Jesus told a story about being as ready as we can for the unexpected (Matthew 25.1-13). His story is the set reading for this Remembrance Sunday. His story was about bridesmaids waiting for a bridegroom to light him to the wedding with their lamps. He was later than expected and some had not brought supplies of oil for their lamps. Those without had to go searching for oil and missed out on the wedding as a result. Those who prepared for the unexpected were ready to meet the bridegroom and go into the wedding.
With this story Jesus is asking us prepared we are for the unexpected? The bridesmaids who were prepared had rehearsed possible scenarios and were ready for those. They also had the right attitude, being ready to wait for the bridegroom’s arrival. As a result, they were able to take part in a wonderful celebration of unity and love. With this story, Jesus is also encouraging us to prepare for the unexpected recognising that we live in a world where conflict is regularly experienced at all levels of society.
While we can't prepare for the exact situation we might face, we can prepare for possible scenarios, prepare mentally and emotionally for difficult events, and practice peace ourselves in order to anticipate a peaceful society. That’s essentially what our armed forces regularly do. In peacetime they go on manoeuvres and take part in exercises in order to be ready for the moment when they are called to go to war while also acting as those who maintain the peace by preventing fresh conflict from developing.
That is also what our government has advised households to do to prepare for severe disruption, to stockpile canned food and drinking water, to strengthen our civic resilience and to plan for the possibility of war. It says we should be "alert - not alarmed."
The truth is that there are now more conflicts, more wars, than at any point since the end of the Second World War. The number of countries involved in external conflict has nearly doubled since 2008. The civil war in Sudan, the protracted conflict in Ukraine, and the ongoing conflict between Israel, the United States and Iran have left the world in a more fragile and militarised state than at any point since the cold war ended. The Chief of the Defence Staff, Sir Richard Knighton, said in September that the threat from Russia meant Britain was living through the "most dangerous" period of his 35-year career in the armed forces.
War in which we as a nation are more actively involved is not inevitable, but it is certainly not out of the question. And yet today I want to say something about hope. Now you might say, “Jonathan, there are no signs of hope. In fact it’s all looking pretty hopeless…” (https://www.chelmsford.anglican.org/uploads/files/Transcript_-_Weekly_Sermon_Remembrance.pdf)
Disasters are frequent occurrences in our world, “some natural, many more due to man’s ham-fisted neglect of the planet or our inability to get by without recourse to violence.” “The result is always the need for a new start, and how we respond and rebuild colours an uncertain future more than ever. Yet, for all the carnage and chaos that catastrophes bring, an odd truth is apparent: disasters do give us the chance to shape things differently.”
So, while this day is about honouring the dead who laid down the lives that we might be free, it can also be about our preparation for the future. We draw inspiration from those who have gone before and learn from their experiences in order that can be as ready as we can for what will come in the future and even shape that future. The key lesson to learn from past wars is the fundamental necessity of peace. Jesus taught his followers through his stories to anticipate a future where people come together in love to celebrate unity and he calls us to be those who anticipate and practice that future reality in the here and now.
As the band Widespread Panic once sang, we should go:
Looking for hope in a hopeless world
Try to find love in such hateful times
Try to stay strong but my mind is weak
Looking for hope in a hopeless world
That was what those at the heart of the Allied response in the Second World War did. Even in the darkest moments when the Dunkirk evacuation was needed, they did not give up hope and began planning for D-Day.
Hope is about a vision for a future that is different from the present; one which therefore requires imagination and vision. For Christians that vision is of the kingdom of God; which has begun to be realised but is still to come in its full reality. That is the kind of hope we need today when we think we are living in a hopeless world.
In his Theology of Hope the theologian Jürgen Moltmann argues that “Those who hope in Christ can no longer put up with reality as it is, but begin to suffer under it, to contradict it. Peace with God means conflict with the world, for the goad of the promised future stabs inexorably into the flesh of every unfulfilled present. If we had before our eyes only what we see, then we should cheerfully or reluctantly reconcile ourselves with things as they happen to be. That we do not reconcile ourselves, that there is no pleasant harmony between us and reality, is due to our unquenchable hope. This hope keeps man unreconciled, until the great day of the fulfilment of all the promises of God.
As a result, the Church is intended to be “the source of continual new impulses towards the realization of righteousness, freedom and humanity here in the light of the promised future that is to come.” Our hope should “provide inexhaustible resources for the creative, inventive imagination of love.” It should constantly provoke and produce thinking of an anticipatory kind in love to humanity and the world, “in order to give shape to the newly dawning possibilities in the light of the promised future, in order as far as possible to create here the best that is possible, because what is promised is within the bounds of possibility.”
Today, as we remember the sacrifice of those who gave their lives for our freedom, may we commit ourselves to find and to be hope in a hopeless world. That is how we prepare ourselves for the unexpected, as did the wise bridesmaids in Jesus’ story. Amen.
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Widespread Panic - Hope In A Hopeless World.
