'Quanta of Remembrance'
Sermon preached in St Salvator's Chapel, St Andrews on 13th November 2011 by The Venerable John Green
You can imagine that although I’ve had some memorable conversations with sailors in 20 years or so of ministry with the Royal Navy, most are probably best not re-told from the pulpit! But, in preparing for today one conversation stuck in my mind: a chat when a nice lad but not the sharpest knife in the box told me how he understood all about quantum theory.
Now, I don’t know about you, but for me quantum physics isn’t exactly something you understand in the ordinary use of the term; like the innate and intuitive grasp we have of the everyday world in which we live. Modern physics gives us pictures of how the world behaves at scales much smaller than everyday life – that’s quantum physics – and much bigger – that’s cosmology. Both these pictures are bizarre: at the vanishingly small scales of quantum theory basic concepts like speed and location start to break down, things at once behave like particles and waves, and even notions of reality and possibility blur together. And on the largest of scales our understanding of space and time merge together in a way that challenges concepts such as the idea of ‘now’, we encounter ideas such as the fabric of space-time itself expanding and the notion of space and time being warped by gravity. In trying to make sense of how the universe behaves, you might say that modern science shows that size is everything – or rather, scale and context is.
What has this to do with remembrance? Well, I want to put it to you that the world of war and conflict is every bit as bizarre and counter-intuitive as quantum theory when you try to understand it from the comfortable viewpoint of everyday life. For me remembrance isn’t simply a matter of recalling lists of names or catalogues of events – it’s also about trying to appreciate the alien world of armed conflict and the light it throws on being human.
In a small way I’ve experienced something of this– I was chaplain of the aircraft carrier HMS ARK ROYAL at the start of the campaign against Saddam Hussein’s forces in Iraq. I remember my world view starting to shift very subtly as the possibility of conflict approached. Subconscious convictions, such as a trust in the honesty of a democratic state and the belief our forces would only be deployed on the side of right, began to permeate my very perception of how things were. A rational corner of my mind was rather uneasy about the politics behind British Forces being sent into the Gulf and Iraq. But it was overruled by an absolute sense of rightness of being there with my ship’s company in whatever we had to face; and I remember, with unsettling clarity, the feeling of being prepared to die with my friends and comrades.
History shows how easily war distorts and warps perceptions, particularly of ‘the enemy’. Propaganda and experience both contribute, but there are more than enough examples of opponents being dehumanised and/or demonised – made less than human or epitomes of evil – thus overcoming the natural human reluctance to kill, seriously injure or even torture. And it doesn’t just happen to nasty people: righteous anger at the loss of a friend all too easily and naturally translates into unquestioning hatred – a hatred that seems perfectly natural and reasonable in the unfamiliar landscape of war. War warps notions of right wrong, of what is and isn’t reasonable. It can seem right and necessary for lifelong friends to become the fiercest of enemies, for young boys scared literally witless to be summarily executed as cowards and for prisoners to be tortured or abused.
Is it right to remember the sacrifice of those killed in war? Yes it is. Is it right to be proud of extraordinary exploits of bravery, heroism and ingenuity? Of course it is. Is it right to celebrate bonds of comradeship that remain undiminished by time or even death? How can it not be? But although the desire to serve one’s nation or protect the innocent might be noble, war, even what you might call a necessary or just, is never noble, but tragic and sordid: at best a necessary and regrettable evil in an imperfect world.
Warfare is a landscape in which ordinary people do unexpected and extraordinary things, many of them good but some of them bad. And no matter how black and white the propaganda might appear not all atrocities are committed by one side and acts of heroism by the other. And if it’s right, as I’ve said, to remember the sacrifice made by so many, then it’s also right to try to appreciate what they lived through and died in the midst of.
Sometimes facing the realities of war can be very hard, and the temptation to find a more bearable way of speaking about it almost irresistible. After the First World War, British society reeled as it tried to make sense of the horrendous and questionable losses of men in the trenches. Memorials spoke of The Glorious Dead and well-meaning hymn writers likened the death of soldiers to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
But it’s no disrespect to the dead or a lessening of the debt we owe them to observe that virtually all of them would have preferred to be amongst the ‘glorious living’ or that many of them died crying and messing themselves caught between the alternative of an enemy bullet or one from our own side. We do them no justice at all if we glorify or ennoble the hell in which many of them fell, or make it out that they wanted to lose their lives. Their sacrifice is all the more precious because they had lives to live and families to return to. If we want to pay fit and lasting tribute to those who gave their lives then we need to take seriously the true nature and cost of war as well. But if we also want to build a world worthy of their sacrifice, we need a vision to takes us beyond the wreckage of the battlefield.
