The power of Hope

Sermon Sunday 10th November 2013




Luke 20: 27 -38 – The power of Hope

The College of St Hild & St Bede, Durham.

 My children’s great grandfather, Cyril was a prisoner of war in Changi Jail, Singapore, held for a long four years by the Japanese during World War 2. It was a cruel and brutal regime. Cyril’s story was moving beyond measure, he was a clergyman in the RAF and whilst in the camp he pastorally cared for those held alongside him. He baptised, celebrated the Eucharist with them, and he conducted their funerals, many many funerals. Yet there is another half of the story, because back home, Cyril’s wife did not know if she was still his wife or had become his widow. She knew he had been captured but had heard nothing else for 3 years. On the liberation of the camp, the London Illustrated News published a photograph of a confirmation service at the camp, for the many men who had been prepared for confirmation during their imprisonment, and the gaunt RAF chaplain who had ministered to them.  A member of the family took the paper to his wife and said, “is that not Cyril?” It was not until then that she could believe she was still a wife and not yet a widow.

Today we remember those who have died in wars and conflicts over the years. Those who went away and never came home. We remember those who have come home, but are not the men and women who went away to serve in theatres of war and conflict across the globe. And today we also remember those left behind. The widows, which in this time of modernity includes men. When we hear the term widow it is easy to conjure up images of Royal Wootton Bassett and the numerous repatriation ceremonies, coffin after coffin being driven through the streets. And in the next few days Sgt Maj Ian Fisher will be repatriated home, and we also remember those who were wounded alongside him some receiving life changing injuries. Yet there are other widows. Those from the world wars for whom there was no body to bring home, because bodies literally sank into the mud of the battlefields. For those buried as unknown in graves across the world. For those like Cyril’s wife who live in a limbo as a widow yet with the faintest hope that those listed as missing in action, would be found and returned home. Sergeant Bergdahl of the US infantry is one such soldier, he has been listed as missing in action since 2009 and is believed to still being held by the Taliban. The recent book and film, “Salmon fishing in the Yemen” tackles this very grief and uncertainty, well. There are those whose loved ones return and yet either through physical, mental or spiritual injury are changed beyond recognition, and so their partners are bereaved of the person who went away, widows in a very real sense.

 

And today on this remembrance Sunday the gospel reading draws our attention to another widow. We are told that the Sadducees, who were a well educated, sophisticated, influential and wealthy sect at the time of Jesus, give to Jesus a sort of riddle  -there’s a woman who marries seven times –and not just seven times, but seven brothers, in succession. Each brother dies, leaving her a widow. Last of all the woman dies also. Therefore, in the resurrection, whose wife does she become? For all seven had her as a wife.” We cannot believe that they were genuinely interested in the question – they were using it as a riddle to trap Jesus – there was no right answer. How much less then would they have been interested in the woman at the centre of their question?  Widows in Jesus time had little status or security - she was a piece of property to be married on, seven times. The Jewish law which instructed a man to marry his dead brother’s widow was partly to protect the widow from destitution, but more to protect the property, including heirs, of the dead man.   The Sadducees question not only tried to trick Jesus into an un-answerable riddle, it also showed no compassion or thought of any sort for the object of the riddle – the widow.  Jesus’s response gives the fictional widow back her humanity, her importance as an individual: “Those who are considered worthy of a place in that age….are like angels and are children of God”.  Jesus reminds them that in the age to come, our lives will be lived on a completely different principle, in a dimension that we can’t imagine. We know it won’t be the same as what we know on earth, we can’t say for sure what it will all be like in heaven – but we know that we won’t be disappointed.

 

I wonder if there were widows there, listening to Jesus’ words. How did they feel? Were there some feeling bereaved, frightened, alone? In their grief, did they hope they would be cared for and loved again? What hope might they have found in these words of Jesus, words pointing to a God who would keep promises and enact justice beyond the boundaries of this world.

St Paul says “Now we see in a mirror, dimly, but when the end comes, “we will see face to face. Now, I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.”

The Christian dispensation acknowledges that we do not know, we do not have control, we are not in charge. But what we can have, in the worst of times is hope. Hope that beyond death it is not simply the continuation of what now is.

In my time as a military police officer I have experienced violence and conflict around me that has made me think I might very soon be face to face with the answers. I have been frightened beyond measure and enraged at the injustice and brutality of humanity. I was a witness to the genocide taking place in Bosnia when I served there in the early nineties, and in those darkest of times I had to hope that what was happening around us would stop and that there would be a better world when the fighting ended. In this last week I have been transported back 19 years ago with the news of the discovery of a mass war grave that has a potential 1000 bodies in north – west Bosnia. 1000 people buried, countless relatives left wondering if they are wives or widows. Have those left behind kept hope?

 Over the last ten years I have attended the funerals of my regimental friends and family. I have spoken to those ‘widows’ left behind, I have been to see friends with life changing injuries and spent time with their widows. What have I learned, what have I seen?

I have learnt that widows have hope. It comes in many forms and guises; some hope that those they loved did not give their lives in vain. There is hope that those killed and maimed in action have left behind a world which is slightly better because of their sacrifice. There are hopes that injuries of body, mind and soul will heal, that one day the person who went to war will hopefully return. For some their hope is in their children, for others there is only the hope that they will meet again with their loved ones beyond this world in a better place.

This college has its own litany of hope. The hope of the young Bede  men who marched from here to serve in the first and second world wars, a hope that they were contributing to tackling an evil shadow in the world. Those members of the Bede college company of the Durham Light Infantry  who died at the battle of Gravenstafel Ridge in 1915, when gas was used for one of the first. Again serving and dying to try and make the world a better place. Hild-Bede students have fought and died in combat in Iraq, and today you as a college remember all of your own who have and who continue to serve in our armed forces.

In the darkest of times, at those moments in individuals lives when it seems all is lost, even if just in a glimmer we can see hope, then we catch a glimpse of the knowing fully that St Paul spoke of.

I return to Cyril, in the blackest of places as a prisoner of a brutal regime, preparing men for confirmation in the hope that the war would end with their freedom. Who in his ministry offered to desperate frightened soldiers a glimmer of a world in which life will rise out of the ashes of horror and destruction. It is worth noting that when Cyril, much later in life, became a bishop himself, he had his wartime medals melted down to make into his pectoral cross, the cross being to Christians the ultimate symbol of hope, of life overcoming death.

This remembrancetide, let us remember the dead but also let us remember the power of hope.