Sermon: Queens Royal Surrey Regiment Association
The Very Revd Victor Stock is Dean of Guildford
- Preacher:
- Victor Stock
- Date:
- Sunday 6th June 2010
- Service:
- Mattins
In 1940 British Forces and some French troops withdrew to the town, sand dunes and beaches to the east of Malo-les-bains, the pleasure resort in the suburb of Dunkerque. Between 22 May and 4 June the great evacuation from the beaches took place of 335,550 men, 50,000 left behind (20% of whom died) and all Allied equipment lost. The port was blocked and afterwards severely damaged. The Germans held out behind the flooded perimeter from September 1944 until the general capitulation of 7-8 May 1945. What has given rise in England to the phrase, ‘The Dunkerque spirit’, with the re-enactment of the little ships setting out from the Kent coast on Thursday 27 May this year, masks a situation of horror and defeat, as well as bravery and human sacrifice. The reality of Dunkerque reveals the human situation.
The letter we call St Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians was probably written by someone else, but someone steeped in the spirit of Paul. ‘Our fight is not against human foes, but against cosmic powers, against the authorities and potentates of this dark world, against the superhuman forces of evil in the heavens’. For the writer, evil is an objective and external force, a superhuman force which bears upon men from outside and brings them into subjection. The man- in-the-street’ s religious outlook at the time of Jesus saw this force, and we can see this in the Gospels, as Satan and his attendant demons. But popular philosophies and religions of the time offered to the cosmopolitan thinker, especially in a sophisticated town like Ephesus, a wide range of concepts for describing this objective and personified power of evil. There was the late Jewish myth of fallen angels, there was the popular world view which saw the space between heaven and earth as peopled with spiritual beings, some malign, mostly malignant, in revolt against God, and there were the doctrines of astrology which invested the heavenly bodies with ineluctable power over the lives of men. These linger on, and more than linger on, in the popular press today. The author of this morning’s passage to the Ephesians draws freely on such concepts. He writes of the spiritual powers of the air and paints a sombre picture of humankind pitted against cosmic powers, against what he calls ‘the authorities and potentates of this dark world’.
We’re gathered here to remember with great thanksgiving the end of the Second World War, the evacuation of Dunkerque, the 150th anniversary of our Cadets, the 125th Anniversary of the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association (SAFA Forces Help). All of these commemorations grow out of the facts of the human condition; that to be a human person is to be up against forces, often outside our control, sometimes inexplicable and overwhelming. National Socialism, the creed of Nazi Germany, was in its horror and evil part of that world that the writer of the letter to the Ephesians well understood, for the Second World War was a fight not just against human foes but against cosmic powers.
Dunkerque itself, to focus here for a moment, has a particular history. It was burned by the English in 1388, besieged and captured by the Spanish in 1583 and again in 1646, Cromwell securing it in 1658 as the price for his help to Mazarin against Spain. Charles II sold it to the French in 1662 for five million livres. Unsuccessful English attacks were made in 1694, 1695 and 1696, but by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 France was obliged to destroy the port and fortifications, an obligation which was dishonoured. For a small seaport in French Flanders Dunkerque’s had a terrible history – there’s something in its DNA which must have made the burghers of Dunkerque long to live anywhere else.
From time to time places are pinpointed by history as places where tectonic plates shift and evil is revealed. We know Dunkerque so well from the movie industry, for it is not only a terrible but also a thrilling story, but there are quieter places where evil can be experienced. A couple of years ago I went to Buchenwald, which is in the forest just above Weimar. There on a clear, bright spring day I stood alone - very few people were about and my companions had moved on. I stood alone in the ruins of the building where sick children were left to die – 2,000 crammed into one place, a room with one latrine. The sense of evil more than 60 years on was almost unbearable – this just above Weimar, the epicentre of the Enlightenment.
When we gather, as we do today, to give thanks for so many brave men and women, so much heroism, so much sacrifice, we need to do two simple things and take them with us from the Cathedral. First, we need to recognise the truth of the Letter to the Ephesians that humankind is up against the authorities and potentates of this dark world, the superhuman forces of evil in the heavens, to use that first century language. There is a seductive lure towards self-destruction which means the destruction also of others, of all that is good, beautiful and true. It is what the Christian calls ‘sin’. So, when tectonic plates shift, darkness is revealed. Imagine what it was like for the 50,000 who didn’t get away. Our first duty is to face the fact of sin and not to be seduced by the fashionable atheism that suggests it’s all a matter of choice, of feeling, of emotion, of what seems best for us in the moment. Without sin, the sin of many, including the sin of revenge on the part of the Allies after the First World War, Hitler would not have risen to power.
Secondly, on this day of thanksgiving for so much, we acknowledge the central place of sacrifice in the Christian scheme of things. No cross, no crown. And again this second point is not superficial, it’s not a cliché, it’s not a bit of patriotic jingoism – the essence of sacrifice in religious anthropology is the offering of something to God, and the offering of the first fruits Abel made over the harvest, and in making over the harvest to God, the harvest became holy. Those who we commemorate today made over their lives for comrades and family, for the sake of others, and that is in the true sense what heroism is. It brings us very close to the Christian understanding of God. For there was a cross in the heart of God before there was a cross upon the hill of Calvary. This building is in the form of a Cross; the Cross with which we are signed at Baptism, the Cross we receive in blessing as we die, the Cross which reveals what God is and why God alone can overcome the superhuman forces of evil in the heavens by taking evil into Himself and transmuting it as in a furnace.
‘Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might, for we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places’. Christian faith and life is a serious business and we rededicate ourselves to the Gospel, to this good news of salvation, here in this Cathedral today, here on this serious soil.