"For Our Sake"
To serve my country, my honour and my God.
Sermon Preached by
The Reverend Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, November 5, 2006
Text: 2 Samuel 9:1-13
Ten days after the declaration of peace on VE Day, May 8, 1945, a young woman from Toronto named Peggy Bates wrote to her dear husband. He had been fighting in Europe, but was very badly injured, and they didn't know when he would return. So on May 18, 1945, Peggy wrote this letter to her husband, Pat, in which she described what life had been like in Toronto on VE Day and the days that followed:
My darling,
VE Day burst upon us on a rising tide of excitement and expectation. We had had the radio going practically all day during the last week, and a CBL was staying awake all night, too, on account of the expected news. I nearly made a date with the alarm clock to get up and listen.
However, the news came over about 9 a.m. on the Monday, and I awoke the Edisons upstairs to tell them and phoned Mary downtown to see what she was going to do. I felt like walking on my hands, and dreadfully wanted to go downtown with Jock (our little son], but was afraid that he might be crushed by the crowds.
Bells rang from all over the place, sirens whined and flights of planes zoomed over and all sorts of jalopies, strangely decorated, went through the streets with shouting kids. Racks of flags broke out everywhere. Mary brought home what she could find downtown, namely a Canadian and a British one, which we stuck in the tub on the balcony rail in which chives were growing.
That afternoon, Mary and I concocted some punch out of some reserves of rum and other peculiar ingredients and people began to splash in and out. I dressed Jock up in pink linen with a Black Watch pin and he caught the excitement and ran around charming the dropped-in people. That evening, after Jock was tucked away, a sort of drifting, al fresco party took place, with a sort of rough buffet spread dreamed up by me. Several contributed bottles to our own reserves.
The next morning, very kindly, Mary took care of Jock while I went to church, the Church of the Redeemer at the corner of Bloor and Avenue Road, where there was a small congregation and a communion service, but unhappily, no music.
Toronto celebrated in a glad and an orderly way, quite spontaneously, I believe, without the embarrassment of the New York crowds, and certainly none of the Halifax hooliganism. I personally felt waves of exhilaration and depression all day - the latter because you weren't here, too. But, I listened to London celebrating over the BBC, and hope you felt as happy as they all sounded.
I still can't believe it, and it will take a long time to become accustomed to it. Before it happened, I had the firmest sort of confidence that it would end soon, but now that it is here, I can't grasp it. It will be easier, darling, when you get home.
With love, Peggy
In this letter, she captured all the emotions of war: the fellowship, the need for worship, the exultation when it is over, the depression of the unknown, the fear of its consequences, the loneliness of the separation and the cloud of unknowing. War, you see, has an uncanny way of bringing out the extremes of human emotions - the heights of joy when it is over, the depths of sadness when it reaches its worst. It reveals to us the very best of human nature: camaraderie, loyalty, sacrifice, dedication. As well, it reveals the very worst: enmity, violence, inhumanity and death.
I always wonder when I hear of what was going on in this very city at that very time, at the end of World War II: How do we respond to such emotions? How can we, who sit in these pews 60 years later, have any sense of what Peggy felt for her husband, Pat, and the emptiness of wondering when he would return?
That is why I have always loved the words of the epitaph at Kohima: “When they ask of them, tell them that for their tomorrow we gave them our today.” When I woke up to that reality, I found that Remembrance Day was not just about them, those who served and those who died. Remembrance is for us. It may have been their “today,” but we are that “tomorrow.” All the emotions, all the good and evil and all the remembrance come back and land before us, because it was for us.
Nowhere in the Bible are such sentiments so wonderfully portrayed as in the story of the love between two of the great figures in the history of Israel, Jonathan and David. Jonathan was the son of the King of Israel, Saul. Saul was not a good king and not really an honourable man. Jonathan, his eldest son, was supposed to accede to the throne once Saul was dead, but God had chosen someone else to be king, and that was David.
Ironically, Saul ended up being bound to David through Jonathan; Jonathan and David were inseparable friends. The problem was that Saul and David were fighting for the throne of Israel, and Jonathan had to decide which side he was on. Would he fight for his father, or would he be loyal to his friend, who, he thought, was called by God? Jonathan would not fight his friend David. Out of loyalty, out of a sense of peace, out of recognizing God's hand, Jonathan remained true to David. Jonathan was a great warrior. He had beaten the Philistines at Gilboa. He was a great leader of people. He could have been the king, but he recognized that David, his friend, was the anointed one.
Then, one day, Jonathan and his father Saul went into battle, and they were killed together. In one of the most wonderful eulogies ever written in the whole scripture, David wrote:
Oh, mountains of Gilboa, may you have neither dew nor rain, nor fields that yield offerings of grain, for there the shield of the mighty was defiled, the field of Saul no longer rubbed with oil. From the blood of the slain, from the flesh of the mighty, the bow of Jonathan did not turn back, the sword of Saul did not return satisfied. Saul and Jonathan in life were loved and gracious and in death they were not parted. They were swifter than eagles. They were stronger than lions. Oh, daughters of Israel, weep for Saul, who clothed you in scarlet and finery, who adorned your garments with ornaments of gold. How the mighty have fallen in battle! Jonathan lies slain on your heights. I grieve for you, Jonathan, my brother. You were very dear to me. Your love for me was wonderful, more wonderful than that of women. How the mighty have fallen! The weapons of war have perished.
