Preached at Prince of Peace, Wasaga Beach, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, 8 November, 2026. Readings: Wisdom of Solomon 3:1-9; Psalm 116:1-8: 1 Peter 1: 3-9: John 6:37-40
“But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them. In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died … but they are at peace” (Wis 3.1)
“At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember them”.
This is a time of year dedicated to the importance of memory. We gather at cenotaphs to remember those whose names are carved into the stone. Towns put banners on lamposts, each with the fresh face of a young man or woman who served Canada. At church services, such as the one happening right now at All Saints, they will solemly read the names of men of the parish who never came home.
It’s important to remember. The alternative to memory is forgetfulness. Sometimes at Remembrance Day we hear the words “Lest we forget”, from the Rudyard Kipling poem. Those words, “lest we forget”, carry a warning. They warn us that if we forget these names and their sacrifices, then they will have died in vain. The tragedies of history will repeat themselves and we will be caught in an endless cycle of violence.
But the problem is that the cycle repeats itself for each generation. The veterans of the First World War had to send their sons and daughters to a second world war, where they served as pilots, sailors, soldiers and nurses. Their children went to Korea and Bosnia. Their grandchildren served in Afghanistan, or stand guard today in Lativa protecting Europe from Russian aggression. Meanwhile innocents die in Ukraine, and in the Sudan, in Iran, in Gaza, and in dozens of other places across the world. In our darker moments, we might say, “there are so many to remember, and what good does it do to try and remember them?”
Well, we remember because that’s what we do as church. The church’s job is to remember, as best we can. We remember Jesus because, whenever we celebrate the eucharist, we heart his words, “do this in memory of me”. We remember the saints who have gone before us, as we did last Sunday. In this congregation, we remember Maxine Bryant, and before her, Elaine Borthwick, and all the others who we remember but no longer see.
Go to a church long enough and you’ll see the places where the local saints used to sit. When I look at All Saints, I see the pews where once sat Jean and Bruce, Brian, Adam, Marilyn, others. And in our minds we carry the names of all those who shared their faith with us and shaped us: parents and relatives, Sunday school teachers, clergy, beloved spouses and friends, all of those who have taken their places in the great company of saints that have gone ahead of us.
So as church our duty is to remember, as best we can, all those who have gone before us. We remember them because we loved them in life and love them still, but also because our memory is a statement of faith. As our first lesson said, “In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died“, but we know better. We know that they are at peace and we trust that they will rise again. We know that they are gathered around the Lamb, where there are no tears, no pain, only light and joy.
On Remembrance Day we say, “we will remember them”, and we take that promise seriously, but we do forget. Wars start because humans forget to be merciful. We forget to be merciful. We want to be proud and fierce and nationalistic when we are meant to be meek and to thirst for righteousness. Our faith calls us to remember mercy, and peace, and love. Our faith comforts us with the promise that the dead, names beyond numbering from countless wars and holocausts, are safe in the memory and keeping of God.
Jesus said to his disciples, Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God” Lk 12:6-7). So we trust that God will remember all the names on all the cenotaphs, as well as the many more whose names are not carved anywhere. Likewise we trust God to remember Aneelia, and Kaden, and all the young people in our community who were bullied and driven to take their own lives. We trust that God will remember Abel and Ezekiel and the others murdered at Tumbler Ridge. We trust that God will remember Byron, the last Canadian soldier to die in Afghanistan, and to remember Abraham, seven years old, murdered in Auschwitz in 1942.
We trust that God will remember them all, as God will remember us, even we are forgotten, even we have forgotten. On this Remembrance Sunday, as we do every Sunday, we give ourselves and our world to the prince of peace, the one who remembers all, who loves all, and who will restore all.
