Remembrance Sunday
Remembrance Sunday
Welcome!
We know not everyone who is part of Westwood Church is able to be in church on Sunday morning however, we thought it would be good to offer some excerpts from the Sunday morning service. Where we can, we offer parts of the service in text and audio, whichever works best for you. If you want to plug in headphones to your computer, tablet or mobile phone now is a good time to do it ! If you want to offer some comment or feedback just use the comment box at the end of this post.
Your Weekly Church Notices
Scripture
Luke 20: 27 – 38
Psalm 9: 9 – 14
Praise – The King of Love
Prayers
For ever and ever, Lord God. That is Your promise to us. A promise made before time began. A promise kept until beyond eternity. A promise that brings us here today. Because forever starts today.
It rose with the first glimpse of dawn. It breathed in the stirring of the morning air. It sang in the waking chorus of creation. And it lives in all of us because You, in Your goodness, have made it so.
This moment in time, God, is nothing in the grand scale of Your awesome plan.
But it is our opportunity to recognise that every second, of every minute of every hour, of every day is everything, because of Your limitless love.
We praise all that You are, Creator God. We stand amazed at all that You give and we celebrate Your faithfulness to us in our failure to appreciate the price of Your promises and the cost of Your creativity.
When You created the world, You presented it to us as perfect. A place of growth and fruitfulness; but we misused it and left it broken and disjointed. When You breathed life into humanity You chose and cherished us. But we broke away from Your gentle arms and dismissed Your love.
When You came to us, You wept with us, You suffered for us and You gave up Your all for us. But we forgot the vastness of Your sacrifice and took it for granted. We cannot fathom the scale and the nature of Your forgiveness yet still we seek it and need it.
And still, You offer it.
For ever and ever, God. That is Your promise as proclaimed in Your Son, Jesus Christ. So here today, we proclaim ourselves a forgiven people, refreshed by Your grace and ready to serve You. We proclaim ourselves forever people.
Committed to sharing in Your work. We proclaim ourselves Your people,
now and always.
Hear us as we join in the words of the Lord’s Prayer saying…
Our Father who art in Heaven Hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil, for thine is the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory forever. Amen.
Address
Much of what I say today is a looking back, because we are not always aware of the traditions that have called us together on this day at this time, to do and say what we do and say, on Remembrance Sunday. Tradition has a habit of becoming blind unless we can see it in all its fullness and allow it to illumine our path into the future. Remembrance is to take the past and make it a present significance.
The first Armistice Service took place on 11th November 1919 at the Cenotaph in London. Events throughout Great Britain in market squares, and prominent places within communities, replicated that service.
There had already been a victory parade in 1919, at which a plaster Cenotaph had been designed and erected by Sir Edward Lutyens, which was planned to be demolished afterward. It was literally weeks before the anniversary of the end of the Great War, on 25th October that clergy, politicians and the King began to consider whether there should be any official, or public event, to mark the anniversary of the end of the Great War.
After much debate and compromise, it was decided to hold a silence of two minutes, which was primarily for the benefit of the widows, orphans and survivors. The Prime Minister, Lloyd George, wanted a secular service, but the Archbishop of Canterbury won his case and persuaded the committee, that prayers, hymns and lessons would be appropriate.
At The Cenotaph service people gathered for what was to become known as “The Silence”. No matter where they were, people stopped and The Silence seeped into souls of those who stood and wept and remembered. After the noise and clamor and chaos of war two minutes of silence stood in rather sharp contrast. Silence brought healing. The Silence had caught the imagination of the people and would be repeated. It was one of the ways that the population used, to slowly and deliberately come to terms with all that they had been through.
By the end of the Great War, there were over one hundred thousand missing soldiers, whose bodies had not been found or could not be identified. The government had decided to bury those soldiers’ remains in, or near, the battlefields, which meant that there was an absence of graves in Britain. Many British people could not afford to visit a grave abroad, even if there was one to visit.
In 1920 the “Unknown Warrior” was buried in Westminster Abbey on 11th November. You may find the story of the “Unknown Warrior” a little difficult to stomach but if nothing else it reveals the desperate need for people to remember and redeem something dignified out of chaotic and desperate suffering. Six corpses one from each of the six main battlefields (Ieper, the Somme, Cambrai, the Aisne, the Marne and Arras) were exhumed and one was chosen by a blindfolded officer. The body was then placed in a coffin of oak from Hampton Court Palace and returned to Britain on HMS Verdun. The twelve pallbearers were the Generals, Field Marshalls, Admirals and Air Marshall of the Armed Services and one hundred Victoria Cross holders lined the nave. It was then interred with soil from the six battlefields. The Congregation was mainly widows and mothers.
The grave of the Unknown Warrior became a personal and very real symbol to families of their son’s resting place. The strength of this symbol resulted in people from all over the country descending on London and flooding Whitehall with flowers. According to a report in the Daily Mirror Newspaper, on 15th December, there was at that time still a queue to lay flowers at the Cenotaph, which reached seven miles long.
