LAST Sunday, November 11 was exactly 100 years since the guns fell silent in war that was supposed to end all wars.
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Being a Sunday, it was church, but with something extra – a Remembrance Day commemoration.
It is not something we have done before in church. We wondered if it was the sort of thing we should do? But we thought about it and reckoned it tied in very well with what we do in church, so we went ahead.
We remembered the sacrifice of so many and how this provided one of the solid foundations upon which our country is built.
We also remembered those who had been injured and those who suffered grief. And we reflected on the horror of war.
Our country bore an enormous cost – some 300,000 men served overseas, besides about 10,000 women (as nurses).
Of those, approximately 60,000 died serving their country, with thousands upon thousands more injured both physically and emotionally.
It’s hard to get one’s head around the suffering and sacrifice.
But trying to grasp the scale of wartime sacrifice helps to give some appreciation of the immense sacrifice of just one man, Jesus Christ.
The sacrifice of one might appear pale beside that of thousands; but of course, Jesus was no ordinary man.
Certainly, a man. But also, the Son of God.
It’s well worth considering what he gave up:
- Even though he was God, he made himself nothing.
- He took the wrongs for everyone, everywhere, for all time, upon himself.
- He endured the shattering of his relationship with his father, the closest in all creation.
And he did this at the cross, as he gave his life, sacrificed himself, on behalf of all humanity.
And the sacrifice of the Anzacs, an enormous benefit to our country, has the bonus of helping the remembrance of Christ’s one-of-a-kind sacrifice.
And that reminder of Christ was why we thought it was a good idea to commemorate, in church, 100 years since the Armistice.
