“We cannot hallow this ground”, said President Lincoln in his extraordinary address on the battlefield of Gettysburg in 1863.  “The brave men who struggled here have consecrated it…It is for us rather to be dedicated…that these dead shall not have died in vain.”  In our land the annual rhythm of Remembrance honours those who paid the ultimate sacrifice and compels us to reflect on our own call to be peace-makers today.  There are estimated to be over 100,000 war memorials in the UK to help us remember well.  York Minster has memorials dating back to the Crimea and Boer Wars.  Alongside plaques that commemorate those who gave their lives in battle or as POWs, you famously have the King’s Book of York Heroes for the First World War and the rather older ‘5 Sisters Window’ re-dedicated in the 1920s to commemorate women of the former British Empire who died in that same conflict.

Memorials capture the imagination down the generations, whether as the traditional village cross, or modern art installations or musical compositions.  Most are uncontroversial but some highlight the juxtaposition of sacrifice and moral complexity in war.  The Bomber Command Memorial in London recalls the loss of 55,000 bomber aircrew in the Second World War, some of them flying from airfields in Yorkshire yet was constructed only in 2012 due to the pain and confusion of what it represents.  It quietly includes the inscription, ‘alongside those of all nations who lost their lives’ in the aerial campaign.  It is appropriate then not just to recall the sheer scale of suffering caused by war but to do so with sober reflection concerning the motives, methods, ambiguities and consequences of war.  To rephrase the question posed by Lincoln: how do we remember in a way that honours the past, informs the present and inspires the future?

How we remember is as important as what we remember.  ‘There is a time to weep…a time to mourn…’  It is absolutely right that we should make our Act of Remembrance, just as the guns fell silent at the 11^th hour on 11^th day of the 11^th month in 1918.  I can tell you there is nothing more sobering than to stand on a parade square in a far off land, bidding farewell to departed friends and colleagues, listening to the Last Post, as a military chaplain saying prayers on behalf of sailors, soldiers and airmen and women – youngsters generally who may not always be able to articulate a faith but deep down are really grateful for spiritual succour.  Yet if we are to honour those who have courageously served and died, in war and in the fight to maintain civic society against terror and extremism, we need to do more, to remember with understanding – for ‘there is a time to speak, a time to gather stones together, a time to build up…’.

Yet it is difficult.  We have heard the abiding counsel of the Ecclesiastes reading, reminding us of the wisdom to know what activity is right, physically, morally, emotionally, at any given time: ‘For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven… a time to plant  and a time to pluck up, to kill and to heal…for war and for peace’.  If only it were easy to judge the right time…!  Yes, there comes a point when the choice is so stark, the cause so great, that there is no time left to ponder. You might think of the summer of 1940 when an existential threat to our nation demanded decisive action in the Battle of Britain.  But our moral choices are not usually so obvious. At ground level I recall a young Serviceman in Iraq who shot an insurgent and then switched roles to patch him up as the team medic. Control of such choices may become even more challenging with the development of increasingly autonomous weaponry. At a more strategic level how does one evaluate one country’s right to defend its homeland against the risk to wider security, or where military response to atrocity generates far-reaching suffering. As in our everyday experience when we sometimes don’t know whether to speak or be silent, to laugh or to cry, we should avoid a superficial, one-dimensional view of conflict for it bears a multitude of complexities.

Remembrance is made yet more challenging by the fickleness of our human condition: How do we fathom the right course of action when emotions and reason often jumbled together?  Leonard Cheshire, who won the Victoria Cross as a Pathfinder pilot and later founded the Cheshire Homes, highlighted the tension: ‘Ambition is a good thing; but not at the expense of others’.  The Russian dissident Solzhenitsyn astutely observed that ‘the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being’.  St Paul wrote honestly: ‘I have the desire to do what is good but I cannot carry it out!  For what I do is not the good I want to do…’ This battle for good and ill is writ large on the international stage and we should pray for those charged with responsibility for leadership.  No wonder Jesus looked over Jerusalem and cried: “If you had only known what would bring you peace …”  He cries today, whether over the legacy of failed military interventions, the drawn-out suffering in the conflicts of Ukraine and the Middle-East, of Africa and elsewhere, the fragility of international partnerships that hinders united action on climate change and migration; he cries over the weaponizing of gender, the power struggles over natural resources, even over water.  It is vitally important for future generations that we face up to battles that may exist in our own lives, communities and nations today.

Jesus, the Prince of Peace, offers a better way: “Blessed are the peacemakers; for they will be called the children of God.”  The series of Beatitudes in Matthew’s Gospel is a manifesto for the Kingdom of God.  It serves as a battle plan against self-interested agenda.  It is truly transformative, liberating as much the one who shows mercy as the one who receives it.  It is profoundly challenging, a call to sacrifice as well as to ultimate redemption.

Are you up for it?  Could you make it work in your family?  Could you be a bridge-builder in your community?  Can you adjust your sights, your ambitions and priorities in a call to service?  There is a wonderful verse in our first reading: ‘God put a sense of past and future into their minds’ – or as another translation puts it: God ‘has set eternity in the hearts of humanity’. It is possible.  Jesus himself has shown the way; he himself walked the talk.  He fought the battle and supremely embodied it on the cross.  He laid down his life, not just for his friends, but uniquely for his enemies also: “Do this as I have done for you”, he said, even as he washed his betrayer’s feet.

The remarkable thing, of course, is not so much that we remember before God but that he remembers us.  Jacob Astley got it right when praying at the Civil War Battle of Edgehill: “Lord you know how busy I must be this day; If I forget thee, do not thou forget me”.  He never forgets us nor leaves us.  He knows the deep waters of anger and pain in grief because he’s been there.  He understands the complexities that we face.  We will be blessed if we allow his peace to steady our disordered passions, if we allow him to walk alongside us in our lives.  So in return let us offer our lives in dedicated, compassionate service.  If we do that then we will truly honour the sacrifices of our forebears, gain lasting hope for the future and become peace-makers today.