The Civic Service on Remembrance Sunday 2014 at S Modwen’s Church, Burton upon Trent

 Micah 6: 6-8. Matthew 5: 1-12

Monday evenings this summer saw me glued to the box, watching the training of Marine Commandos. We glimpsed them, we glimpsed their trainers, many fresh from Afghanistan, and we saw how duty and tough love are agents of transformation. It made me wonder what our future is likely to be, shaped increasingly nowadays by ‘rights’ and indulgence.

It was remarkable to witness as training went on how these men come together in the service of something bigger than themselves. They learn that individuality is subservient to the common good. They learn that their own preferences and desires count for nothing when it comes to the well being of the unit. They learn comradeship. When one of them fails in an exercise there is none of the derision that I suffered in PE classes at school (I was and remain physically inept) but instead a remarkable level of encouragement and support.

It’s people and attitudes like this that we honour today.

Think about the men in the trenches a century ago. Maybe they signed up seeking excitement, maybe they were bored, maybe they had a sense of service, or maybe they were escaping desperate circumstances. Just like today’s commando trainees. Think how dreadful life was in the trenches. And death. And yet, despite this—or perhaps because of it, for there’s nothing quite like adversity to bring people together—we witness the comradeship and intimacy that develop, and we see it in ex-servicemen and -women.

Now think of the women and men who served in the Second World War, in the Gulf War, Ireland. Think of those serving at this moment: Afghanistan, the Middle East, and more. Think of servicemen and women who suffer in peacetime as a result of idiots who think they know better than everyone else. Think of those that are injured physically and mentally. And think of their families.

It is people like this that we honour today.

We’re not here to honour politicians who appear to indulge in playground games like ‘mine’s bigger than yours’ or ‘you can have my soldiers if I can be your friend’. We are not here to condemn service chiefs who make the best decisions they can given the information they have at the time—or who have decisions imposed on them. We’re here to remember those who learn to their cost about justice, and mercy, and humility. That is what the first reading is about. And in the second reading we hear that only when we have emptied ourselves of selfishness can we begin to glimpse the kingdom of God—which is not about life after death, but about what life could be here on earth, as it is in heaven.

However much historians might proclaim the stupidity of the First World War, one cannot deny the evil that was confronted in the Second. Fighting evil is necessary, so long as we remember that every evil act begins as a thought in the mind—and that such evil thoughts are in your mind and mine as well as in the mind of the Dictator. It’s worth remembering too that nowadays a UK military presence often serves, in the words of the second reading, ‘to show people how to cooperate instead of compete or fight.’ Selflessness replaces selfishness. That, brothers and sisters, is what Resurrection is about: we can all rise to the selflessness of eternal life if we put aside selfishness and ego.

My son and his family live in the United States. I’m always struck at US airports how military personnel are invited to board first, and how at shows and public events the military are applauded. Americans respect their military all year round. This week we show our respect for those who learnt the hard way that selflessness, not selfishness, is the way. It would be good if we could remember this message in the other 51 weeks of the year, every year, and in every moment of our lives. Before it’s too late.

A homily for Proper 22, Trinity 16, Year A Isaiah 5:1-7. Psalm 80:7-15. Philippians 3:4b-14. Matthew 21:33-46

Here is the prophet doing what prophets should do: speaking unpalatable truths. Here is Jesus doing what Jesus so often does: speaking unpalatable truths.

The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.

The Lord provides the means for the vineyard to grow good grapes. But it’s a bad harvest of wild grapes and so the vineyard is destroyed. The Lord provides the ingredients for the Kingdom of God. How do you respond? The Lord gives life. How do you respond? It’s up to you.

A gift is only a gift if you accept it as a gift. You have to stretch out your hands to take what is on offer. You have to respond. You have to act. Refusing to accept, refusing to act, amounts to rejecting what’s on offer. We throw the gift back in the donor’s face. We exclude ourselves from the generosity. Jesus talks about people being excluded from the Kingdom. The Lord does not exclude us, but by our standoffishness and refusal to dance to his invitation, we exclude ourselves.

I’ve been here three months now. A quarter of a year. I’m wondering how best we can thrive in the next decade or two. How best can we serve the town? Let us imagine that Our Lord comes here. What does he find?

