Here’s the message I preached at the 2008 Remembrance Day Service here in Winkler.
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Remembering
Micah 4:1-5
Winkler Remembrance Day Service, 2008
It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the LORD shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and it shall be lifted up above the hills; and peoples shall flow to it, and many nations shall come, and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. He shall judge between many peoples, and shall decide for strong nations far away; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore; but they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid, for the mouth of the LORD of hosts has spoken. For all the peoples walk each in the name of its god, but we will walk in the name of the LORD our God forever and ever.
(Micah 4:1-5 ESV)
Remembrance Day. That’s what we call today in Canada. Not Veterans’ Day, not Armistice Day, even though we gather on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month to recall that armistice signed 90 years ago today. Remembrance Day. It is a chance to remember, to call to mind the important things.
The reality is that much of what did happen has been lost to the tides of time; the recent movie Passchendaele is one Canadian’s attempt to retell the story of that battle in the First World War so that we do not forget. My great-grandfather, Christian David Kuhl, who was an enlisted man in the Canadian forces in the First World War, never made it to the front lines, thankfully, or I might not be here today. Instead, while overseas, he became ill with the flu, that other great killer of the second decade of the last century. Between World War I and the Spanish Flu, millions upon millions lost their lives. The trenches of mud were littered with the bodies of young men from all over Europe and North America. Death. It is a painful thing to remember.
The Second World War, likewise, has its stories and its griefs. This is the war with which most of us here are more familiar. It was the first use of an atomic bomb, as human beings discovered more effective yet impersonal ways to kill each other. Yet it was also a war fought with good reason; to prevent an evil man from destroying the Jewish people and indeed all others who were not up to his ideal of the human race. Even so, millions upon millions lost their lives. My grandpa Klages’s brother Lorne Klages and brother-in-law Nelson Prowd, both of whom served in the Second World War and came home alive, died young of cancer. The family still wonders if it might not have been something they encountered while in the war. Death. It is a painful thing to remember.
Even for those soldiers who made it home alive, most had friends or comrades who did not make it home alive. The wars were hard times indeed. Our soldiers bravely continued on, to the oft-forgotten Korean War in the 1950s, to various parts of the world as called upon to keep the peace or make the peace. Currently our troops are in Afghanistan, in a war which seems to have no rules of fairness. Our soldiers are over there trying to make Afghanistan a safe place for women and children to be, and yet you hear of roadside bombs and suicide bombings on the news all the time. This is a war which has no easy objectives, no clear end target, because the enemy no longer seems to have any clear cut goal or leader. And our soldiers are still dying; not in nearly the numbers as in previous wars, but every death is a death. As the Anglican minister and poet John Donne once wrote, “Every man’s death diminishes me, for I am a part of every man.” Death. It is a painful thing to remember.
The reality of this world as we now know it is death, and war is one of those causes of death. Jesus foretold that there would be “wars and rumours of wars,” when He was describing how the world would be as the end approaches. That’s the world. We may find peaceable solutions to this location or that location’s particular problem, but the truth of the matter is that as long as there is coveting, as long as there is hatred, as long as there is fear, as long as there is anger, there will be war, and there will be death.
So when we hear a passage such as the one for today, from Micah 4:1-5, it can seem like a pie-in-the-sky dream. A world without war, a world where the true God, the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is worshipped by all nations in truth and purity. A world where people beat swords into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks. A world with no more hatred or animosity between peoples, a world with no more fear of your neighbour, a world where everyone is content to sit under their own tree and rejoice in the goodness of the Lord, to walk in His name forever. A world that looks nothing like our own.
After all, what is our world if not a race to accumulate money and possessions, a nice house, a new car, a decent retirement income, and all the things we want to have? What is our world if not the rat race to get ahead at any and all costs, to prove how valuable to society you are by how much material worth you have when you die? What is our world if not a place of sins against God and our neighbour–sins of greed and coveting and dishonest dealings and murder and immorality of every kind, sins of putting our own wants in the place where God should be?
The world as we know it is an unfair, inequitable place. As long as this world is what it is, there will be sorrows and struggles and faults and failures. There will be sin. For sin is the root cause of all this fallen reality. Sin is at the heart of why there must be war. Consider all the wars in the Old Testament, how the ones condoned by the Lord were there precisely to punish the heathen nations for their sin against the Lord and how the ones which attacked the Lord’s people were there to punish the Hebrews for their sin. Sin is at the heart of why there is hatred and anger and fear and coveting. And as Ezekiel 18 points out, the soul that sins dies. Sin brings death.
So Micah’s picture that he paints for us must needs be a picture of a time where sin is no more. For only where there is no sin is there the true peace with God pictured in this reading. The peace with God which we call “heaven”. An eternity which was made possible for us to be part of through Jesus Christ alone. For this world, broken by sin, needed to be repaired in order for the peace from God to even be possible.
God has made that repair through His Son Jesus. For Jesus lived that sinless life, at peace with God, which none of us can live. He lived free from sin for He is the Son of God. He came to this earth to suffer a violent death, to sacrifice Himself on the cross of Calvary, in order that we, who have been slaves to death and destruction, might live a new life. He died that we might live, and He rose from the dead that we might also live with Him for eternity. He overcame the devil once for all, in order to free us from our imprisonment, and while the battle still rages, the war is nearly over. Jesus has won. Evil has been defeated, once and for all. His death might not be pleasant to remember, but it is in the remembering and cherishing that we have life.
Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths. For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. He shall judge between many peoples, and shall decide for strong nations far away; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore; but they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid, for the mouth of the LORD of hosts has spoken.
I’m looking forward to that time when there will be no more war, when all those from all nations who trust in Christ will together ascend His eternal holy hill and worship Him. I’m looking forward to the day when all will have what they need and be satisfied. I’m looking forward to that day when we no longer have to fear death, for death itself will be no more. I’m looking forward to the day when there is no more fear, no more need to learn war.
Yet for now, I also appreciate and commend the work which our military must do. It is not pretty or pleasant, but it is essential to the well-ordering of a nation which is in a world laden with sin. We should honour our veterans for the time they spent in service to our country so that we can have the freedoms we so often take for granted. We should pray for our armed forces that they carry out the duties which they have been given with integrity, trustworthiness, and honour, showing respect for the lives of the innocent, and bringing to justice whichever situations they might find themselves in. We should pray for their commanders and leaders that they choose wisely and well the situations to place our armed forces in, in order that their goals might be achieved in the least destructive ways. And most of all, we should pray that our Lord Jesus would come quickly and bring an end at last to all wars, so that there is no more need for remembrance, for the former things will have passed away and the new life, the life which never ends, will have come at last. Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus. Amen.