Grace In Time Of Need (Remembrance Day Sermon 2015)

Psalm 20 and Matthew 26.36-39

Queues outside Westminster Abbey, 26 May 1940

This year marked the 75^th anniversary of one of the greatest miracles this country has witnessed in recent times. It was an expression of the grace of God at a time of unprecedented national emergency.

It’s a sad reflection of our times that our media stopped short of retelling the full story this year. So, in case you haven’t been told before, let me tell you what happened in the life of our nation 75 years ago.

On 10 May 1940 Adolf Hitler launched his blitzkrieg against the Low Countries and France. Blitzkrieg literally means “lightning war,” and it was a military strategy designed to create panic among opposing forces through the use of concentrated, mobile firepower.

Barely a week after this blitzkrieg began, French and Belgian defences had been breached and overrun. The 7^th Panzer Tank Division made a rapid advance across northern France and western Belgium.

There is no other way to say it: the allied forces took a pounding. They just didn’t expect to meet a military machine so well trained, so well organised and so well armed.

Days later, they were threatening our retreating British troops with encirclement. It was an embarrassing mismatch of firepower and our forces were driven back.

With the entire allied front pushed back and collapsing like a house of cards, the decision was made in Whitehall to pull out and get as many of our forces back from the Continent as we could. You probably know this already from the opening credits of Dad’s Army. This is exactly the situation they depict.

This was a fight Britain could not win, so the best option available was to retreat, regroup, retrain and hopefully fight another day.

The one last port from which an evacuation would be possible was Dunkirk. But as Hitler’s tanks advanced, the window of opportunity was closing rapidly and Dunkirk wouldn’t be viable as a launching harbour for long.

Taking stock of the dilemma facing our country, Winston Churchill wrote in his Nobel Prize winning memoirs these words: “I thought - and some good judges agreed with me - that perhaps 20,000 or 30,000 men might be re-embarked. The whole root and core and brain of the British army... seemed about to perish upon the field, or to be led into ignominious and starving captivity.”

30,000 maximum from a force of about 340,000. We were looking at the prospect of about a third of a million casualties.

Seeing the scale and urgency of the unfolding crisis, King George VI called for Sunday 26 May to be observed as a National Day of Prayer. This quiet and shy man who could barely string three sentences together without stammering awkwardly found something in him to give a stirring radio broadcast, calling the entire nation to commit their cause to God and cry out for his deliverance. 

Some of the lines from our first reading, Psalm 20, seem to encapsulate the crisis faced in those days:

May the Lord answer you when you are in distress;
may the name of the God of Jacob protect you.

Some trust in chariots and some in horses,
but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.

Lord, give victory to the king!
Answer us when we call!

History records that together with members of the Cabinet and the military, the King got down on his knees in Westminster Abbey, and millions of his subjects flocked to churches up and down the land to join him in prayer. Britain was a nation before God that Sunday.

The scene outside the Abbey was astounding - long lines of people queued outside but most couldn’t get in because the church was full.

There was a fervour in prayer. Churchill said afterwards, “The English are loath to expose their feelings, but in my stall in the choir I could feel the pent-up passionate emotion.” Our nation poured out its soul in a heartfelt cry to almighty God.

Here’s a short Pathé newsreel report from that day… [Click on the picture to go to the go to the page at britishpathe.com].

“The empire responds to the King's call. And at Westminster Abbey, heart of the empire, the statesmen, the soldiers, the ambassadors and hundreds of ordinary men and women join the mighty congregation. Her majesty Queen Philomena of the Netherlands arrives just a few moments before their majesties. No one here today could have forseen the grave news that has come from Belgium. All the more! It is well for us to show the world that we still believe in divine guidance, in the laws of Christianity. May we find inspiration and faith from this solemn day.”

I became quite emotional this week as I watched that clip and read archived newspaper reports in preparation for this talk. Will I ever see the like of those reports in the Guardian or of that film clip on the BBC in my lifetime? I don’t believe I will. Can we really say that we still believe in divine guidance as a nation? I’m afraid that I don’t believe we can today.

The following morning, the front page of the Daily Sketch carried a report of the National Day of Prayer with a photograph of huge crowds outside Westminster Abbey. The report said, “Nothing like this has ever happened before.”

The very day people read those words at their breakfast tables, Monday 27 May, the Nazi High Command made this boast: “The British army is encircled and our troops are proceeding to its annihilation.” They were now only ten miles away and the buffer of resistance between the two armies had vanished.

