Sermon by Rev. Russell Daye
St. Andrew's United Church, Halifax

Peace and Remembrance Part Two

I Corinthians 15: 20-26

Leonard Cohen - Villanelle For Our Time

From bitter searching of the heart,
Quickened with passion and with pain
We rise to play a greater part.
This is the faith from which we start:
Men shall know commonwealth again
From bitter searching of the heart.
We loved the easy and the smart,
But now, with keener hand and brain,
We rise to play a greater part.
The lesser loyalties depart,
And neither race nor creed remain
From bitter searching of the heart.
Not steering by the venal chart
That tricked the mass for private gain,
We rise to play a greater part.
Reshaping narrow law and art
Whose symbols are the millions slain,
From bitter searching of the heart
We rise to play a greater part.

Born in 1980 and raised in Hubbards Nova Scotia, Rick Green possessed an infectious, positive attitude from childhood. Immediately after high school he joined the Canadian Armed Forces, becoming a member of Princess Patricia's Light Infantry. He served his country well as a paratrooper and as a peacekeeper in the Bosnia mission. His fellows knew him for his optimism, his sense of humour, and his pride in being a soldier. He also took pride in his family, particularly his grandmother Joyce, and had deep affection for his girlfriend Miranda. While deployed in Afghanistan he bought an engagement ring to be offered to Miranda on his return home. Rick never made it home to propose marriage. On April 17, 2002 in the fog of war, an American plane dropped a laser-guided bomb on the Third Battalion of Princess Patricia's Light Infantry. Rick Green was one of four Canadian soldiers killed.

From bitter searching of the heart, quickened with passion and with pain, we rise to play a greater part. This is the faith from which we start: we shall know commonwealth again, from bitter searching of the heart.

About 10 years ago I met a young man whom I will call Tim. I had known his new girlfriend for a few years. She had recently left high school for college and had suffered through something of a crisis of confidence and identity. Her growing friendship with Tim had provided a calm and an unconditional affection that helped her to find her ground and her way. They were married and later had two daughters. Tim struck me as gentle and open. I was a little surprised when he joined the armed forces but felt that his sensitivity and compassion would be gifts to the military on peacekeeping missions. Early in his career he was sent to Afghanistan. One night he was in a vehicle following another vehicle that was destroyed by a roadside bomb. Tim courageously ministered to his gravely and, as it turned out, fatally wounded comrades despite injuries to his own eyes and head.

These injuries healed, and Tim returned to active service, but his most severe wound was deep inside. It was a blow to the soul that the medical model calls post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD. Tim received treatment for this, and engaged in helpful activities like exercise, especially weight lifting. For a time it looked like he was growing beyond his condition. As his muscles flourished from the weightlifting, there seem to be a parallel increase in his confidence. What only his immediate family could see, however, was that the growth in his muscles and his seeming confidence were actually external armour that Tim was producing to mask his inner hell. Unfortunately, Tim is yet to win his battle with PTSD, and his marriage has been destroyed by the collateral damage. He no longer lives with his wife and daughters.

From bitter searching of the heart, quickened with passion and with pain, we rise to play a greater part. This is the faith from which we start: we shall know commonwealth again, from bitter searching of the heart.

This morning Canadians gather in sanctuaries and at cenotaphs to remember. We remember those who served and those who fell in the Great War, in what generations have called simply 'the War,' in Korea; and we are newly saddened to remember those who have fallen, and those who are falling, in Afghanistan. We memorialize them; and this is important. From my research into post-apartheid South Africa and my current involvement with preparations for a truth commission on native residential schools in Canada, I have learned the need of families, and communities, and individuals to memorialize. They need to honour those who have been torn from their midst, those lost to or broken by war and oppression. These rituals of memory repair the communal soul.

But if our acts of remembering stop with memorials, they are not enough. If our remembrance with the exercise of memory, that is not good enough. Let us turn to word study for a moment. Two words, each centered on the same root, serve as antitheses. These are the words 'dismember' and 'remember.' The word root assumes a certain wholeness of parts. Members are units of a whole. In Paul's famous metaphor we are the members who collectively form the body of Christ. To dismember means to destroy or greatly injure a body, a whole, by tearing a member from it. Rick Green's family, his community, his battalion, were dismembered by that wayward laser-guided bomb. My acquaintance Tim was himself dismembered by the tearing of his soul that we call PTSD. His family was dismembered by the same slowly penetrating blow.

