Remembrance Day SermonThe Rt Revd Christopher Lowson,Bishop of Lincoln

I love going to the cinema. As a child of the 1950s and 60s, I was brought up on a diet of films that celebrated the Second World War – The Dam Busters, 633 Squadron, and The Battle of Britain and because I was once Archdeacon

of Portsmouth, I should also mention, In which we serve, and the Cockleshell Heroes. For a young person these films were exciting, moving and full of great heroes. But recent war films have been much more graphic. I remember being stunned into silence by the horror of the hand to hand fighting of the first 30 minutes the movie, Saving Private Ryan.

In my ministry I have had to support many older men who have direct memories of the horror of such intense and direct conflict. As a young man I had the privilege of being chaplain to the Royal Star & Garter Home on Richmond Hill in Surrey and later I was closely involved with veterans from the Gallipoli Campaign, inaugurating an annual public lecture in their honour in south London. Often these men would prefer not to talk, or indeed could not talk about their experiences. They would rather keep silent.

There’s a lot to be said for that – indeed this may be part of the importance of the two minutes’ silence we have shared this morning – a collective recognition that the reality of war is so awful that it is best to remain silent.

And we are also here to remember those not killed in action in the First and Second World Wars but those killed in engagements since then – including those who died in Afghanistan this week.

But in Lincolnshire we also remember the two young men from the Red Arrows, John Egging and Sean Cunningham, who were recently killed in tragic accidents, one in aerobatic display and one in training.

Flight Lieutenant Sean CunninghamFlight Lieutenant John Egging

The Christian church has an obligation to articulate a spiritual dimension to a collective and silent memory. In that it has to careful and sensitive – loyal to its community, but most importantly, loyal to its Lord who commands it to speak in his name to the world.

I suppose there are two distinctive ways in which the Christian church can contribute.

Firstly, it can provide the opportunity for people to mourn and hear the Christian gospel of hope, and secondly, it can remind people sensitively but firmly about the central place of forgiveness in an authentic human life.

Within the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches, All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days early in November provide liturgical opportunities for the expression of mourning and hope as we pray for those who have died in the hope of the resurrection.

And I have noticed since the death of the Princess of Wales more people on the fringes or even outside the church want to come to church to pray for their departed loved ones at a bereavement service or requiem. Lighting candles as a way of prayer – at the time of Edward King regarded as a high church thing to do – is now common practice in all kinds of churches on these occasions.

And Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday, far from fading away as some might have expected, has grown in national significance in the last decade.

But what of the second of those contributions the church can make? How do we affirm the importance of forgiveness in the experience of a Christian and indeed in the life of any human being that wishes to live in an integrated and creative way? This is much more difficult.

I think we have to listen to people who have the authority to speak to us with integrity. Stories about the experience of real people can speak to us much more eloquently than theology spoken from a pulpit.

I should like to consider two people who, in their words and actions, set the standard for us to follow.

The first person is obviously, Jesus of Nazareth. In his teaching he made it absolutely clear that God forgives us inasmuch as we are able to forgive those who hurt us.

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us...

And when he was dying, as an innocent man on a cross, he called on his heavenly Father to ‘forgive them for they not what they do’.

The second example of a person who set a standard for us was the American civil rights activist and Christian minister, Martin Luther King Jr.

In his beautiful little book ‘Strength to love’ he offers three simple pieces of advice about forgiveness.

The first is to remember the teaching of the Bible. Luther King put it like this,

“He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love... (and) the degree to which we are able to forgive determines the degree to which we are able to love....”

Secondly, we must recognise that the evil deed which has been done to us or the hurt we have received never quite expresses all that a person really is. God certainly felt that with the human race - he did not give up on us.

Luther King writes “there is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies”.

Thirdly, only those who are wronged can grant forgiveness, but in granting forgiveness, which is a very important Christian ministry, we must not seek to defeat or humiliate the person who has hurt us - but we should seek to win his or her friendship and understanding.

That’s what we are called to. This conviction lies at the heart of the Christian gospel.

But it is not easy.

I recognise how difficult forgiveness can be sometimes, how it is easy for someone with no direct experience of the horrors of war to speak of forgiveness too lightly.

Imagine the challenge of forgiveness for someone who lost a close member of their family or a friend on September 11 in New York or Washington – no warning, no preparation – horror, tragedy and suffering literally out of the blue.

Forgiveness is challenging, and, if it were easy, it would not be authentic.

Let me tell you about my grandmother. She was in many ways a great Christian woman. She had come to the Christian faith in her early twenties when her life was very tough as the wife of an unemployed miner in the depression in the Northeast of England. Her faith grew and deepened over the years, until she became one of the little old ladies that vicars and curates always wanted to visit.

But she could not forgive the Japanese for what they had done to her brother. He had served in the army during the Second World War and had spent several years in a Japanese Prisoner of War Camp. He survived, but returned broken and emaciated to die a year later.

She knew she should forgive those men who had caused her brother’s death; she worried that she couldn’t do this but hoped and prayed that in the fullness of time this difficulty would be resolved.

Prisoners of war in Bataan, 1942.

And I think she had a point – for forgiveness to be real (and not merely glib) it takes time. There has to be repentance on the part of the perpetrator and then healing and reconciliation can take place, which in the fullness of time can lead to forgiveness. But that journey of repentance, reconciliation and forgiveness can be a long one and, for some of us, continues in the next world as well as this.

I am sure that now my grandmother is united to the Lord who made her and loves her and forgave her in Christ, her pain and anguish is being resolved and healed. And she would be interested to know that her granddaughter, my daughter Rebecca, spent a very happy year teaching English in a rural community in Japan, where she was supported and cared for as an English girl far from home. God’s way seen perfectly in Jesus of Nazareth is a way of forgiveness. We are invited to follow him on that way, but, though he places the challenge fairly and

squarely before us, God knows how hard it is and I think is patient with those for whom it is a struggle.

And so, this weekend we thank God for those who suffered and died in serving their nation and

we reflect on the meaning of those events for our generation today as we face a highly complex struggle for justice and peace in our own time.

It is painful for those who were directly involved and humbling for those, now

most of us, who were not.