Instead of fading in significance as time goes by, Remembrance Sunday only seems to grow in importance. Against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine and, more recently, the horrible conflict in the Holy Land, marking Remembrance Sunday seems all too relevant to our lives today.
My father fought in the 2nd World War. He was the navigator on a Black Widow bomber and was stationed in the Pacific arena. He and his co-pilot flew 99 missions in all and they were in Pearl Harbour on D-Day. He did not speak often of his wartime experiences and would only occasionally be drawn into telling some of the stories from those years. My mother, on the other hand, had a very different experience of the war. She was based in California and would fly VIPs to various locations in a little Cessna aircraft. Sometimes, she would be asked to fly low over the desert to hunt for escaped prisoners of war, while Native Americans would be tracking them on land. She loved to talk about those days and we would be entranced by her tales.
Perhaps my parents’ very different experiences of the war are not so surprising: my mother had been one stage removed from actual warfare, while my father had been in the thick of it. Being surrounded by death and dying, with the continual threat of death, was something my father did not want to remember.
For us, it is important for us to remember, so that we can acknowledge and express our gratitude for those who gave their lives so that we might live in freedom. An Englishman, John Maxwell Edmonds, fought in the Battle of Kohima in northern India in 1944. It proved to be a key victory for the Allied forces and forced the Japanese army into retreat. Afterwards, Edmonds wrote the now famous epitaph: “When you go home, tell them of us and say, for your tomorrow, we gave our today.”
Dwelling on other people’s sacrifices reminds us to reflect on how we are living our lives, and what effect our lives might have on those who come after us. How are we living and working so that future generations will live in peace and harmony? Knowing what we now know about global warming and climate change, might it be pertinent for us to consider what more we could do so that future generations can live in a healthy world? Although we are not at war, thank God, the state of the future of our planet is a life-threatening crisis that affects us all – and all who will come after us. Do we not owe those who made sacrifices for us the honour of doing what we can to do to best preserve life on earth?
Perhaps there is another way of honouring and remembering. The prophet Isaiah wrote his vision of what the world could be like and of how he believed God wanted it to be. He described a world where there was no more war, no more need for weapons, no more strife. He painted a picture of people living in peace, a deep and abiding peace for everyone. If we believe this is what God wants and is how we are supposed to be living, we might ask ourselves what more we could do so that, one day, it may become a reality.
The Revd Christina Rees