with this reality of war. However, we salute all the soldiers who courageously and with character come forward to protect their nations.
We also realise that soldiers are not just merely for war but the amazing skills they offer our society by doing variety of things to restore peace and order, in saving lives during natural disasters and all other support.
Science and technology has opened up for us a new world of advancement in understanding of science, medicine and communication but sadly it has also made life more dangerous as wars are now fought more fiercely and more dangerously and wars have to be fought with unknown and unseen enemies.
On this remembrance Sunday we have to remind ourselves that the value of the freedom that we cherish. People can take it for granted. We would not be living a life of freedom if not for those thousands of brave soldiers who endured such a lot of trouble, leaving their families and friends and fought battles in most difficult circumstances.
There were many people who suffered post traumatic stress and died in asylums and we remember them today.
Jesus said there is no love greater than the love when one gives gives up their lives for the sake of their friends.
The words of Paul gives us comfort that death is not the end their sacrifices and good deeds are not wasted.
The Kohima Epitaph:
When you go home
tell them of us and say,
for your tomorrow
we gave our today.