David not only mourned his friend, he mourned his enemy, Saul. What is amazing about this remembrance is not just the love Jonathan had for David and David for Jonathan, but also what happened after. You see, Jonathan had a son named Mephibosheth. Today's passage is about the encounter between David and Jonathan's son. Jonathan's son had lived with his father only five years; he had hardly known him. Moreover, he had become lame, and was therefore neither feared in battle nor worthwhile in the court. He was someone who was an outcast, because he was lame.
But David asked: “What can I do for Jonathan's sake?” Then he realized that if he cared for Jonathan's son, he could honour the dead. So, he brought Mephibosheth into his court and gave him a place of honour amongst the people there. He gave him a servant called Ziba and he placed him in a position of power and authority. This child who was lame and orphaned was now loved and cared for and protected by David for Jonathan's sake, for the sake of the slain warrior.
So, I ask myself: What, then, do we do for the sake of those who died for us? What is our response to those who gave their lives? How do we live for their sake after they died for us?
This past summer, Marial and I visited the Scottish National War Museum in Edinburgh Castle. I had no idea how moved we were going to be in going there. It is an incredible shrine, an incredible place of remembrance! In a wonderful tapestry hung on the wall, there are these words from a soldier. He said, in Gaelic: “You serve and you remember: my country, my honour, and my God.”
When I left that place, I thought that is the response to those who have laid down their lives. That is the right response: to serve my country, to serve my honour and to serve my God! That is how we do it for their sake. By “my country,” we are not talking about an abstract concept. We are not just talking about physical space and the domain and range of boundaries. We are not talking about an idealistic construct in the abstract. We are dealing with people. That is what country is about. That is what nations are about: People who have a shared history, people who have a shared present, and people who have a shared future. The way that we respond to those who gave their lives is to love the country, to love the people. I realize that I still love the people of South Africa and the country of South Africa, not because of its two oceans or veldt or Table Mountain or magnificent parks and animals, but because I remember its people as children of God.
When I think of my love for England and Scotland, I think not of the heather and the and the hills of the Pennines and the beautiful villages of the south or the magnificent homes and cathedrals and castles. I think of the people, for they are the country and my family. When I think of Canada, which I love more than any of them, I think not of the majesty of the Rocky Mountains or the beauty of Cape Breton or the rugged lakes of Muskoka or the expansive fields of the prairies; I think of the people, and I realize that the love of people is the love of the country. Love of country is not an abstract idea, but a passionate commitment to our fellow citizens.
I once asked a military chaplain why young men and women still serve their country. Why do they go into places of danger? Why do they risk their lives?
He said, “Andrew, at the end of it, I have concluded there is only one reason, and that is for their families, for their communities, and for their nation.” For the people! How do we remember those who went before? How can we possibly repay the sacrifice they have made? We can do it by loving our nation, by loving our country and by loving its people.
How do we find honour in the midst of all of this? William Wordsworth, in defining this word that often seems to have slipped from our vocabulary, wrote the following: “Say what is honour? ”˜Tis the first sense of justice which the human mind can frame.” Honour is to do the just; honour is to do the right; honour is to serve the other.
Six days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, a small town called North Platte in Nebraska decided to do something. There was a rumour that a train was going through their town with the troops of the National Guard of Nebraska, and it would stop there for a few minutes. So, many of the men and women of the town, mainly the women, decided that they would greet the Guard on their way to the west coast, before they got on the ships that took them off to war.
They made coffee and tea and doughnuts and sandwiches and had magazines and keepsakes for the soldiers. The only problem was that when the train arrived, it was the Kansas and not the Nebraska National Guard that arrived. They thought, “What are we to do now?! This was for our boys!” They decided still to give the coffee and the tea and the doughnuts and the magazines to the D Company of the Kansas National Guard.
A day or two later, in a local paper, a 26-year-old mother of two wrote about how wonderful it was to see these 8,000 young men and to give them tea and coffee and to help them on their way. She suggested that they should do it more often. From that day on, the people of North Platte set up a canteen in the middle of their little town. Over the next four years, six million troops went through their canteen on their way to the coast. Four thousand, five hundred volunteers made tea and sandwiches for them. When asked, a young man from Louisiana who had gone through said that those 10 minutes in North Platte were one of the most memorable moments in his whole life. He said, “For 10 minutes we were truly honoured.” Honour is to serve; honour is to do justice; honour is to care for the other.
In Gaelic it said, “My country, my honour, but also my God.” At the shrine at the National War Museum, I went into the very dark recesses of the back hall. On the wall, all those who had served the Dominion have their names inscribed in a Book of Remembrance: all those who had died from New Zealand and Australia, from South Africa and Canada. Slowly, I opened the book and went down the list of names of the Canadians. My eyes stopped; there was a Stirling. I looked up to the window on my right and there, looking down like a beacon of light on all those names was a symbol of the Cross, and on top of it, the dove. In the midst of the names of all those who had died, there was this incredible symbol of peace. I just stood there and stared at it.
This is the symbol of our God. This is the symbol of Christ. In the midst of suffering, this is the hope and the dream of peace. This is what we honour. This is what we hope for. For all of those who died for our sake, let us then live for the sake of the other in the name of our God, the Prince of Peace. Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.