Remembrance Day

(Gospel: Revised Common Lectionary for Proper 27, Year B)

TEXT: Mark 12:38-44

Jesus sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. Then he called his disciples and said to them, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on”’ (Mark 12:41-44)

At eleven o’clock each morning, as the largest bell in Ottawa’s Peace Tower chimes out the hour, a solemn, and usually private, ceremony takes place in the Memorial Chamber.* Within this chamber, faced with stones taken from World War One battlefields and from France and Belgium and on altars constructed of Hopton Wood stone, lie six books of Remembrance which honour Canada’s war dead. According to a timetable which ensures that each of the more than 118,000 names is shown for at least one day a year, a member of the House of Commons Protective Service Staff turns the pages of these books according to a set military protocol.

On November 11th, we assemble before cenotaphs and in chapels. We gather on the day which ended the First World War. On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, the Armistice signed six hours previously took effect and, as New York Times correspondent Edwin L. James wrote from the front, “four years’ killing and massacre stopped, as if God had swept His omnipotent finger across the scene of world carnage and cried, ‘Enough!’ ”

The “Great War” was called the “war to end all wars.” Sadly, it did nothing of the sort. World War II and the Korean War—along with numerous other conflicts—also claimed many Canadian lives and caused untold suffering. We know that this year’s National Silver Cross Mother, Maureen Anderson, lost both her sons as a result of their overseas service in the Canadian Army.

Sgt. Ron Anderson served on several tours of duty overseas, twice in Afghanistan. On one of those missions, he jumped into action under dangerous circumstances to save the life of a child. Upon his return, however, he was never the same, and later took his own life. Sgt. Ryan Anderson had served in Afghanistan alongside his brother, as well as on several other overseas deployments, including in Bosnia, Ethiopia and Haiti. He too, experienced a severe personality change and later passed away. Both men served with the Royal Canadian Regiment and each brother was being treated for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) before passing.

We come here today to mark the end of war, to honour those who gave their lives, to say thank you to those veterans who are still alive, and to speak that hope that lies in each of us, “never again”.

Historians can do little more than catalogue the victories and the losses. The history books tell us of the Somme and Vimy Ridge, of the assault on Dieppe and the liberation of Holland. The Battle of Britain and the invasion of Normandy all speak of the bravery of Canadians and other Allied soldiers who risked everything to bring peace back to the world. The casualties are listed in numbers almost too large to imagine.

Yet in the history books there are few names. Oh, the generals, politicians and strategists receive their due, but the front-line soldiers, navy personnel and air crew are generally forgotten and unnamed.

Forgotten and unnamed; except, that is, in the hearts of those who waited and worried and prayed, and who mourned when that dreaded message was received, “we regret to inform you that … was killed in action.” And as those who can remember die off, they will remain unnamed. Except on the war memorials which dot our vast nation. These simple or ornate slabs of stone speak aloud that otherwise silent tale: a tale of personal worry and sacrifice, of exceptional bravery and heartbreaking loss; a story of victory and peace won at enormous cost; the price of Canada’s beloved sons and daughters.

In one of the places I have lived, a veteran always read those names, from the monument. Many were remembered by some of those assembled and others knew them as parents and grandparents they had never met. But what was important was that their names were spoken aloud. In this way they would not be forgotten, so that this horrible time that demanded so much of families and communities could never pass out of memory.

It has been a long time “The Great War” was seen as the war to end all wars. Slogging through rat-infested trenches, engaging in hand-to-hand combat, enduring hours of boredom punctuated by fierce and bloody battles, did little to change how the world dealt with conflict and dissension. Since that time millions have died in war, both soldiers and innocent civilians. Yet at the end of each conflict there is the hope that the sacrifice meant something, that leaders will pause long and hard before they teach their children war once more.

In the gospel of Mark, we read the story of the “widow’s mite”, about the woman who gave her last penny to the temple treasury. The significance of her gift was measured not by its small size, but by the fact that it was all she had. On Remembrance Day, we do not recognize the victories or the losses as they are recorded in history books as much as we remember those individual sons and daughters who gave their all, who gave more than they ever thought they could; who died so that others might live in freedom.

Today, I’d also like us to think about those who have waited at home, who have endured sleepless nights worrying about daughter or son, sister or brother or parent or spouse; who have waited for letters which never arrived; who have had to celebrate when a neighbour’s loved one returned even when theirs did not.

As we remember those who did not return and honour those who did come back, let us not forget those who were their primary connections to their homes; those who gave them a reason to return, those who added a personal face to the freedom they were fighting for.

Canadian doctor John McCrae would more than likely have wished to be stitching up the injured in an antiseptic hospital, but he was not; he was in Flanders trying to save lives in the heat and the dirt and stench of battle. Overhead the larks still fly, and to us has been thrown the torch; let us not break faith with those who died; let us keep their memory, for they have earned their sleep.

Amen.

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*  https://www.veterans.gc.ca/en/remembrance/memorials/canada/memchamb