Remembrance Day St Wilfrid’s broadcast 11 November 2020

It’s Armistice Day and the claxon will sound across Haywards Heath at 11 o’clock as many in our town keep a 2 minute silence to recall all those people who died in the World Wars for which poppies on our lapels have been an ongoing visual reminder these last weeks. 

In the early part of the 20th century, the fields of France and Belgium were filled with red poppies. The flowers grew in the same fields where many soldiers lost their lives fighting in World War I.

John McCrae was a Canadian surgeon in the First World War. He was also a poet and produced a famous poem called "In Flanders Fields". The day before he wrote this, one of John's closest friends was killed and buried in a grave decorated with only a simple wooden cross. Wild poppies were already blooming between the crosses that marked the graves of those who were killed in battle. 

"In Flanders Fields" was first published in December, 1915 in England's "Punch" magazine. Within months it became the most popular poem about the First World War. Many people felt the poem symbolised the sacrifices made by all those who participated in World War I. Here it is

In Flanders fields the poppies blow between the crosses, row on row,

that mark our place; and in the sky the larks, still bravely singing, fly

scarce heard amid the guns below. 

We are the Dead. 

Short days ago we lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, loved, and were loved, 

and now we lie in Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe: to you from failing hands we throw

the torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die

we shall not sleep, though poppies grow in Flanders fields.

This morning we remember that out of that sadness and the terrible reality of war there grows a longing for peace which is being eloquently expressed across the world today. 

There is another sign mentioned in the poem besides that of the poppy. It’s that of the cross which is placed over graves to remind people of the sacrifice of Jesus and his victory over death.

During the First World War a British Soldier fought in one of the trenches in the Somme surviving those 4 years of conflict to return to his native Yorkshire. 

He took with him a spent brass shell case from the trench of the Somme. In his spare time he took that case and moulded it into a crucifix, an image of the Cross of Jesus.

Years later I was to meet his daughter who gave me the same crucifix when I visited her in her old age in Doncaster.

Here it is - a very special cross given me thirty five years ago by a miner's widow.

A cross made from a shell to show God's love. 

A cross made from a weapon of destruction to hold Jesus our crucified Saviour.

I keep it on my desk to remind me of Jesus as the One who can turn the raw material of our lives, with all its pain and sorrow, into a thing of beauty, just as the brass shell became this crucifix.

Through the cross of Jesus we know God has overcome the worst things in the world that can ever come against us – sin, fear, doubt, disease, even death – all these powers are overcome.

Jesus, the Son of God, has been through the darkest valley so I know that there is nothing God and I together cannot overcome in this world or the next.

On Armistice Day at St Wilfrid’s we voice for our town and its dear dead a prayer engraved on the west wall of Westminster Abbey: God grant to the living grace, to the departed rest, to the church and the world peace and concord and to us sinners eternal life. Amen.