Date: November 9, 2025

Readings: Wisdom 3.1-9; Psalm 116; 1 Peter 1.3-9; John 11.21-27

Preacher: LCol the Revd Canon Jim McCorriston

Remembrance Sunday

Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’ Jn 11.25-26

In nomine…

So is the message of the Gospel for us on this Remembrance Sunday. They are the same words – as are the other readings today – for one of the gospels for the Church’s feast of All Souls’. On All Souls’ day the Church remembers the saints – all those who are held so tightly in the love of God – whose names may not be known to us but whose lives are known to God and are held safe. On Remembrance Sunday we are offered these readings and asked to enter into remembrance for those of our nation – and other nations - who offered their life in service to our country in the face of conflict and war.

“Make my life a prayer to you / I want to do what you want me to /
no empty words and no white lies, / no token prayers / no compromise”
– Keith Green

The fullness of the Christian life is the abandoning of it in service to God. In it we find perfect freedom, because of it, we come to know who we are meant to be – one loved by God to serve.

“Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live”

And our abandonment to God is according to the call He has placed on each of our lives and the call He has placed on our lives together. Week by week your rector/the preachers remind you of God’s call on your life together. Today we remember the calling of those – who together – served their calling in the threat and face of battle, and those amongst us who prepare to do this: an abandonment of life in service.

Let me be clear: I am not equating military service with service to God anymore than we would equate any work to a service to God. And yet, the message of the incarnation – of God made flesh, who walked amongst us – is a message that the work we do – what we do – is the very way service to God is accomplished. And that those who have served, and serve presently, in uniform, more or less, work out their sanctification through their service not only for their sakes but for the sake of this community and other communities.

Our National Day of Remembrance especially remembers those who served in the First Great War, the Second World War, the Korean Conflict and in peacekeeping and other conflicts. We might especially remember the long-lasting peacekeeping endeavours in Cyprus, conflict in Kosovo, and in Afghanistan. And in conflict zones which are small enough for us to not know about or remember, even though the threat our members faced was just as real.

Let me be personal for a moment as someone who spent much of the decade following 9/11 supporting families who lost a son or husband in Afghanistan; who spent time with soldiers who were injured – in body or in mind – in Afghanistan; who spent time in forward operating bases, in patrol bases and on the airfield in Kandahar: If you haven’t served in war, you do not know what it is to serve in war. And it can’t be explained.

There is a 19th century saying that “the men who serve together in the face of battle have a love their wives at home are jealous of.” And this is true of the women who have served in the face of battle with their beloveds, also. It is a service of storge (love) which can touch agape (love) – in love, it is duty which can touch the divine. And it is through the cracks of these loves, that human service sees where and when it is aligned with divine service. (Our lives taken up into the participation of God’s life and re-ordered in divine love.)

Make my life (my entire life) a prayer to you.

It’s my job as a padre and priest (and your job as a Christian!) to see how these liturgical moments align – for liturgy literally mean “work of the people.” When is it that our life is in Christ and Christ’s life working in ours?

Let me suggest that at every Canadian cenotaph on Remembrance Day, and in many Remembrance Sunday services today, there will be a little liturgy which opens the cracks to Divine Love. That crack is the time between the playing of the

Last Post and the playing of the Rouse/Reveille. What happens in that time of silence is one of the most important events in the Christian life, one of the most important events in Christ’s sacrifice for us, and which is rarely - uncommonly -preached about. Because that silence is the silence between Christi’s death and His resurrection.

You know the liturgies that are celebrated on Good Friday and Easter Sunday. They are important /great feasts in the Church – so important that ecumenical services are often held; sunrise services (with breakfast!?) are had; churches are decorated with lilies. And more! Preachers will often spend extra time on their sermons for these days of the great Triduum – the centrality of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross and the elation of an empty tomb on Sunday because of the resurrection. But there is almost always no sermon on the day in-between – Holy Saturday. In our society Holy Saturday is the day we do not want to talk about – we are silent on it because it is the day of desolation, hopelessness, abandonment – true and complete death. It is the day when all the disciples – the believers – have lost hope – hope ended in death – and where there is fear in the aloness. It is the harrowing of hell!

And at the cenotaph service there will come the point in the ceremony when the Last Post will be played (it means: Go to bed – die!) and all military members will be ordered to silence (death.) Alone. Standing. Waiting with the chaos, fear, uncertainty, images of a particular past. Alone. And if you look in their eyes at that moment you might just glimpse what the experience of total death and hopelessness is. And there they stand – ordered to do no other thing. No opportunity for distraction. Until the bugler plays and sounds the Rouse/Reveille – Get up! It is resurrection!

“Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life.
Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live,
and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. “
Make my life (my entire life, and death) a prayer to you.
The love of God woos all of us to return to him from wherever we are. And some need to be loved more than others because of where they stand – because their service has taken them to stand in a particular place, for your sake.

The rector said in his sermon last week for All Saints’ that “A life must have hope.” And from standing back and looking at anyone: Every breath they take, each and every time, is proof that hope is present undergirding the incarnate life they live. And still, when standing close up to some of those women and men, who in the divine motion of the liturgy of their lives are living in the presence of Holy Saturday – where their lives reside with the harrowing of hell – the word “hope” (or one like it) holds no meaning. And yet they, like us, continue to be wooed by God’s love to return to him, in time… or out of time.

This Remembrance Sunday let us give thanks to God for women and men in ages past, and in our midst, of this world God so loves. Let us give thanks to those who have given of their minds, hearts and bodies so others (we) might know perfect freedom.

Make my life a prayer to you.
Even though they die, [they] will live

Amen.

Readings
Wisdom 3:1-9
3 But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God,
and no torment will ever touch them.
2 In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died,
and their departure was thought to be a disaster,
3 and their going from us to be their destruction;
but they are at peace.
4 For though in the sight of others they were punished,
their hope is full of immortality.
5 Having been disciplined a little, they will receive great good,
because God tested them and found them worthy of himself;
6 like gold in the furnace he tried them,
and like a sacrificial burnt-offering he accepted them.
7 In the time of their visitation they will shine forth,
and will run like sparks through the stubble.
8 They will govern nations and rule over peoples,
and the Lord will reign over them for ever.
9 Those who trust in him will understand truth,
and the faithful will abide with him in love,
because grace and mercy are upon his holy ones,
and he watches over his elect.
Ps 116
John 11:21-27
21 Martha said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22 But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.’ 23 Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ 24 Martha said to him, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’ 25 Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life.[a] Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’ 27 She said to him, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah,[b] the Son of God, the one coming into the world.’