‘whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ Matthew 25:40
Brothers and sisters, who’s your favourite hero from a book or TV? Mine probably used to be Spiderman, when I was young. We all probably once had these people we look up to, those people we’d like to be because they’re strong and they did the nearly impossible. In fact that’s the way we all think, isn’t it? That we’d love to be stronger than we are, to have powers or to be more powerful than we are as ordinary people. Actually, I think that is one of the problems of the world. Everyone wants to be more powerful, don’t they? That, I suspect, is why Mr Putin invaded the Ukraine, or why countless other wars and atrocities have been committed across our history, because people wanted more, they wanted to make themselves more powerful. However, in Luke 12, we read these words:
“they will seize you and persecute you. They will hand you over to synagogues and put you in prison, and you will be brought before kings and governors, and all on account of my name. And so you will bear testimony to me.”
As Christians, instead of wanting more, wanting to be more powerful, we ought to want less. Instead of trying to solve things by becoming more and more powerful, Jesus says that if we do things right, we’ll be persecuted and that is how we will tell people about him, how we will bear testimony to him. Isn’t that what we see in the way he lived his life? God Almighty who had the power with the snapping of his fingers to cause the world to start, became a man and then was killed. That’s what God is like.Can you imagine that superhero movie? If we were going to judge Jesus by the way we’d judge our favourite superhero we’d maybe even think that Jesus lost, he was killed and he let himself be killed on the cross. But that’s because Jesus’ point is that trying to make ourselves more powerful will never work, fighting wars will never work. Instead, we need to be like God who became a person and gave up power.
The 11th of November, as well as being Armistice day is also the feast of St Martin of Tours. St Martin was born when the Roman Empire was still powerful and only shortly after Christianity had become the main religion in the Empire but in a part of the Empire where still most people weren’t Christians. As a young man, Martin decided to go off and fight, he became a soldier of the Empire, fighting and killing but also, as with many people who fight in wars today, losing his friends and seeing things that must have broken his heart. After years of fighting, St Martin felt convicted over fighting for the Emperor and declared “I am the soldier of Christ: it is not lawful for me to fight.” He left the army and became a monk, telling people about Jesus and living a humble lifestyle that pointed towards the peace of Christ. In this time St Martin had gone from being a soldier, probably in the guard that defended the Emperor himself, to being a hermit, and yet it was when he was weak and powerless that he brought peace by caring for the poor and needy and refusing to use violence, even against those who persecuted him. And Just like St Martin we all have the same choice today. We can keep trying to make ourselves more powerful and try to make war to better our own situations or we can make Jesus our superhero and try to find peace through him and not our own power.
Today we think a lot about remembrance. John Bradley, one of our hardworking church wardens, last week showed me a beautiful picture of his mother and told me about how the family had gathered around her in her last days and he said that she lived on in his memory of her. There’s something about memory that’s very personal isn’t there? If I were to ask you to think of your favourite memories, of times at the beach or Christmas with loved ones and you imaged for a second that those memories disappeared, it would be like losing a part of yourself, wouldn’t it? It’s true what Father Mike says, remembering is what makes us who we are. Well today we remember all those people who died fighting so that we can be free and we have that choice once more. In memory of those people we can choose to keep warring, to keep trying to make ourselves like the other superheroes and to long after power, or instead we can make Jesus our superhero, we can learn to give things up, to make ourselves less powerful, even if that means we suffer. Especially as we’re thinking of armistice this day, the next time somebody makes us angry, perhaps instead of thinking how we can make them angry in response to make ourselves feel bigger and stronger, we could find ways to show the person who has hurt us that we love them. In other words, today, as we remember, let us decide to turn away from war to the peace of Christ, our superhero. Amen.(from Fr Jordan).
All Saints Church Chorley 