Recent Sermons
St. Andrew's Church
An Anglican Church • Grimsby, Ontario, Canada
Preached by
Stuart Pike
Rector
For More Information Contact the Office
Notice any errors? Have a suggestion? Or a comment? Then ....
Remembrance Sunday 2007
Proper 32 C
St. Andrew's Church
11 November, 2007
Luke 20: 27-38
Today is Remembrance day, and I have the task of preaching using the Lectionary readings for today (with that phenomenal Gospel), whilst at the same time addressing Remembrance themes.
I guess I had better get started:
There were two main factions in opposition to Jesus: The Pharisees and the Sadducees.
The Pharisees were the majority.
They seemed to be incensed that holy things seemed to be happening around and through Jesus and entirely outside of their jurisdiction!
If there was to be anything holy happening, their religious institution had better be getting the credit for it!
In today's Gospel story, they have been trying publically to trap Jesus with their questions and their dogma. Yet Jesus has slipped through their rhetoric not only unharmed, but more strongly supported than ever. Now it is the other faction's turn: the Sadducees.
Like the Pharisees, the Sadducees are pious and often self-righteous. The best way to remember a key difference between them is that the Pharisees believed in the after-life and in heaven but the Sadducees didn't believe in life after death: so they were sad-you-see!
The Sadducees try to trap Jesus using a purely rational argument and some ancient marriage law from the book of Deuteronomy which says,
"When brothers reside together and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the deceased shall not be married outside the family to a stranger. Her husband's brother shall go in to her, taking her in marriage, and performing the duty of a husband's brother to her, and the firstborn whom she bears shall succeed to the name of the deceased brother, so that his name may not be blotted out of Israel.
This rule had largely not been applied in Jesus' time, but the Sadducees don't care about that: they are trying to trap Jesus in a logical argument and so they come up with this unlikely story of a woman who is married to one of seven brothers.
When he dies and she is childless, she is married to the second brother, who dies without issue, so she is married to the third brother, who dies without issue, and so on, and so on. Finally she has been through all seven brothers who have all died and then she finally dies.
The Sadducees then ask, so who's wife will she be in heaven?
My question would be: would she really want anything to do with men at this stage?
The Sadducees are giving this purely logical argument in the form of a story. They fail to see the humanity in the story.
So I have a question for the men who are here today: How would you feel if you were brother number four or five or six or seven?
And women: how would you feel being passed from brother to brother?
How would that make you feel about your humanity?
Can you feel the anxiety and pain in this story?
Jesus sees that this is a heartless and cruel story about human beings in misery.
For Jesus, rules and laws are never simply about logic. They are to serve in human situations Jesus is compassionate - The word compassion literally means that Jesus shares in the passion of human beings in all of their situations. Jesus relates to us - not through the rules and regulations and dogma of religious institutions. Jesus relates to us at the level of our humanity. He knows our pain, our fears, our anxiety and our need.
-----------------
It is so tempting to speak of war and remembrance in terms of facts and figures.
How many were killed?
How long did it last?
How essentially good was (or is) our side?
How essentially evil was (or is) the enemy?
God doesn't approach the tragedy of our wars and violence in statistical terms, nor in generalizations.
Through Jesus, God knows our tragedy in human terms.
I want to read to you a poem called High Flight written by a young flying officer during the Second World War named John Gillespie Magee.
High Flight
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee No 412 squadron, RCAF Killed 11 December 1941
John was born in 1922 in China to an American Father and a British mother who were Anglican missionaries.
John began his education at the American School, Nanking from the age of 7 to 9 years.
In 1931 he moved with his mother to Britain where he continued his education first at St. Clare's near Walmer, Kent (1931-1935)
and then at Rugby School (1935-1939) winning the Rugby School's poetry prize in 1938.
In 1939 he moved to the USA to live with his aunt in Pittsburgh and attended school in Avon, Connecticut.
He earned a scholarship to Yale University - where his father was then a chaplain - in July 1940 but did not enroll, choosing instead to enlist in the Royal Canadian Air Force in October of that year.
He received training in flying in Ontario at Toronto, Trenton, St. Catharines, and Uplands and passed his Wings Test in June 1941.
He was sent to Britain initially to No. 53 Spitfire Operational Training Unit (OTU) in Llandow, Wales later that year and then to the newly formed No 412 Fighter Squadron, RCAF, which was activated at Digby, England, on 30 June 1941.
Magee was qualified on and flew the Supermarine Spitfire.
John was killed at the age of 19 when the Spitfire airplane he was flying collided with an Oxford Trainer in a cloud at about 400 feet above ground level at 11:30 over the village of Roxholm which lies between RAF Cranwell and RAF Digby, in Lincolnshire, England. John is buried at Holy Cross, Scopwick Cemetery in Lincolnshire, England.
On his grave are enscribed the first and last lines from his poem High Flight:
"Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth - Put out my hand and touched the Face of God."
He had sent his poem, "High Flight" to his parents on the back of a letter and his father printed it in the Church bulletin. He wrote it only a few months before his death.
The tragedy of war is known in personal stories like John Magee's. What a loss to the world to have him die so young.
Jesus feels the loss in millions of stories like John Gillespie Magee. This loss carries on in the wars that continue to ravage our world.
Jesus feels the loss of each one taken by war and violence. Including those who are dying today in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Including the military on both sides of the battle. Including, of course, the civilians and their tragedies. Each story is known by our Lord.
As we remember today, let us remember the good news in today's Gospel lesson:
Jesus promises that there is life after our life on earth.
And Jesus relates to us as human brothers and sisters.
He knows our hopes and fears, our losses and griefs, our sins as well as our deepest desire for healing.
Jesus loves us as we are. No matter our story of tragedy or of peace, we can rest assured in that love. One day, Jesus will bring us home. Halleluiah! Amen.
