Sermons And Gubbins

This sermon was given at our Remembrance Sunday service on Sunday 10th November 2019. The first Remembrance Day took place one hundred years ago, almost to the day. Back then, Remembrance Sunday wasn’t a thing. People commemorated the end of the “Great” War – the “war to end all wars” – on the anniversary of Armistice Day itself. It was only after the Second World War that services such as this, on the closest Sunday to the 11th November became common place, overtaking, if not replacing, the observance of a minute’s silence on the actual anniversary of the end of that first world war. But, before that, between the two world wars, the vast majority of the population of the UK marked an act of remembrance specifically on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month every year. That tradition has been revived within the last 40 years or so, and now, many workplaces across the country will also hold a minute’s silence tomorrow morning too. A colourised photo of...

There’s a phrase – five small words – that people utter when they’re trying to empathise with you. People say it with the best of intentions, trying to bridge a gap of grief or loss, attempting to reach out and find some common ground. It’s a phrase that tries to be kind; that tries to be helpful. … I think it’s the most annoying phrase in the English language: “ I know how you fee l”. I’m sure I’ve uttered it before, and I’m thankful I wasn’t met with a swift slap in the face, to be honest. It’s certainly what I’ve felt like doing when people have said it to me. Because, the thing is, standing here in this pulpit tonight, I don’t know how you feel. I’ve not lost a partner or a mother or a father, or a daughter or a son. I’ve not lost a brother or a sister. I have lost other relatives, and my life is unequivocally emptier without good friends I have known who have died in years gone by. I also carry with me the grief of nearly ten years of my wife and I being unable to ...