The Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 32, Year A

Remembering

Readings: Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25; Psalm 78:1-7; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; Matthew 25:1-13

The Israelites after years of wandering in the desert were settling into life in the Promised Land. Life was good. It was easy to forget the struggle that had brought them there. So Joshua did a very wise thing. He assembled the people. He reminded them of the gracious acts of God toward them throughout their history. He reminded them of Abraham’s relationship to God and of the covenant that God had made with the people. They remembered the time of slavery in Egypt. They remembered God’s faithfulness to them in the wilderness. It was a reminder to put away the foreign gods, the false gods, that had arisen among the people and to turn back to God. It was a reminder that they could not follow the crowd and still be God’s chosen people.

Paul is speaking to the Thessalonians who are grieving for loved ones who have died before the return of the Lord. He calls on them to remember that we all live between the life of Jesus and the coming of Christ, and that all of creation will, with the coming of God’s realm, belong once again to God.

And there is the parable that Jesus told. Five foolish bridesmaids took their lamps with them to the wedding, but didn’t bring any oil. Five wise bridesmaids on the other hand came prepared with enough oil for any contingency. The bridegroom was late in arriving. The wise bridesmaids were able to trim their lamps and meet the bridegroom. The foolish ones asked for oil from the wise ones. Their request was met by refusal. It does seem rather mean-spirited that those who brought oil did not simply share what they had, but the point of the story is that we are to be ready to serve God wherever and whenever God appears. Once again, it points out to us a choice we must make between the way the world lives and the way our Christian faith calls us to live. It calls us to remember how God has been with us in the past, and how God will continue to be with us.

Remembering is so important to us as humans. Whether it is a story of love, of tragedy, of faithfulness, of generosity, our human story needs to be remembered. Something forgotten does not function any more in our conscious life. It plays no conscious role in our decision-making. If it appears to us in a dream it is not understood. It goes over our heads. The tragedy of life is that everything can be forgotten. This Remembrance Sunday calls us to remember so that war will end and peace will prevail.

I have to admit to having some difficulty around Remembrance Day. I am at heart a pacifist. So when it comes to this celebration I am reminded about the tragedy of war, the loss of life, the inhumanity. I consider how we have glorified war. I consider how all sides in war have asserted, “God is on my side,” And I know that the truth is that God weeps for all of God’s children. I look back at the person closest to me who was in the military. He was my uncle, a medical doctor who rose to the rank of Brigadier General, whose whole career was in the military, but who never bore arms. He served on the Italian front in the Second World War and in Korea where he ran mobile units. I remember him recounting his stories to us when he returned from Korea. What stands out in my mind is that he considered that the bravest soldiers who served in the army were the conscientious objectors who refused to bear arms, but went onto the battlefields to carry the wounded back to military hospitals. And so, yes, I hate war, but not the soldiers who believed in their cause. I hate the cost to human life, not just in loss of life, but also in the unseen costs. We hear of veterans who come back from war suffering from Post Traumatic Stress, and I know how much they need our compassion and care. I see the events we have experienced over the last few weeks, as misguided individuals act out their hostilities on the military. And once again, I know that God weeps. And I am convinced that we need to remember. We need to remember so that it does not happen again.

Remembrance Day can be a meaningless ritual, which we continue to observe out of some sense of duty to people who are for most of us nameless individuals. Yet they died in a cause, which has benefitted us. What of the society they helped to form? As we ponder the events of the past few weeks, as we face the fact that we have moved from a country largely untouched by terrorism into one that knows the sorrow of senselessly losing young soldiers, as we begin to awaken to how quickly our peaceful society can be torn apart, let us consider how it has changed our sense of peace and well-being.

Pacifist though I will always be, I find what moves me most on Remembrance Day is something so familiar that I would have thought it would become trite. And yet, it never does. It is the poem, “In Flanders Fields”. I can recite every word of that poem. I memorized it back in grade school, complete with every nuance. Then I spent many years as a teacher preparing classes to recite it at assemblies. And yet pondering on the familiar words, I find myself reflecting on it in a new way, hearing things I have never heard before. At this stage in my life, it has less to do with the task of completing the unfinished work of those who died, of taking up the torch; rather it makes me consider just what has been taken away through war. What greatness has been lost over the centuries? What greatness did Canada lose through the death of Corporal Cirillo? We can never know. So I believe the greatest memorial we could possibly offer is in the continued struggle for peace and justice everywhere and for all people.

So let us remember. There is a sense as we gather on this Remembrance Sunday, of a kind of passing of the torch, a passing of the collective memories, of those successes and failures of the previous generations. What we may forget is that when you are the one carrying the torch, you can easily be burned. When you are the one standing alone torch in hand, there is nothing brighter. But that too can be a terrifying realization.

As we remember, we may feel a sense of grief and loss. But above all, I pray that we feel a sense of faith, a sense of hope. Faith that God gives us, faith in the promises that God makes, hope with the allaying of our fears, the uplifting of our hopes, the forgiveness of our anger, the strengthening of our faith.

As generations pass and we come closer and closer ourselves to being the older generation, the responsibility falls more and more to us. Finally it is ours completely. There is no one else to blame for the human condition. We alone bear the responsibility.

That is the time to remember that the kingdom of God does not come overnight into our lives or relationships or societies. We need to live out a sustained, lasting faith. We do not need some sudden outburst of ecstatic spirituality. We need something that will go the whole distance. We need a “for better or for worse” spirituality that will sustain us through difficult times. We need the wisdom to prepare, to have enough oil in our lamps to keep the flame alight. Let us remember that we are called to live each day in expectation of the approach of God. Let us remember to have peace in our hearts and to keep fanning the flame.