In Scotland, the National War Museum in Edinburgh Castle became a place of pilgrimage for Scottish people. It contains the names of everyone who died in the War and was built in the mid 1920s. The numbers who visited in the first few years were so great that the rough stone floor was worn smooth.
The author Rudyard Kipling lost his only son at Loos in 1915. Kipling never really came to terms with his son’s death and part of his way of trying to deal with it was his involvement with the Imperial War Graves Commission, which was later to become the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. As one of Britain’s most famous authors, he was involved in thinking about the symbolism and wording which was given to memorials, gravestones and the whole set up of graveyards abroad after the Great War. Kipling was a committed Christian and his biggest contribution to the Imperial War Graves Commission was his suggestions that the Stones of Remembrance in the graveyards should be inscribed with the biblical phrase from Ecclesiasticus 44:14, ‘Their Name Liveth Forevermore’; and the gravestones of unknown soldiers should read ‘Known Unto God’. He also chose the inscription, which went onto the Cenotaph, which reads, ‘The Glorious Dead’. Yet despite his involvement with the Commission, he was clear about the futility of the Great War. One of his most famous quotes was, ‘If they should ask us why we died, tell them that our Fathers lied’.
From 1919, there was a growing habit within the Churches to combine an Armistice service at the town square with the worship of God in the local Church on the Sunday following. Churches even worked ecumenically, which was not always welcomed or encouraged by some Church leaders. The service at the Cenotaph on that first November 11th in 1919 included Jewish and Muslim faith representatives. As the 1920s and 1930s progressed Remembrance Sunday was set as part of the life and worship of the church.
At the outbreak of the Second World War, it was recognised that an Armistice Silence was not appropriate during wartime. The practice of Armistice ceased and for a number of years it was something acknowledged, but not adhered to as a form of ritual as it had been in the past. After the Second war there was a debate as to whether another date should be chosen to remember those who had died during the Second World War, but it became clear that 11th November still held such a powerful place in people’s hearts that it could not be superseded. In 1946 it was decided to recommence holding a service at the Cenotaph, but on the Sunday closest to Armistice and rename it Remembrance Sunday.
Twenty years ago, and even less it was not uncommon for conversations to take place as to whether Remembrance was an event that had had its day. But wars have not ceased and suffering has not ceased. It is clear that young people are serving and dying and living with the long-term effects of their service, if not here then in communities and nations that we hear of in our news reports. Remembrance is not about a war long ago; it is about now. It is about our failings as human beings; for when the talking stops, the killing starts and when the killing stops the talking starts. And someday we will learn once and for all that we cannot simply kill our way out of the problems humanity faces. Remembrance is deeply rooted in the Jewish and Christian faith where it means ‘to bring to present significance’. Remembrance is about bringing the sacrifice of everyone affected by war to present significance. We are only too aware of the dead; but we must always remember the widows and widowers, the children and those who have survived conflict and live with the effects of it each and every day.
Praise – I vow to thee my country
Prayers for Others
Hear us now as we offer our prayers of thanksgiving for all the good in our lives.
On this day, we hold with gratitude the service of those who are peacemakers
in their service of our country.
We are grateful for a vision that will hold the darker forces of our humanity in check with an ethos of cooperation, harmony and mutual respect.
We pray for the dedicated service of our armed forces in all the generations,
remembering especially those who still remain with us from the Second World War.
We thank You for their testimony which reminds us of the tragedy of conflict.
Help us to hear it even as we honour the sacrifices made in search of the good.
On this day when we are drawn together from many backgrounds,
and with faith flickering, strong, or with no faith,
we thank You that there are times and causes
around which we can all rally for the common good.
Help us more often to find that common ground, and to work through our differences. May the example of Jesus, His boundary-crossing life, His open-hearted embrace of all peoples, be the inspiration for our weary and wounded world.
We give thanks for the people who look at our world and dream dreams of what could be.
We pray for the fixers: for the people who take the dreams and make them reality…
So, we hold before You Lord those who are our leaders, praying for tenacity, energy, and an open-eyed, open-hearted vision for our communities and the world….
On this day of remembrance, may our remembering be for new beginnings, so that lives lost are the foundations of new worlds. May Your forgiveness be our forgiveness. God of the cross and the empty tomb, God of the road to Emmaus
and the breakfast on the shore; You have shown us in Jesus the way that is beyond death, help us to rest in the confidence of new light and life, to trust that those we have loved and lost have returned to You, where You wait for us in the mystery of eternal life.
May our prayers rise to You like incense,
God our Maker, our Saviour and Sustainer.
Amen
Praise – Eternal Father strong to save
The Grace
And now… May the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God and the Fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you and all whom you love, now and for evermore. AMEN.