As the leaves fall: Remembrance Sunday in the parish church

As the leaves fall, as the mid-November days grow shorter and colder, we observe Remembrance Sunday.

The season is befitting for the observance.  There is nothing brash, loud, or glorious about late Autumn: it has an air of melancholy, of gentle decline. Intimations of mortality surround us.

We will gather in the parish church, wearing our poppies. If one was seeking a symbol of nationalistic fervour, the poppy would - to say the least - be a very odd choice.  A delicate little flower, bearing no national colours. A delicate little flower which grew in foreign fields, fields which saw loss and sacrifice, not shock and awe triumphs.

Names will be read out at the parish war memorial. 

Sons of the parish, and one daughter, killed in the Great War and the Second World War. We still recognise some of the surnames. Whether we recognise the names or not, these are are sons and a daughter of our parish. Some will have been baptised at our font and received the holy Sacrament at our altar rails. 

They had family who sat in our pews, praying for their safe return; mourning in those same pews after the telegram arrived, informing parents, spouses, and siblings that their loved one had fallen in Flanders field, in the waters of the Atlantic, or in the skies over Europe. 

We look around at the dedications in stained glass windows in our parish church. Of 6 windows in the nave, 5 commemorate young men of our parish who fell in the Great War. This was a parish deeply marked by the loss and sacrifice of that war.

After the names are read out, the solemn silence. 

Solemn silence, as the leaves fall, as the mid-November days grow shorter and colder

Silence which stills us in the face of such loss and sacrifice; silence drawing us into prayer.

For we commend those whom we have named, those of our parish, to the God who is Creator and Redeemer.

There are no words about the glories of war. No nationalistic calls. No bombastic proclamations.

Names. Silence. Prayer.

Then there is the National Anthem.  We last sung it in the parish at the King's Accession. Its sparse use in divine service means that it marks national solemnity, a time to particularly seek God's blessing on our common life.

It is a moment which can move us to be thankful that the anthem of this realm is no stirring call to arms, no urging on of duty to patria, no invocation of a mythical volk. 

It is simply a prayer for the King, a prayer for the good, peaceable, and just government of the realm.

And we might briefly glimpse as we sing the National Anthem, that it was for this that those names we have just heard fought and died: for a quiet, peaceable, just realm, the "quiet and peaceable life" for which the Apostle exhorts we pray.

Our service on Remembrance Sunday ends with the now traditional blessing:

God grant to the living grace, to the departed rest, to the Church, the King, the Commonwealth and all people, unity, peace and concord, and to us and all God’s servants, life everlasting ...

It brings to mind the Prophet's vision, the vision of the peaceable kingdom:

But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid.

So we depart from the parish church, into a cold, dark November day, as the leaves fall, another Remembrance Sunday past. We remove our poppies for another year, our prayers offered for the fallen, for our national life, for the peace of all. 

May our observance of Remembrance Sunday, with its memories of bitter loss and great sacrifice, draws us to receive the Prophet's vision with a renewed gratitude, and with a deeper commitment to cherish, nurture, and defend a common life quietly, justly, peaceably ordered and governed.