From bitter searching of the heart, quickened with passion and with pain, we rise to play a greater part. This is the faith from which we start: we shall know commonwealth again, from bitter searching of the heart.

To remember is not only to exercise the faculty of memory, but also to undo dismembering; to put together again. This requires the exercise of other faculties: the faculty of compassion; the faculty of discernment; the faculty of truth-telling. Tim is with us still, but he needs re-membering. He needs to be put together again. He needs to be held in bonds of love for the bitter searching of the heart that will return him to wholeness.

He is far from alone. Recently, we learned that twenty-eight percent of the soldiers screened after serving in Afghanistan show symptoms of mental health problems, five percent symptoms of PTSD. We also learned that the resources available to treat these conditions are sorely lacking. The issue that faces us is very clear: We are sending young women and men to the battle line, when they return broken, will we give them the care they need to become whole, to be 're-membered'? Or, will we simply forget them? If we cannot muster the needed care, the necessary resources, then I suggest it is our turn, Canada's turn for a bitter searching of the heart.

And what of the fallen? What of Rick Green? What of the seventy-one Canadians who have died in Afghanistan? What of the tens of thousands of Canadians who died in the wars of the twentieth century? What of the millions of civilians who died in those wars? What of the children, and women and men who die now in Darfur, in Columbia, in Iraq? What do we owe them?

From bitter searching of the heart, quickened with passion and with pain, we rise to play a greater part. This is the faith from which we start: we shall know commonwealth again, from bitter searching of the heart.

That is what we owe them. We owe them the world. If the pains of the twentieth century have taught us anything, it is that we are one world that will live in peace or in war together. For more than a century, our soldiers have been falling on foreign soil and civilians have been fleeing distant wars to come here. In that time, countless children, women, and men have perished. Their deaths will amount to one of two things: They will be meaningless annihilation, or they will be the birth pangs of a new, global commonwealth - a worldwide community of peace. These millions of deaths will amount to one of two things: they will be a nihilistic holocaust or they will be an ungodly crucifixion, but one followed by a global resurrection.

Yes, a resurrection. Listen again to Paul's words written to the church at Corinth. '… the truth is, Christ was raised to life - the firstfruits of the harvest of the dead. For since it was a man who brought death into the world, a man also brought resurrection of the dead. As in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be brought to life.' Resurrection is not something that happened to a man. Resurrection is not something that happened once, two-thousand years ago. Resurrection is an ever-present gift that God has offered to the world. Resurrection is a power that has been weaved into the fabric of creation. In the midst of the ongoing crucifixion of war, which now is continually, globally present, God offers us resurrection. Here is the rub: God offers it, but we must live it. If there is going to be a rising from death, we must be the living Body of Christ that rises. How?

From bitter searching of the heart, quickened with passion and with pain, we rise to play a greater part. This is the faith from which we start: we shall know commonwealth again, from bitter searching of the heart.

Remembrance through memorialising is important. It is most important because it calls us to a more profound re-membering. Re-membering is resurrection. Re-membering is the restoration of commonwealth through the healing of the broken. Re-membering is the expansion of commonwealth through offering hospitality to refugees and through helping to rebuild the nations from which they come. Re-membering is the correction of the commonwealth through the fight for global economic justice. Re-membering is the protection of commonwealth through the exercise of good judgement about when and where we fight. (And here let me make this point. Those who question our mission in Afghanistan are not being disloyal to the troops; they are exercising the freedom for which the troops fight. Commonwealth requires open debate in which we deploy the faculty of discernment.) Re-membering is resurrection. We live in a global community that needs to be re-membered. God holds this before us. 2000 years ago Jesus was torn from us and cast upon a cross. Three days later, the broken commonwealth was re-membered. Today God holds before us resurrection of the global commonwealth asking, 'will you re-member? Through bitter searching of the heart, will you rise to make a greater start?'