Readings:
Sermon:
Jesus said,
‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you!’
I have family members serving in the army, one of whom is on a UN peace keeping mission in Africa. I think of them today as we remember all our brave young men and women, facing dangers in our name. We need to honour them, and all those caught up in former conflicts.
Earlier this year I settled an Afghan family into their new home. It was an empty vicarage that the diocese made available for them. They had fled their home and beloved country when Kabul fell to the Taliban and American and British troops hastily pulled out. You may remember the chaotic screens on TV as desparate mothers handed their babies to bewildered soldiers guarding the airport. That conflict and the war in Iraq cost this country and America well over a trillion dollars, with over 7,000 soldiers killed, and tens of thousands seriously injured. Every life lost is precious. And every life lost or maimed leaves many others grieving and broken in its wake. Husbands, wives, children, parents. We honour and remember them all today.
On top of all this civilian deaths run into the hundreds and hundreds of thousands. Each life precious. Each life lost leaving others broken in its wake.
It’s difficult to argue with the British Secretary of State who wrote,
‘As the result of two successful campaigns, of the employment of an enormous force, and the expenditure of large sums of money, all that has yet been established has been the disintegration of the State..the assumption of fresh and unwelcome liabilities..and a condition of anarchy throughout the remainder of the country.’
Except that those words were written back in 1880 during our last Afghan campaign! 140 years later. Have we learnt nothing at all?
Can we not be better than this? This endless playing out of hatreds and retribution, of wars on terror, of conquest in Ukraine and all the rest?
For everything there is a season scripture says, a time for war and I pray soon, a time for peace.
A time too to hear the words of our Lord Jesus Christ. ‘You say, an eye for an eye,’ says Jesus, ‘But I say to you, ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you!’
How ridiculous! How impractical! But how practical was our 20 year war on terror, responding to the attack on the twin towers with 20 years on war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Where has it left us and the thousands upon thousands we remember today?
‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.’
Don’t just react, retaliate, hit back in anger. But step back, reflect, pray and respond not out of hate and fear, but out of love. Our very best military personnel do just that.
Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
What a challenge!
Words that Jesus lived out to the full... and calls us to live them out too.