Sermon: Remembrance Sunday at Radley

Preacher:

Date:

Sunday 10th November 2013

Venue:

Radley

Do not be afraid for I have redeemed you. I have called you by your name, you are mine

Isaiah 43.1b

+ In nomine Patris…

I don’t know if you’ve heard of ‘Banksy’.  If you haven’t here’s a bit about him. He is a street artist, specialising in graffiti on buildings. ‘Banksy’ is a pseudonym, a false name, so that we don’t know ‘Banksy’s’ real identity, and not knowing someone’s name means you can’t really know someone.

You might be wondering what the connection between Banksy and Remembrance is. Well, there are two points of connection. First, Banksy’s name is unknown to us and today we remember by name those who have fallen in war, especially of this College and, by association, led by HM the Queen, all those who have fallen in war from this nation and Commonwealth. The second connection is that the significant thing about Banksy’s work is that it is in public spaces open to everyone, and today we focus on war memorials which are public places where everyone can see the names, and are encouraged to pause and to remember.

In the church where I was Vicar, before moving to Guildford Cathedral, on the side of the organ case there is a hand pump. Organs need air blowing through them to make them work and nowadays organ pumps are electronic. In the old days organ were pumped by hand often by boys from the choir for an extra shilling or two. So what would the choirboys end up doing during sermons? Well, they would sit and scratch their names into the wood of the organ case. (I am not encouraging this!) They would do graffiti. We would be horrified if someone did that today, but these names tell a stories about the boys who grew up in the parish before the Second World War.

One story is about a boy called William Inkpen. He scratched his name into the organ case. I found out a bit about William. He was a boy who sang in the church choir and pumped the organ. I have a photograph of him in the choir from 1930. He’s standing just behind the extremely fierce looking Vicar. Quite what that Vicar thought when he saw William’s name on the organ case I don’t know (William can hardly have denied the crime!)  I’ve also seen a photograph of William when he was at the village school in the late 1920s. He looks full of life and full of possibilities for the future.

There was always something terribly poignant about seeing William’s name on the organ case, because the other place I saw it most days - and always on Remembrance Sunday - was on the village war memorial in my churchyard. His name was read out by the local Royal British Legion, and his name, of all names, hit me year by year.

There will be some people here today for whom particular names mean something very significant, very personal and perhaps difficult. Or perhaps to you the names are ‘just names’. Either way names matter, they tell the story of someone’s life. If you have a name you matter, you are human. In the concentration camps the Nazis deprived people of their names and tattooed a number on them: that is the ultimate in saying that somebody is a nobody, barely human.

If you have a name you matter. That is why on Remembrance Sunday we read names. Those names are read because those men and women mattered when they died; they matter now; they will continue to matter.

Every time you walk under the Memorial Arch, or into this chapel, you will pass names carved into the wall, a public space, names that matter.

Something you could do as part of your remembering today, or in the coming days, is to pause and look at one of those silent names etched in the stone and make that the name that you ponder and pray for each Remembrance Sunday. It maybe somone with the same Christian name as you or another connection, or just a random name.

When you do that you are saying that that person mattered, still matters and will matter. You will be acknowledging that were it not for that person’s death, your life might be quite different. You will be associating yourself with the people, families, loved ones and friends, for whom that person mattered most.

At the heart of the national act of remembrance led by the Queen are two places which bear no names. The first is the Tomb of the Unknown Solider. No name can be written on that tomb, because the man buried there is not known by name to us. In that way every name can be associated with that place at the heart of Westminster Abbey and our national life. The other place is the Cenotaph, a cenotaph being a monument to someone buried elsewhere, a tomb with no one in it, in other words an empty tomb.

An empty tomb and a name lie at the heart of the Christian hope. This is what gives Christians hope that through the name of Jesus and his empty tomb all may share in the life of God whether living or dead, because, as St Paul reminds us, even though we die and have the pain of grief, ‘nothing can separate from the love of God in Christ Jesus’ (Romans 8.39).

Today, then, names from the public space of this school and our nation are etched onto our hearts: we give thanks and we remember. I will remember William Inkpen. I wonder who you remember. As you remember them by name, remember the words of our reading which apply to them and to you, ‘Do not be afraid for I have redeemed you. I have called you by your name, you are mine. You are precious in my sight and honoured, and I love you.’ (Isaiah 43.1b, 4a).

May they rest in peace. We will remember them.