Press Releases12 Nov 07

Sermon preached on Remembrance Sunday in St Macartan's Cathedral, Clogher

Sermon preached at a Service on Remembrance Sunday in St Macartan’s Cathedral, Clogher by the Right Reverend Michael Jackson, Bishop of Clogher

Readings: 1 Kings 3:1-15; Romans 8:31-39

1 Kings 3:9 Grant your servant, therefore, a heart with skill to listen, so that he may govern your people justly and distinguish good from evil. Otherwise who is equal to the task of governing this great people of yours?

The name of Solomon is one which we associate instinctively with wisdom. Phrases like: as wise as Solomon are phrases which we still use. Today’s Old Testament Lesson gives us the background and the explanation as to why Solomon even today has a reputation for wisdom, still remains someone who embodies what it is to be wise. Solomon was aware of everything which his father David had done. He knew that somehow he had to continue that work and that tradition. God asked him what he wanted from Him and we hear his reply: Grant your servant, therefore, a heart with skill to listen, so that he may govern your people justly and distinguish good from evil. As we listen to the rest of the conversation between Solomon and God, we learn that God will indeed grant his request and also will give him much more besides – things for which he might have been expected to ask and did not in fact, as it happened, ask. But the request he made was for a heart with skill to listen and his priorities and his needs were the following: just government of God’s people and: the capacity to distinguish good from evil. This message is as real today as it was then.

It is to the example and the request of Solomon that I draw you today, Remembrance Sunday, because all too often in a busy world we can forget the sort of request which Solomon made of God. To think about human wisdom guided and inspired by God is a fitting thing to do on Remembrance Sunday. This very world will all too soon be approaching the one hundredth anniversary of the start of World War I and will even sooner be approaching the seventieth anniversary of the start of World War II. For those who have memories, their own and those of others, of both of these events, the march of time must seem to be impossible to comprehend and quite unforgiving in its forward march. For those who have no direct memories of either of those World Wars, the freedom and opportunity given us together with the sadness and destruction experienced by millions throughout this period of time remain vivid because we have, rightly, not been permitted to forget them but annually have been asked to remember them.

The twentieth century has shown us that war and warfare are part of the weave of life. The twenty-first century, even in its short first decade, shows us that things are no different. Instant access to the action brings instant access to the bravery of soldiers and the suffering of civilians, women and children as well as men. Those of whom in the past we heard but little – older and younger people, women and children – are much more part of the map of war now that we are all armchair viewers and strategists in the theatre of war. Critical studies of the political and economic causes of war leave us more cautious about emotional nationalism and more cynical about the motivation of those whom we find in positions of leadership. It would be all too easy to conclude that the times in which we live are more peaceful for some and sadder for all.

To my mind that would be rather too negative a conclusion to draw. History, as we all know, is a strange thing when we live through it. Looking back over what has been done, what has happened, is a luxury which was not possible for any who were there and who had to make decisions at the time. This holds for World Wars and also, in many respects, for The Troubles which scarred the human landscape of Northern Ireland for more than thirty years. Let us not forget that out of the experience of two World Wars have come both the institution which we call the United Nations and also the organic community which we call the European Union. The former has seriously sought to bring to bear on situations of international tension and escalating progression towards warfare the moral pressure of what has been agreed to be an irreducible set of core values in human existence and dealings with other people. The latter looked at the scarred and smouldering remains of a Europe ravaged by warring nationalisms and in so doing determined on a response which would be positive, cohesive and fuelled by a shared hope in the future, gathering in the experience of the human collapse which is war itself and making of it a different type of future. The island of Ireland itself manifests the dangers which there always are in turning an economic formula into a recipe for social and cultural togetherness. But at the same time there is progress which has been sustained and developed. And this year we marked fifty years since the signing of The Treaty of Rome which set the European Union on its way and in our diocese alone within the Church of Ireland we did so with a fellow-Anglican bishop from mainland Europe, Bishop Carlos of Spain, among us.

Ever since my childhood, I have been fascinated by the testimony of inspiring old soldiers who are quite clear about one thing when interviewed long after the events of which they were part and which they had survived. Part of what fascinates me is that almost invariably they have seemed to express the sentiment that, even though we regard them as distinguished heroes for what they did in the cause of freedom, they wished that they had never had to go to war in the first place. And that is still something for us to ponder. As war is and remains part of the weave of human life, so there are many who become embroiled in it who wish that it had not been necessary. They did what they did because they felt that they had to do it for the sake of security, for the sake of others, for the sake of their families, for the sake of freedom and for the sake of peace or for some other reason. I think that somewhere within this sense of duty and this sense of anxiety all in one we can see something of the wisdom of Solomon as he expressed it in his response to God: a heart with skill to listen, so that [I] may govern your people justly and distinguish good from evil. For those motivated by principle, there is that desire to combine the prompting of God with the best of what we as human beings can offer. There is the longing to contribute to just governance and to help to distinguish good from evil and in so doing to enable justice to shine in the world as we know it. I suggest that however humble our decision may seem to us we can learn, from King Solomon and from those who gave of themselves unstintingly in the service of freedom, to bring to such a decision a heart with skill to listen and the urgent desire to distinguish good from evil.

