Remembrance - Parish Magazine Article / Sermon Outline

From The Rectory

Since this year marks 100 years since the end of the First World War, it seems especially fitting to devote this November letter to the subject of Remembrance.

Remembrance Sunday happens to fall on 11^th November this year too.

All three churches in the benefice will observe the traditional two-minutes silence at 11am and details of the services are included later in the magazine. We hope you’ll be able to join us for this important community occasion even if you’re not a regular in church. There is even a bring and share lunch at Bodle Street Green village hall if you’d like to extend the occasion. I’m sure those from Warbleton and Dallington could get away with turning up too, but I didn’t say that!

So much could be said about war, peace and remembrance and there will be an opportunity to reflect further in these themes at our services. For now, maybe I could make three simple points:

(1) We are such forgetful creatures, and there are some things we ought especially to remember.

You probably know the experience only too well of walking in to a room and wondering why you went there. Often I can’t remember the most basic details of the last fortnight, and I don’t think that is just because I am now the wrong side of 40. We are forgetful. Sometimes necessarily and even thankfully so.

But there is so much we really ought to remember. Not least the horrors of war. And the sacrifices of all those who died that we might know peace. We should take seriously the pledge we make each year: “We will remember them.”

Above all, however, the Bible urges us to remember God our Creator and Redeemer. We owe him everything and it is in relationship to him that meaning and purpose are to be found.

(2) God remembers.

Although we too easily forget, God always sees and knows. He remembers and cares. Every life, every moment matters to him. And all will be called to account. Justice will be done. Wrongs will be righted. In the end peace will reign. All those who are forgotten by history and by their descendants are remembered by the Almighty and Eternal God.

(3) But surprisingly there is one thing God says he will not remember.

It bears saying again it is so unbelievable. Amazingly, there is one thing God says he will not remember. Not literally that it will slip his mind, of course. Rather, he will deliberately refrain from calling it to mind and acting upon it. God will forget his people’s sins. He will put them away and wipe them out. Because of the supreme sacrifice of the Lord Jesus, all our foolishness and rebellion can be erased. Sometimes we have to live with the consequences of our mistakes, but in eternity they will never be brought up again. God has pledged himself to remove believers’ sins from them as far as the east is from the west. He will bury our wrong-doing in the depths of the ocean. Not because he turns a blind eye to vice or winks at evil, but because Jesus has fully paid the price for sin. Jesus’ victory over sin and death and hell towers over all the conflicts of human history and of the human heart. That is worth remembering.