On Armstice Day,
my son was standing observing a minutes silence in school.
On the way home asked mem, in that straightforward Childish way,
that is so disarming:
‘why did they do it’? X2
I wonder what your answer to that question is?
For many the answer is
They died for our freedom…
As in the Veteren’s badge- Freedom isn’t free.
We are conscious that most of the service women and men who were just at the last service this morning, served not in the C20th but in conflicts in the C21st…. Siera Leone, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and in the Levant.
At really grave cost to many.
(At my conference, two soldiers standing, what was turning over in their mind?)
Currently many are engaged in actively supporting the Ukrainian Armed Forces, training 19K in the UK right now.
(three weeks and they’re back defending their own homes, streets, families)
I wonder then, if, in our culture, whether the character of that freedom
that was bought at such cost
has been widely misunderstood.
What we exercise, more often than not- is freedom- from.
What was bought was freedom- to.
Let me explain…
Freedom- from
is a kind of liberty that seeks freedom of choice
and individual expression above all else…
which, by extension,
avoids the that restrictive duty and commitment
that cramp and demand
that service to neighbour which, Christians believe,
is so essential to build the ties that bind us together
and to deliver us from evil.
Our liberal democracies are, or were, fast becoming places
where the only things that do bind us together are the fear of death
and the love of shopping.
And thatt such a conception of freedom has been, for some time,
the dominant one in our society
isn’t hard to see when you look at the kind of politics
and the kind of political choices that we seem to be making as a society
However, I put it to you, that liberty that is ONLY or merely Freedom From,
in the end, builds nothing but gaps …gaps between us,
suspicion around us
and ultimately division among us.
Without investment in the cement that binds our society together
it is becoming more unequal, more polarised, more shrill.
It is a sign of our times that spirituality has become decidedly individualistic.
But that is not how most Christians have conceived the scope of their faith.
Just as today’s Gospel anticipates a falling away of institutions,
as stone breaks apart from stone, and conflict emerges,
so St Paul urges Christians outlines a different way to be
a different use of Liberty so that things will hold together.
Paul urges his followers to act decidedly differently than those around them:
He, himself, boasts, that “with toil and labour he worked night and day, so that he might not burden any of them”,
and he urges his sisters and brothers in Thessalonica:
do not be weary in doing what is right.
For St Paul- and in the Christian tradition throughout its development-
freedom is always FREEDOM TO
freedom to give back, freedom to build, to invest, to support, to compete, to contest, to create, to provoke, care, serve, sacrifice, to do ones duty- freedom TO LOVE our neighbours as ourselves.
This more positive, more meaningful- this deep and challenging conception of Freedom…
THAT I suggest- is the intended legacy of those whom remember today.
THAT- makes a good answer to my son. A vision of human choice in the service of others that can be for him, and for us, a Christian vision.
Not jingoism… or easy nationalism.
No- a genuinely Christian loadstone.
A guiding light. A compass point.
The freedom to get involved in our common life.
The Freedom to commit to the common good.
The freedom to volunteer time and money
The freedom to bear in ourselves the cost of love.
The freedom to be our brothers keeper.
To love neighbour as ourselves.
This, I suggest- is actually why we hold these services on Remembrance Sunday and, is, largely, why people served and sacrificed.
And is why it is WORTH remembering
And being chastened and instructed by their Christian example.
As the veteran’s pin badge rightly declaims:
Freedom isn’t free.
Any liberty worth the name remains a costly goal.
It is the harder, restricting, and yet wholly necessary
calling of each of us
to build that up, to nurture and sustain it
to guard over it
lest we complacently forget its value and cost.
And, yes, this is very deeply connected with our Christian Hope and, indeed, with this Christian Sacrament of Remembering Christ in the Eucharist.
That sometime President of West Germany Richard Von Weizacker
(an unlikely leader- the son of a war criminal…)
said, once, that we must continue to look truth straight in the eye-
“Seeking to forget just makes the exile longer”– he said
“The Secret of Redemption lies in remembrance”
We who call ourselves Christians, who are offered Christ’s wisdom,
and hear this morning, Paul’s encouragement
should offer our remembrance, asking again of Him-
in whose service is perfect freedom-
the wisdom to remember together
of what our liberty consists
and for purpose it was won.
As we celelebrate this memorial of our redemption
Doing THIS in remembrance of HIM
Let us ask for the grace to live in such a way
that we use or liberty positively FOR others.
and ask for the the forbearance to show OTHERS
the true character of this greatest of gifts.
AMEN
