This year’s Armistice remembrance comes at a time when the world, and the concept of Peace, seems very fragile with the ongoing war in Ukraine, Escalation of hostilities in the Middle East, the Sudanese Civil War, Myanmar Civil War, and dozens of other conflicts the world over.
This is the most fragile peace has felt to me in my lifetime and this has been exacerbated by the election of a notoriously unpredictable US president. So, we might find ourselves asking - where do we find our hope?
This morning’s readings help me to remember two things which you may find helpful when searching for hope; firstly, like Jonah, James, John, Simon-Peter and Andrew we too are called. Everyone is. Some respond and some don’t. Like Jonah some may run away from where their call leads them, until a point where God becomes so insistent you have no choice – like being swallowed by a giant fish and spat out where God told you to be in the first place. Although our experiences are perhaps a bit less literal.
Or maybe, like these 4 apostles, we jump in with both feet, giving everything to Jesus, but finding we’ve make mistakes and had our doubts on the way. Whichever we’ve been, I’m sure there’s aspects of your lives – your career, the things you’ve given you time to, the people you’ve found yourselves amongst, that felt right, that felt it was the place God wanted you to be. When something feels right, I think it’s often a sign that we are where God wants us to be.
The second thing these readings lead me to remember is that Jesus’ work is already done. We continue it and strive to bring his message of love and equality to every corner of our lives, but He’s done the heavy lifting already. Memory and remembering is a peculiar thing, it’s so easy to forget God’s in control and at times give ourselves over to despair.
I don’t know if any of you have seen the film Coco? Years ago, we watched it at The LOFT as a way of engaging with this remembrance season. The film looks at memory, remembering loved ones who’ve died and our common memories. We’ve already had the feasts of All Souls and All Saints and today is the solemn day set aside to remember all those whose lives have been lost in conflicts the world over.
Coco is the story of a Mexican boy named Miguel, who accidentally ends up in the Land of the Dead on The Day of the Dead and must get help from his ancestors to find his way home.
We see the people of Miguel’s village both in their homes and at grave sides making offerings and remembering their dead ancestors. There’s an air of celebration to their remembrances.
It might surprise you to hear that visiting the graves of loved ones to honour them, lighting candles and decorating them with seasonal flora was also a practice in the British Isles on All Soul’s Day.
Film critic Clarisse Loughrey writes that our relationship to the dead is a key theme of Coco. Those who reside within the colourful, bountiful Land of the Dead can do so only as long as there is someone to remember them in the Land of the Living; once that last memory is lost to time, that individual – quite literally – fades into nothingness.
It's incredibly important that we find ways of engaging with younger generations about remembrance, that we keep alive the memories of our ancestors but also keep remembering the reasons for the world wars of the 20th century, and don’t let them fade into nothingness. When I was young the reasons for and outcomes of two devastating world wars were burned into our communal memories and conscious. Alongside “we will remember them” we said “never again”.
And yet we find our world in this fragile place, alongside the increase in and nearness of conflicts, we’re seeing a worldwide rise in those with extreme views gaining power and discrimination of certain minority, ethnic and religious groups. Our communal memories should be reminding us that we’ve been here before, and it wasn’t good.
Remembrance is central to the ritual of church life. Each time we gather here it’s an act of remembrance for the life of the one we’re called to follow. Every communion service has Jesus’ words “do this in remembrance of me”.
Our gathering here is a reminder that like the fishermen in today’s gospel we’re called to something else, for someone else. We recognise and remember the importance of God in our lives each day.
Remembering Jesus doesn’t mean we just think about him and hear stories from his life, it means we have a call to act and be different. Our remembering directly affects our actions in the world. Maybe remembrance is always about more than remembering, maybe true remembrance is about how we’re influenced to act and be because of those memories, because of the experiences of those who’ve gone before us and because we should learn, grow and change through our shared memories.
It may sound obvious, but I think it’s important to remember that today is a memorial of peace, and that we as Christians are the agents of God’s peace.
We can’t let these memories fade into nothingness because by keeping them alive we highlight the importance of peace, and hopefully have a better chance of achieving it.
To finish I’d like to share a prayer of remembering:
In the love that created a universe we remember
In the love that created those who have died through war we remember
In the love that blessed their lives with love we remember
In the love that blessed their lives with laughter we remember
In the love that wept when they wept we remember
In the love that healed them by welcoming them home we remember
In the love that holds our broken hearts in its heart we remember. Amen.