But perhaps even within the sordidness of war we can see a glimmer of hope and an idea of what this vision might be like:
“Some day you may have to lead men into battle and ask them to do their duty, and you will do it through love.” So began a short talk on leadership delivered by a General to Army Officer Cadets in Sandhurst some forty years ago. He went on to tell the cadets that they must always put the needs of those in their charge before their own, and concluded his talk: “... and through love for you and for one another they will be the best soldiers the world has ever seen.”
Those serving in the Forces, particularly through times of war, will all have experienced extraordinarily tight bonds of comradeship – so tight that using the word ‘love’ is no exaggeration. It’s often said of those who die in war that they give their lives for Queen (or king) and country, or for the folks back home. They don’t: they do it for their mates, their comrades in arms. It might be to protect them, or not to let them down or even to die in their stead – but it is for them that they die. In fact for those fighting, the world of Queen and country, of family and friends can seem light years away from the strange world they’re living in. But through the relationships they have with their comrades they give themselves to something far beyond the individual
The two readings we heard this morning speak of a world as strange and alien as anything quantum physics or the battlefield can conjure up. They speak of the strange realm of the kingdom of God – how things are when God is in charge. And to us they sound not only strange but even ludicrous and unjust, especially the reading from the Gospel of St Matthew. What they’re about is a stark clash of cultures and ideologies.
There is an idea that Christianity is about being a do-gooding prude or believing a package of abstract, outdated and obscure doctrines – or both; something entirely personal, private and irrelevant. But you couldn’t be more wrong. Christianity is essentially practical and is about relationships rather than abstract ideas. When Jesus was asked what the most important commandment was he said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and with all your strength; and love your neighbour as yourself.”
Christianity is about the vision of a common life, a world order in which the nations are not at enmity with one another, nor even simply co-exist but who share a deep and lasting peace resting in God. And just as quantum physics makes some astounding statements about physical reality so Christianity does about the nature of life and society. It challenges the idea that the world can be made stable or that real and lasting peace can be established by military force or overwhelming power – a challenge that history also supports. Counter-intuitively, evil will only be defeated through love.
Christianity argues that the human tendency to put ourselves at the centre of our personal universes and to pursue what we want, regardless of the cost to others, is the root of our problems. The idea that Jesus is trying to get at is of centring our world on others rather than ourselves and relating rightly to those around us. What sin is really about is having wrong relationships with God and those around us – not the obsessive preoccupation with what people do with their genitals that seems to preoccupy the Church while relatively rich economies systematically ‘screw’ the poor with impugnity. And, ultimately, it is injustice and the pursuit of power and wealth regardless of the consequences – in other words ‘sinfulness’ – that is the root cause of war.
It can be so much easier to vilify those with whom we have a disagreement, or to blame those with whom we have a conflict of interest than to think about the part that the world order we support might play. Sometimes it might be necessary to use military force to deal with a symptom of how things are. But the reason that war persists so stubbornly is our reluctance to learn from history and commit ourselves to working for a world order in which the underlying causes of war are addressed.
So today let us honour those who fell in two world wars and in conflicts since, acknowledging the debt we owe to those who died for the sake of freedom. Let us us also remember the extraordinary accomplishments of so many ordinary people. But let us also remember the cost of war, of how it warps our perception of right and wrong and how, ultimately, it deals only with symptoms rather than causes. Above all, let us celebrate a vision of a world worthy of the sacrifice of so many. A world not dominated by greed and self-interest but by the love that conquers all things and which is experienced even in the midst of war.
And if you take nothing else away from this Remembrance Sunday, take the conviction not to pay mere lip-service to the fallen but to work for a future in which such sacrifice is never repeated. If, perhaps, we were to give ourselves as enthusiastically to the pursuit of peace and justice as enthusiastically as we do to the pursuit of wealth, power and self-interest, then the bizarre, quantum-like world of the kingdom might not be so strange after all, but prove to be our salvation.