It seemed a matter of time before our defences would be overrun and our armed forces would be decimated, leaving wide open the route for a military invasion of these islands. We would have been sitting ducks.

But immediately following that Day of Prayer three extraordinary things happened.

The first was that for some reason – and this has never been fully explained – with his Generals just waiting for his order to advance, Hitler simply froze. This is a matter of historical record. For two or three days the Fürher didn’t know what to do. He parked his tanks at the very moment they were poised to power ahead, press their advance to the beach at Dunkirk, and smash the last British resistance.

The second extraordinary thing came the next day. On Tuesday 28 May a fierce and prolonged storm suddenly broke over southern Belgium and northern France. The weather was so atrocious that the entire Luftwaffe had to be grounded, enabling British formations to retreat safely on foot to the coast with all aerial bombardment immobilized.

The third extraordinary thing was that despite the appalling weather in Flanders, there were mill pond calm seas and open skies in the English Channel just a few miles away.

It enabled a great flotilla of ships, naval escort vessels, lifeboats, sailing dinghies, tugs, barges, rowing boats, yachts, paddle-steamers… every floating device imaginable… to relay back and forth in perfect conditions in the desperate scramble to save as many troops as possible.  

General Halder, Hitler’s Chief of Staff, just three days after his High Command had boasted that our forces were hours from annihilation, recorded in his diary on 30 May these words: “Bad weather has grounded the Luftwaffe, and now we must stand by and watch countless thousands of the enemy getting away to England right under our noses.”

Fleet Street put it on published record that what had seemed impossible was achieved only through a miracle of deliverance.

Journalist C. B. Mortlock wrote in the Daily Telegraph these words: “The prayers of the nation were answered by the God of hosts himself… Officers of high rank do not hesitate to put down the deliverance of the British Expeditionary Force to the fact of the nation being at prayer on Sunday 26 May, two days before that great storm in Flanders and the calm that came over the Channel.”

Churchill made a statement to the House of Commons on 4 June, and in a voice charged with emotion reported that, rather than 20,000 or 30,000 men being evacuated, “335,000 men have been carried out of the jaws of death and shame to their native land.”

He too referred to what had transpired as “a miracle of deliverance.”

So grateful was our nation to God that Sunday 9 June 1940 was set aside as a Day of National Thanksgiving.

I believe God’s grace was shown to us in our time of need. I learned this year that on fourteen subsequent occasions George VI called the nation to prayer. He was a great and godly man who knew that God invites us, many times in the Bible, to humbly call on him in times of need.

“Turn to me and be saved,” he says, “all you ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other.”

“Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence,” it says, “so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

“Cast your cares upon him”, it says, “because he cares for you.”

“Seek the Lord while he may be found,” it says, “and call on him while he is near.”

And God will be near to you if call on him today.

Time magazine in April 1941, almost a year after these events, carried an article called “Days of Prayer.” And Churchill is quoted in it, saying this: “Thank God that we were all spared the nightmare of Nazi tyranny. He heard the prayers of this people not only in Britain, but in other parts of the world during this time of tribulation. The outcome of the war, I am convinced, hinged at one critical moment on a National Day of Prayer.”

You and I may never be brought into the confidence of the great and the good in our land. We may never be on first-name terms with whoever the Prime Minister of the day is. We may never converse with royalty or drink tea with peers of the realm. But we have the ear of almighty God. We can go straight to the top and find grace in time of need.

I wonder what went through the minds of those men and women from the British Expeditionary Force cornered on the beach at Dunkirk? Maybe a prayer, “Lord, if it’s possible, deliver me from the jaws of death and certain defeat.” He did.

That prayer, “Lord, if it’s possible, deliver me from the jaws of death” may have been uttered later in the war by the same soldiers who would give their lives in a fight that delivered victory and peace for us. Their sacrifice delivered us from the jaws of death. And today we show our gratitude.

It was also, as our second reading tells us, a prayer that Jesus prayed between his betrayal and arrest. “Lord, if it’s possible, take this cup of suffering from me. Nevertheless, your will be done.” It wasn’t possible. He had to drink that cup of suffering dry on the cross to make forgiveness and healing and peace available for all who believe. 

To those who laid down their lives be honour today. And to him who laid down the most precious life of all be glory forever.

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 8 November 2015