• He finds that a church built in his honour is locked most of the time.
• If he comes at a time when the building happens to be open might see people who in world terms are reasonably well off. He might wonder how they serve the people of the town who are less well off.
• He might notice that people seem to communicate with smiles that often hide inner sadnesses that they feel unable to speak of.
• He might wonder how we tell each other of our deepest darkest fears, to allow the transformation of ‘the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory’.
• He might notice that the building is a temple to the past.
• If he comes to a PCC meeting, he would hear that much of the energy and interest is with money, and with keeping the building looking as it did in the past.
• He might wonder why all decisions are made by older people for a future that few of them will see.

Let us imagine that Our Lord now looks around Burton.

• He might see a lot of people sitting alone watching a flickering box in the corner of the room.
• He might see people at night around the church injecting fluid into their veins.
• He might see men and women hitting each other.
• He might see children being hit, and still going to school the next day.
• He might see young people’s bodies being exploited for the sexual gratification of those who should know better.
• He might see people knocking on Vicarage doors for food and drink, and sleeping outside in boxes.

Our Lord might look at all this, and look at us here in this building, and think, ‘ah, they come for spiritual refreshment so that they can go out into the world and be my ears, my eyes, my hands, my feet, and my mouth, to heal the sick, to free the captives, to tend the poor, to bind the lame, and to restore creation.’

Or would he? Would he hear moaning and criticism and Chinese whispers? Would he think that we come here simply to keep us happy in the prisons that we have made for ourselves, ‘inclosed in our own fat’? Would he perhaps think that our coming to this church for an hour or so once a week was a hobby like going to the gym, the golf club or the sewing circle?

We have some serious thinking to do about the future. At this time of year we know well enough that the harvest is plentiful only if the ground has been disturbed and seeds have been planted. Leaving things as they are means that soil becomes more and more stale, with the inevitability of death.

I would like to set up a Survive and Thrive group to get going with planning. Not a group that talks, drinks tea, and complains about the Vicar, but a group that gives serious consideration to what this church and church community must do, and how to do it. If you wish to serve on this group, write your name on the sheet at the back of church. I hope that someone might offer to convene this group—it needs to be run by someone other than me.

Vicars come and go, and initiatives and planning for the future have to come from you rather than be imposed by me. I’m embarking on trips to other town churches nearby to see how they do things. Stoke, Wolverhampton and Birmingham are fixed, and Tamworth and Derby are possibilities. If any of you would like to come along, please see me afterwards.

We have been given all these ‘talents’. What shall we do with them? The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom

Some Burton church ‘leaders’ met yesterday. Of about 20 people there, over a half were from churches under the broad Pentecostal banner, with seven of us from the C of E.

Despite a rather self-congratulatory tone, it was impressive to hear of churches with big budgets and lots of people laying on programmes of social action, support groups, food banks and the like, that fill gaps gaping ever wider as the government obsesses about the Daily Mail vote (I wonder how many volunteers vote for the policies that result in the conditions they are volunteering to address). I hope, though, that there’s something more to church than being busy. If not, I’m doomed.

Five or six years ago I would have come away from such a meeting feeling inadequate. I’m blessed with faithful and lovely people but we certainly don’t have a critical mass of volunteers, though I know my parishioners give in their own sweet and quiet way to voluntary programmes throughout the region. And as for funds, the buildings more than eat up our money.

I was pondering this all afternoon. Then in the evening two couples contacted me about baptisms and a wedding at S Paul’s. They had been inside (we must keep churches open) and they had been ‘blown away’ by it. ‘A church should bring you to your knees’, said Sir Ninian Comper. And it does. Even if we humans are not active in the community, our buildings certainly are. Thank the Lord for those that built them, those that beautified them, those that handed them on to us. They may be long dead, but they’re still at work. I count it a privilege to have them in my care.

I can’t compete with the busy-ness of some churches. But I can have buildings open and available; I can be seen around town myself, open and available. It’s terrific that churches are able to lay on extensive programmes of social action, but if that’s all they do there’s something missing. The Immanent is all very well, but without the Transcendent, churches are simply an arm of social services.

We are privileged to be able to offer something else: the Transcendent. We offer space, silence, beauty, the numinous. In our worship we can offer a glimpse of otherness, a glimpse of heaven. And it is that that recharges the batteries so that we can go out and serve each other.

Like I say, once I would have come away from yesterday’s meeting feeling inadequate. But I’ve grown up a bit since then.