Remembering Deliverance (Remembrance Day Sermon 2016)

Psalm 3.1-8

From 7 September 1940 to 10 May 1941, a total of 245 days, London was pounded from the skies. There were widespread rumours of imminent airborne gas attacks and the entire population was issued with gas masks. Fears of a chemical weapons attack turned out to be without foundation, which may sound familiar, but every day except one for over eight months, tons of deadly ordnance were dropped on the major cities of these islands, and London was the most targeted and worst hit. Overall, 18,000 tons of high explosives and 1.5 million incendiaries fell on London alone over that time.

Probably the most deadly attack of all occurred on the night of 29 December 1940. 300 high explosive bombs were dropped on the capital that night every minute. This particular assault caused a huge firestorm that ran out of control throughout the City of London. It was terrifying. People called it the second Great Fire of London. 

This whole sustained campaign came of course to be known as the Blitz. Over a million houses were destroyed or damaged. Civilian casualties in London alone during the Blitz amounted to 28,556 dead, and 25,578 wounded. I think all of us were deeply moved by Sonia’s interview. (Earlier in the service she told of being adopted at about 3 weeks old, discovered hidden in a chest of drawers in the rubble of a bombed house; she has never known her original identity, or who her parents were, and often wonders what her life might have been). It brought home to us very personally the human aspect to all the history and statistics and of course this was magnified on a scale of tens of thousands of lives.

The historian Norman Davies, in his authoritative book Europe at War – No Simple Victory (which has been my bedtime reading over the last month) says this about the Blitz, “Death from bombing can be particularly gruesome, not least because the life-stopping injury is often preceded by a period of sustained terror. Those who are close to the point of impact and who die instantly are the lucky ones. Most are burned or buried alive, crushed by falling masonry, asphyxiated, choked, pierced by flying glass or splinters, blinded or deafened, or otherwise struck down by insurmountable multiple injuries.” On reflection, that may not be the best material to read just before nodding off for the night…

Of course, it wasn’t only the Germans who went in for the indiscriminate bombing of civilian neighbourhoods. The Japanese in Rangoon and the Americans in Tokyo and Hiroshima, and the British in Dresden and Hamburg, and the Soviets throughout the eastern front - amongst many others - adopted similar tactics in an effort to break the resolve of their adversaries.

As you can see from the London photos in today’s service booklet, efforts to crush national morale didn’t work. Three homeless children in the East End on page 5 seem quite unfazed sitting on a pile of debris. What was going through their young minds as they looked around to see everything they’d ever known pounded to dust and hardcore?  

And the woman on page 7 looks almost carefree sitting down on the rubble of what was her home. As long as she’s got a nice cup of tea, she can face the day. It's so English isn't it? My grandad’s favourite expression was “Mustn’t grumble“ and he learned it living in London with his wife and two little girls at that very time. Keep calm and carry on… This is what became as the Blitz spirit.

We are quite good as a nation at holding it all together. The French speak admiringly of 'le phlegme brittanique' (we just calmly get on with it and don't make a fuss) but to whom do we turn at times of sheer terror? Of course, for want of anything or anyone else, many turned to God. Everyone else and everything else had been taken from their lives.

Like Saint Paul’s Cathedral, surviving intact whilst the streets around it were flattened, in the same way, our faith in God – in times of distress and ordeal – can seem like the only thing we know that’s not falling apart.

I have talked to people, just hours before their death, who are aware of little else but God’s presence around them, it’s a remarkable thing.

Our Psalm, written at another time by a man under sustained attack, expresses the entire range of emotions those who lived through the Blitz must have experienced. The Psalm can help us feel what they felt.

The hopelessness of feeling overwhelmed and outnumbered: “Lord, how many are my foes! How many rise up against me!”

The worry that hope is fading and this might be end: “Many are saying of me, ‘God will not deliver him.’”

A desperate cry for protection when familiar buildings are tumbling like skittles: “Arise, Lord! Deliver me, my God!”

The disgust at those who are pounding your city night after night: “Strike all my enemies on the jaw; break the teeth of the wicked.”

There is a “but” though; a confidence and assurance that comes from God’s presence too.

“But you, Lord, are a shield around me… the One who lifts my head high.” Even when you are overwhelmed and outnumbered, grace enables you to look up in hope and not down in despair.

And despite the chaos, peace: “I lie down and sleep; I wake again, because the Lord sustains me.” Anxiety can keep you tossing and turning all night but peace is when you can sleep restfully even though everything you know, including your very life, is uncertain.

Defiance: “I will not fear though tens of thousands assail me on every side.” Getting married, as planned, in a blitzed church. There’s defiance for you. I’m not sure what Health and Safety would say about that…

And faith: “From the Lord comes deliverance. May your blessing be on your people.”

I have told this story before but at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I think it’s worth it.

It’s about a church in London that was preparing for its harvest service in October 1940. People had been in decorating the building and filling it with the fruits of the earth. Marrows, potatoes, carrots, apples – the church looked like an overstocked greengrocer’s shop.

But the Saturday night before the harvest festival a Blitz bomb fell on the church and completely flattened it. Not a brick was left on another, not a pew, hymn book or Bible survived; everything was totally obliterated.

But the following spring, amidst the rubble on that site, a new shoot appeared. It was from the seed of some of that harvest produce on display back in the autumn. You can raze a brick building to the ground in an instant, but all the dynamite in Europe could not destroy the life stored up in that one seed.

Today, as we remember the indescribable cost of war, as we honour those to whom honour is due, as we show respect to those to whom we owe it, we also affirm that even from the epicentre of destruction itself, we can pray for a better tomorrow.

That’s what they did in our first reading in Joshua 4; they built a monument to show for generations to come that all the living owe a debt of remembrance for national deliverance at a time of great peril. It’s why we do this today.

Jesus 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.’

May God grant to the departed, rest; to the living, grace; and to all the world, peace.


Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 13 November 2016