Remembrance Sunday 8^th November 2009.

Mark 1:14 – 20.

They Answered The Call To Serve Our Country

I can visualise the scene, can’t you. The Sea of Galilee on a sunny day, fisherman, preparing to set out in the hope of getting a good catch of fish, never suspecting that in a way they were about to become the catch, that their lives were about to be turned upside down, in a way they could never have imagined.

But that’s how God works, when he wants us to do something his call is strong, he only calls those whom he knows can meet the challenge, answer the call.  

Of course, the call is different for each person, God has given us gifts and he wants us to use those gifts to his glory. Our gifts may not seem very important, but to make society work and make the world go round we all have to use the gifts we have, to answer God’s call to use them.

Mark uses the word immediately, and I am sure they did follow Christ as soon as he called them, but Mark also always wanted to stress the urgency of responding to Christ.  He was expecting the kingdom to come very soon and therefore it was important that everyone had responded to Christ’s life, to his message.

And, of course, in responding to Christ’s call the fishermen had left their families their loved ones behind.  We read ‘they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him’.  I wonder what Zebedee was thinking – probably saying to himself why on earth have they gone with that man, they hardly said goodbye.

But as we know having called the fisherman as disciples Jesus stayed with them, they came to love him as he loved them.

Today we are remembering countless thousands of men and women who have answered the call to serve their country, and we are particularly remembering those called to serve our country, to serve us.

Men and women who felt it was their duty to join the three services no matter what the cost would be, their love for their country and us was so great that they were willing to give their all.

Perhaps for quite a long time we seemed to remembering just the past, the brave men and women of the first and second world wars, but I think that this year that has all changed.  As the headmistress told the children at St Matthew’s school assembly on Thursday, you are buying a poppy not just for the past; you are buying them for soldiers killed this year, yesterday. It’s not just old men who will be at the Cenotaph but young men in their teens and twenties some with horrific injuries. We are this year remembering James and all his comrades who have died, or who have been injured in Afghanistan.

We are remembering the love they had not just for their families but for their country, for us.  But love has to be two way, we cannot just accept their love we have to give ours. And I think we all have a duty not just to remember them with love, but through love to ensure that those who are willing to fight for us get all the support they need from their country, we can’t just take we must give, that is what they deserve.

As we remember them we pray - Heavenly Father we thank them for their sacrifice, and pray that we are worthy of it. Amen.