Remembrance - when will there be peace?
Isaiah 2: 1-5; Matthew 25: 1-13
We gather to worship God this Remembrance Day, as people have gathered since the end of the First World War “the war to end all wars” – and really there can be only one question: when will there be peace?
Whilst we remember the silencing of the guns on 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, marking the armistice ending the First World War; we know all too well that before a baby born that day had even reached their 21st birthday, the world was propelled into a second World War.
And since the end of that conflict in 1945 there has not been a year without a war somewhere in the world.
Today, of course, we cannot mark our Remembrance without also remembering the people of Gaza, Israel, Ukraine, & Russia, and also Nagorno Karabakh, Yemen, South Sudan, Haiti, Syria, Taiwan, Afghanistan… there are more.
When will there be peace?
We have heard Isaiah’s prophecy that ‘in days to come’ God’s home will be raised above all other places, people will stream to it and there will be peace
“God shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”
It’s a wonderful vision - In days to come, God will bring peace, one day God will draw all people together and teach them peace in place of war. One day…
Isaiah declared his prophecy at a time when the people of Israel were surrounded by powerful enemies and feared for their future security. Isaiah warns the people of his day that they need to be committed to God’s peace and God’s will if they are to find a way forward to be God’s people.
The words of Isaiah surely feel just as relevant now as they were then.
We might long for all God’s children to know God’s peace. But in the meantime we wait and we wonder when this day will come and what, if anything, we can do to make our world more peaceful. How do we wait?
Jesus tells this parable of the ten girls, acting as bridesmaids, lighting their lamps to be part of a wedding celebration.
I want to encourage us today to look at this as a story about how to wait. Don’t worry, there’s always more than one way to understand a parable – we can look at it this way today – we might look at it another way on another day.
We looked at this parable at our Zoom Bible Study on Tuesday (the next one is on December 5th if you want to join us).
Some of us admitted that we wanted to change the story because we are left feeling really sorry for the five foolish girls who ended up getting locked out.
All ten girls fall asleep while they are waiting – why do the foolish five get punished? It seems very unfair.
So we wanted to change the story:
- Perhaps they could just join in the wedding procession even though their lamps had gone out..
- maybe the wise girls could share their oil with them, so everyone gets to process..?
- maybe the bridegroom could just let them in anyway, when they get back to the party…?
You can probably think of your own, happier solution to the sadness in the story.
But the truth is that we wouldn’t have been discussing the story so much if it had just been a simple, happy story in which they all lived happily ever after and join the party.
Like all parables, it’s a story to make you think.
So what does this story make us think about waiting?
Waiting is hard. All the girls fall asleep – the bit at the end of our reading today ‘Keep awake, therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour’ doesn’t quite fit the story.
We shouldn’t beat ourselves up too much if we grow tired of waiting – even waiting for something as important as peace.
But waiting is also active, it’s not just saying “there’s nothing I can do”.
Susan will smile – or perhaps grimace – at that sentence “there’s nothing I can do” because she will be remembering me saying it in a very different context.
As some of you know, we used to come and camp regularly at Dale on our summer holidays. The campsite with the best view then – about 10 years ago – was Windmill Farm. It was very windy.
One night we were in our tent, hoping for the best, having heard the forecast of 50 mile an hour winds.
During the night our tent was taking the brunt of these winds. There was no doubt that the poles were starting to bend in ways they were not supposed to.
‘I think the tent is collapsing’ said Susan.
‘there’s nothing I can do’ I said – quite a few times, I think – there seemed no point in getting up to see exactly what the problem was – in the pitch black and howling gale there was no way of doing any kind of repair.
In my own defence, in the dark & without my glasses on I hadn’t quite appreciated how much the poles had bent, how far the roof had caved in, and how squashed Susan was getting. When I put my glasses on and turned the torch on I realised there was something I could do – in fact there was something we had both better do – get out of the tent and sleep in the car until daylight. I had opted for a passive waiting for morning – but I needed an active waiting, which recognised when it was time to act.
In the same way, the girls in Jesus’ parable all sleep – but the wise ones have oil in their flasks, ready to spring into action when the time is right.
Our waiting for peace is a part of this act of Remembrance.
We want to the honour the past and learn from it.
We want to commit ourselves to be peace-makers in waiting. Just like our response to the parable, we are left with a longing that the story of this world could be different…we are left wanting to do something, to change something in our world. How can peace come to us all?
Isaiah’s prophecy ends by telling God’s people to “walk in the ways of the Lord”. In other words, not just to do what seems good for them, but to ask what is right for all God’s people. We must never tire of looking for peaceful solutions, and we must never tire of praying for those who are also looking for peaceful solutions – for our world, whatever the issue to the conflict.
And we need to live as those who have reserves, as the wise girls had reserves of oil. We need to be ready to act – however long we have to wait for the right moment to come.
Jesus tells us to seek ways to be peace-makers – both large and small - in the world. And his teaching helps us believe that every step in the right way makes a difference.
So this Remembrance Sunday we commit ourselves to remember and to care for our world, and to wait actively, being prepared to act for peace.
In the name of God, who will one day grant all the earth perfect peace. Amen.
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