Remembrance Sunday 2013

On 25^th September 1915, the first day of the fighting at the battle of Loos, Captain Anketell Read of the First Battalion, The Northamptonshire Regiment, was killed while leading his men in the most ferocious fighting. For his conspicuous bravery and self-sacrifice, paying no regard to his own safety or well-being but only to that of his soldiers, he was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross. 

Three times winner of the Army and Navy Heavyweight Boxing Championship, he was known as ‘Widowmaker’ for his devastating jab. He was by all accounts the epitome of the chivalrous English gentleman and also a committed Christian, admired and respected by all who knew him. On the headstone of his grave is a brief but most interesting inscription: it reads as follows. ‘’He won because he never recognised defeat. ‘Christ died for all.’’

Here then was a man - a man of his time and culture sure enough - a man whose selfless sense of duty towards those under his authority led him to put them before himself: he fully understood the very best principle of leadership. On day one when arriving at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, we were presented with a little red book entitled ‘Serve To Lead’. It is a book about and with examples of leadership according to that very principle; the principle practised by Read. It is an excellent and inspiring little book. Later in life I made the naive mistake of recommending to my first bishop and Theological College Principal that it really ought to be mandatory reading for all would-be parish priests!

In Captain Read then, we meet a man who was not only inspired to lay down his life for those who followed him but who was deeply conscious of the far greater, life-changing, sacrifice made by his Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.      Of course, his personal sacrifice that day may have saved the lives of some or even many; but many, many more were killed. Some will look back on that battle, on that war, and on the huge loss of life, and say, quite rightly in so many ways, ‘what a terrible mistake; what a terrible waste’; just as some today will raise similar concerns about our presence in Afghanistan. Now I am not going to raise contentious political issues this morning but I will ask you to consider and remember this: that the men at Loos and in Afghanistan, whatever we feel about the rights or wrongs of both engagements, hugely deserve our respect, our sympathy, and in the latter case, our prayers.

In remembering his sacrifice for his soldiers and his country, Reid’s parents chose not to forget but to remind everyone who would see his headstone       of the far greater sacrifice; the sacrifice that had inspired their remarkable son: ‘Christ died for all.’

Each year we remember and honour those, like Read, who gave their lives in order that we might enjoy a freedom they thought worth fighting for. This service today is a reminder to us and a challenge to, as the Prayer Book says,  ‘use aright the time left to us here on earth, to repent of our sins, of the evil we have done and the good we have not done.’

And so their sacrifice leads us naturally, or ought to, to consider again the greatest sacrifice ever made; the day when ‘Christ died for all’. It was the greatest sacrifice ever made because it achieved some remarkable things; things no ordinary human being could. Let us remind ourselves this morning of just three of them; three that can alter radically the way a person views this life, views others, and indeed views themself; three things that Captain Read’s sacrifice could never achieve, though he himself had lived a life inspired by the knowledge of them.

Those three things, those three remarkable and life-changing things are these. First, in voluntarily giving up his life, Jesus paid the moral debt we owe to God. Secondly, he made our reconciliation with God possible. And, thirdly, he made possible eternal life.

This moral debt we owe God is perhaps these days even more contentious for some than the idea that there is such a thing as eternal life. But if you are someone who believes both in love and justice; indeed that a deep concern for justice is actually an essential part of what it means to love if love is to have any worthwhile meaning at all, then a perfectly loving God cannot simply turn a blind eye to even the least of our injustices, be they sins of commission or sins of omission – the evil we have done or the good we have not done. Personally, I could not even begin to worship a God who simply turned a blind eye or who acted like an indulgent old uncle.

But as we do not have it within ourselves – no one does – to put ourselves right with God, God chose, in one of his forms of being God, to take human form in the person of Jesus and to pay our debt himself. This he did when he laid down his life on the cross at Calvary. But in this case it was not just for the few who followed him, it was for the sins of the whole world. In so doing, in paying the moral debt that stood against our evil deeds and our failure to do good, he made it possible for all who will accept in faith this sacrifice of his to be reconciled to God. This is the second of the three remarkable things his sacrifice achieved. He simply hangs on the cross there and asks us to trust him. ‘It is finished’, he said. ‘I’ve done it for you and for the sins of the whole world.’ But of course we have to trust and to show this by our attitude to him and to others; we have to accept him as Saviour and Lord of our lives; we have to demonstrate that the reconciliation is genuine.

Now what people discover is that to be reconciled with God creates a newfound freedom; I might almost say a carefree freedom, even in the face of danger and death. 

Why? Well, if we know that we have been forgiven for everything – whatever our track record or character – by humbly accepting his offer; and if we know that we are now reconciled to God entirely because of what he has done for us; and if we know too that this life, whatever happens to us and however we go, is not the end of existence because the one who reconciled us has also promised us eternal life, then would that not be a very great weight off anyone’s mind?

But why did Reid believe this? Why could he live as he lived? Why should anyone believe it? The answer lies, I am sure, in verse 30 of our first reading this morning. 

You can see it there, very briefly, on your service sheet. ‘But God raised him from the dead’. This is the cornerstone of Christian belief and the reason why we can trust the person and the promises of Jesus. The evidence for the resurrection is there for all to see but will never be sufficient for those who choose not to see it or who simply do not care.

Jesus taught explicitly that he had come to save sinners, to reconcile us to God, to free us from our pride and sins, and to offer us eternal life. This he did by sacrificing his life for us. Captain Reid’s sacrifice was a most heroic act of selflessness; but his family and friends knew what, or rather who it was, had inspired that sacrifice. ‘Christ died for all.’ Do you believe and trust in this, in him? It is a question we must all of us ask ourselves – and give an answer.