Remembrance Sunday

Jesus could have been reading the news headlines off a teleprinter when he said, as is recorded in Luke 21: 5-19: “Countries will fight each other; kingdoms will attack one another. There will be terrible earthquakes, famines and plagues everywhere; there will be strange and terrifying things coming from the sky.”

On Remembrance Sunday we come to remember and to honour those who gave their lives because our world still is as Jesus described it all those years ago. Countries still fight each other, kingdoms still attack each other. So, like a certain newsreader several years ago, we ask, “Where is the good news to be found?”

In Malachi 4: 1-2a we read of God saying that his “saving power will rise on us like the sun and bring healing like the sun’s rays.” Life on earth seems like a long, dark night of the soul but the night will pass, the day will eventually come and we will emerge blinking into the light that will heal our world.

Those who have known active service know what it is like to go through the fearful experience of conflicts where the only relief is the company of your colleagues. But they also know what it is to survive those experiences and share in the joy of victory and peace. Jesus, too, knew this experience - the long torturous death that was crucifixion followed by the joy and victory of resurrection. Like the sun, Jesus rises upon us and brings healing.

Because of Jesus there is light, not just at the end of our tunnel but here in the present too. Many of us at St John’s have known that light breaking in to our personal darkness to bring God’s healing into our wounds and brokenness.

But this personal healing is only the beginning of a process that can move us towards the day when God’s saving power will rise on all, not just individuals. Jesus’ life, death and resurrection and our experience of Jesus in our individual lives are both intended to bring us a place where, in the middle of a world where conflict and bad news are the norm, we work for peace to bring the good news of God’s coming kingdom to all. May it be so for each one of us.

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Corinne Bailey Rae - Like A Star.