I spoke earlier about two particular initiatives on the wider international scene which came out of the scarred remains of two World Wars. They were the United Nations and the European Union. I spoke also of the need always to remember the people of every persuasion, class and creed who fought for freedom and in the conviction that good would triumph over evil. In our own country we are now in a position where there are opportunities for growth, development and cohesion in society which were not there before. That same request of God to which Solomon gave voice is needed in today’s Northern Ireland: just government and distinguishing good from evil. For too long we have been accustomed to having to listen to political leaders who more often than not know what is best for themselves. For too long they have sold on to us a political philosophy which has both built upon and consolidated the division in our society. And let us never forget that they have thrived and flourished on it. The political encampments of entrenched leadership will, I predict, over the next five years come under intense scrutiny and severe criticism.

In an era of greater peace, where people like you and me have even the sniff of normality, more people than the political gurus ever predicted will want what I can only call: value for their vote. At the same time, of course, the contribution in terms of tolerance, respect, creative thinking of people like you and me locally is essential. But the infrastructure and the superstructure to feed and to nurture this tender plant of a new society require sustained commitment on the part of politicians whose control of the purse strings and whose engagement with the fashioning of a new future stand as something which they can offer back for good into the societies which they represent and whose best interests they are elected to champion. We need roads. We need hospitals. We need clarity about provision of education at all levels. And in the West in particular we need to be treated as equals, as people who ought not to have to settle for the crumbs, and as people who carry a particular legacy and a heavy history throughout The Troubles without retaliating and who now wish respectfully to be helped to move forward. Mature, creative and responsible devolution requires not only peaceful co-existence but also pro-active co-operation on the part of those who, previously enemies, now are nudging towards accepting their need of one another as fellow-citizens. In the cycle of current history it is an uncharted path. In the demands of contemporary society it has to be, however, much more walk than talk. And it is not easy either for them or for us. We carry the past with us as do they into the future. And they do indeed have our prayers as they move into the open, unguarded terrain which is today’s Northern Ireland.

It would, in my opinion, be strange were Christian people not to have recourse to Holy Scripture for advice, for direction, for comfort and for re-focusing on what it is to be a child of God and a disciple of Jesus Christ. One of the most sustained early responses to the presence of God in Jesus Christ in the world as we know it is St Paul. He is a complex character, in all probability a difficult person, but at the same time he gives us an insight into what it was for him to listen to God when it was the last thing he wanted to do. From this we can draw some helpful conclusions about what it is for individuals and communities to respond today to the same God who dragged Paul out of himself. In his Letter to the Romans, Paul tells us in a way which is properly Christian what it is to live in the future. My suggestion this afternoon is that, in the way of Solomon, we listen to this invitation and this call. I say this because the future will not go away. The future beckons us whether we want to go there or not. The letter to the Romans chapter 8 offers us the road to the future. We are invited to accept the fact that by our obedience to the pattern of teaching given us by God we are free from sin. This sets us free to live a holy life. It also sets us free to embrace the love of God which will uphold us in this freedom and will protect us from separation from the love of God.

This is a robust message for our time. In our own particular context today, as people gather to worship God, to honour the memory of those fallen in two World Wars first and foremost of this parish but also in this mother church those fallen of this diocese, and to reflect on what those people gave in order that we might be here today, this section of Romans 8 does not minimize the dangers and the difficulties. It does carry us, however, on the cross of Christ into and through the most intense suffering and degradation, through to life itself in all its fullness and to the victory over death which comes about by the love of God. And it brings us back to the earliest words and ideas of the Bible: creation is God’s creation. No matter how difficult and destructive this creation is to other parts of itself to itself, nothing in creation ultimately can separate us from God the creator of creation.

It would not be possible for me to speak today without a special Remembrance of those who lost their lives Remembering the dead of two World Wars in Enniskillen in our Diocese of Clogher on Remembrance Sunday, November 8th 1987. Anyone who, like myself, was present at the Cenotaph on that day will never ever forget it. The callous premeditation of those who planted the bomb, their failure ever to acknowledge in any meaningful way what they did or who they are casts a cloud over every effort of good people to build up trust in our divided and anxious community. As well as remembering before Almighty God the dead of two World Wars from this parish of Clogher we remember today also in a special way: Bertha Armstrong, Edward Armstrong, Wesley Armstrong, Samuel Gault, Jessie Johnston, Kit Johnston, Johnny Megaw, Agnes Mullan, William Mullan, Marie Wilson and Ronnie Hill who died many years later. Their families are very much in our hearts today of all days, on the twentieth anniversary of what history calls The Enniskillen Bomb. We remember the tireless and committed work of people who tried in any way they could to help, members of the security, fire and emergency forces, members of the general public, medical and nursing personnel and all who right up until today help people to carry the burden of suffering, loss and incomprehension. I re-iterate my appeal for a meaningful apology on the part of the perpetrators of The Enniskillen Bomb to the families of those people and to the people of Enniskillen.

We remember most of all not to forget: not to forget the sacrifice; not to forget the suffering; not to forget the people and their lives; not to forget that, in the words of St Paul, nothing in creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

May God bless both our remembering those of the past and our hoping for those of the future.