Habakkuk
1.1-4, 13-17 and John 14.23-27
On
18th November 1961 in an upstairs room in a modest two-bed semi in Essex a
young mother gave birth to her first son (there's a picture of it, the
house - it's the one on the right with the porch). He wasn’t much to look at,
and he cried round the clock but she loved him as only a mother can. That baby
boy was me. And I came into the world just 16 years after the end of World War
II.
I
was born into a very different world than I would have, had the generation
before mine not risked and, in many cases, laid down their lives to defend
these islands from the cruellest tyranny Europe has ever known.
That is why we do this every year. We do not wear poppies just to remember death but also to savour the better life we enjoy at their expense. Their bravery and sacrifice bequeathed us the legacy of a continent at peace – and we are grateful.
I want to talk about two sorts of peace this morning.
One spring evening in an upstairs room in Jerusalem, Jesus said looked at his twelve closest friends and most loyal followers and said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” It was the evening before he died.
The peace Jesus gives, he said, is “not as the world gives.” That is to say, the world offers one sort of peace. And Jesus gives something else.
What sort of peace does the world give? What does the peace, that is not like Christ’s peace, look like?
To answer that question, look at our very best efforts to contain war.
World
War 1 (1914-1918) was a conflict that was so thoroughly awful that it was
called the war to end all wars. 17.6 million people died or went missing in
just four years. 21.2 million more were wounded – and that’s just military
casualties, not counting civilians. When it ended, people said “We must learn
how to work together to make sure it never happens again.” The war was
officially ended with a treaty signed in Versailles. They set up an
organisation called the League of Nations so that international conflicts could
never be allowed to escalate out of control again.
On
30th September 1938, just 20 years after the end of that war, our then Prime
Minister Neville Chamberlain flew back here from Munich. He stepped off the
plane waving a piece of paper signed jointly by himself and Adolf Hitler hours
earlier. He said, to great cheers from the gathered crowd, “the agreement
signed last night… [is] symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go
to war with one another again.”
Later
that night outside number 10 he said “it is peace for our time… go home and
sleep quietly in your beds.”
That’s the peace that the world gives. It wasn’t peace for our time and it was
anything but a time to sleep quietly in bed. In fact, the very next day, as the
newspapers carried the headline “Pact with Hitler is only a beginning” Hitler
invaded Czechoslovakia.
Within a year, Britain was at war with Germany; a conflict that spanned six years. In the Second World War, there were 24 million military casualties and approximately 49 million civilian ones. In other words, this war was over four times more deadly than the war to end all wars, two decades earlier.
So much for the peace that the world gives…
On the 26th June 1945, within two months of the end of the Second World War, there was a summit of world leaders in San Francisco.
The outcome of that historic gathering was that the United Nations was formed.
They issued a charter in which the following resolutions were affirmed.
We the peoples of the United Nations [are] determined
·
to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our
lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind…
·
to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good
neighbours…
·
to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security
These are beautiful words. These are commendable goals. This is the peace that the world gives. The problem is, sadly, like the Treaty of Versailles, it doesn’t deliver the peace we all yearn for.
If it did, there would be no conflict zones anywhere in the world today. War would be a thing of the past.
The truth is, not a single month has passed by since the setting up of the United Nations when there hasn’t been a war somewhere.
This is the peace that the world gives.
And, of course, war and violence is not just a modern phenomenon. Habakkuk, in our first reading cried out; “Lord, why is there so much strife and violence and you do nothing about it?” He wrote those words over 600 years before Christ. About that time, a prophet called Jeremiah was saying “Peace, peace you say – but there is no peace!” It has been the same sorry story throughout human history.
Jesus said that there will be “wars and rumours of wars and nation rising up against nation” until the end of time.
Why is it that we, as a species, the human race, are so manifestly unable to deliver the peace we all so long and yearn for?
We see from a very young age that small children fight over toys. My entire childhood there was a running feud and a bitter dispute between my brother Richard and me on who should have the top bunk bed. We have only recently negotiated a truce! As we get older, the toys and beds become land, and positions of power and natural resources like oil.
We find too that we clash with each other in our marriages and families, sometimes with irretrievable breakdown. We fight at work. We fall out with the neighbours.
There will always be wars and rumours of wars, as Jesus said, because the human heart itself is not what it should be.
Jeremiah, again, said “The human heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?”
So this is the peace that the world gives; momentary, illusory and ineffective.
But remember the words of Jesus.
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”
What is the peace that he gives? In what way is it different?
To answer that question I want to introduce you to a young man called Cyril
Barton. On 18th July 1943 he wrote the following letter to his mother to be
opened in the event of his death.
Dear
mum,
I hope that you never read this but I quite expect that you will.
I am expecting to do my first operational flight in a few days. I know what operations over Germany mean and I have no illusions about it. By my own calculations, the average life of a crew is 20 flights and we have 30 to do in our first tour.
I am writing this just to tell you how I feel about meeting my Maker. All I can say about this is that I am quite prepared to die. It holds no terror for me. I know I will survive the judgement as I have trusted in Christ as my own saviour. I have done nothing to merit glory; because he died for me, it’s God’s free gift. At times I have wondered if I have been right believing what I do and just recently I have doubted the veracity of the Bible. But in the little time I have had to sort out intellectual problems I have been left with a bias in favour of the Bible.
Apart from this though, I have the inner conviction as I write, a force outside myself and my brain, that I have not trusted in vain. All I am anxious about is that you and all the rest of the family would also come to know him. I commend my Saviour to you.
I am writing to Doreen separately. I expect that you will have guessed by now that we are quite in love with each other. She too will find the blow hard to bear. But there is a text that we have often quoted to each other and it is written in the Daily Light she gave me. Romans 8:28 – We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him. It’s true.
Well,
that’s covered everything now. Love to dad and all.
Your
loving son, Cyril.
On
30th March 1944 Cyril Barton's Halifax bomber was hit by enemy night fighters.
Two fuel tanks were punctured, the radio was disabled, the starboard inner
engine was on fire and the intercom lines within the plane were cut.
A
misinterpreted signal resulted in three of the crew bailing out. Cyril was left
all alone with no navigator, no bombardier and no wireless operator. As he
crossed the English coast his fuel finally ran out and with only one engine
working he approached the village of Ryhope, near Sunderland. If he had bailed
out then, his stricken aircraft would have crashed into a row of houses so he
stayed on board to steer it towards a pit head instead.
He was pulled alive from the wreckage but he died before reaching the hospital. He was only 22. It was his 19th mission.
He was posthumously awarded the highest honour for gallantry, the Victoria Cross.
“I commend my saviour to you” he wrote to his mother and from the grave he commends his saviour to us all today. If anyone merited the Victoria Cross it was Cyril Barton – but his greatest reward, his eternal reward, was in Christ.
As a young pilot, Cyril Joe Barton knew he was staring death in the face every time he took off on a wartime mission. How could he face death with such courage, with such nerve, with such… serenity?
He knew the peace that Jesus gives, that the world cannot give, and it settled his fearful heart.
But his death was still a bitter blow to their parents, one from which they never fully recovered. As far as I know, they never shared their son’s faith and never tasted the peace that Jesus gives and that the world cannot.
Do you have that peace? Have you discovered it? Put your life into his hands today, as Cyril Barton did, and then ask Christ to help you bring his amazing peace to others.
“Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, [for] you were called to peace”
(Colossians 3:15).
Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 11th November 2012
