Eucharist Sermon with Act of Remembrance
A sermon by the Revd Capt Georgina Anson CF, RA Army Chaplain
Hebrews 9: 24-End
Mark 1:14-20
Lord, to a life of love in action, help us rise and pledge our word. Amen.
In 1914, on the feast of St Michael’s and All Angels, whilst Britain was already in a state of war, the bells of St Gabriel’s Church rang out with joy as Lillian Allan married her beau William Sheriff. She was 22 and he was 21. It must have felt almost immediate when, the next year, one month before the net of conscription was cast, William swore to defend His Majesty against all enemies. Happily, Corporal William Sheriff survived the First World War, discharged at all convenient speed in 1920, and by 1925, Lillian had given him three children, Denys, Alan and Rita.
William, now a veteran, ran a grocery shop opposite St Gabriel’s Church. It was a very traditional shop; the smell of ground coffee wafting out the door, mounds of butter and cheese weighed out by the pound and put into brown paper bags. William worked hard to provide for his family, sacrificing much to give them a life.
His daughter Rita loved both her brothers but was particularly close with Alan. Alan was the golden boy, intelligent and good looking, where Denys was an introvert who felt the pressure of being the eldest as they grew up.
In 1939 when war was declared again, Alan was a 19-year-old medical student, but Denys was already a qualified medical practitioner, so he immediately followed the call to arms and joined the army medical corps. 14-year-old Rita was evacuated to a farm and kennels in Yorkshire. A few years later, Alan qualified in medicine and surgery, so he followed the call, and became an army medic as well. By 1943, William and Lillian had waved goodbye to all three of their children. I wonder if their father felt like he was giving his sons up to die. I wonder if their mother passed by the church and prayed that St Gabriel and all the angels were watching over her children.
Alan was attached to the Southeast Asia Command, so he was sent out to India; then in May 1945, after VE Day, he was sent to Burma. He was a long way away from St Gabriel’s Church and his father’s shop. I wonder if he remembered the smell of the coffee, or the ringing of the bells, as he worked on the other side of the globe, joking with the other officers, comforting his patients, and getting to know the oddities of American soldiers stationed with them. I wonder if he missed his sister, his brother. I wonder how much he mopped up blood that was not his own.
On August 9th, 1945, two days before his twenty-fifth birthday and only six days before the end of the war, Captain Alan Sheriff died, when the US Army jeep he was travelling in overturned. He is buried in a Commonwealth cemetery in Kathmandu, and his gravestone reads: ‘Enshrined in the hearts and memories of those who loved him.’
Rita was devastated by her brother’s death. Years later, in 1982, when her husband Bill died, two days before his 57th birthday, she did not cry; she had cried herself dry for her brother, that he had not grown old as she that was left grew old.
Even in her eighties, before she died in 2013, she mentioned Alan now and then, and looked off into the distance with a palpable sense of loss.
This is the story of my great uncle Alan, the good-looking young army doctor, mourned by my Nanna for 68 years. This story has taught me about self-lessness, and enduring love, virtues rising from a commitment to life. As a British Army officer, Alan took his final, mortal journey to Burma to defend not just His Majesty, but life. He knew what he was risking, as did Great-Grandad William, Great Uncle Denys, and Grandpa Bill (Grandpa Bill who, please note, also served, but because he cheated his way through the medical with one deaf ear. Slightly different virtues in his story). These, in their human complexity, are my ancestors, who went to war, not knowing where it would lead.
Great-Grandma Lilian did not pray to God reassured that Alan and Denys would be safe. Our faith does not comfort us that human war or mortal death is avoidable. But Lilian prayed with the same hope as us, that throughout all generations, God is committed to life.
I cannot imagine what it would be like to lose my brother. I wonder how much the apostle John cried when his brother James was the first disciple to be martyred. I wonder how much Simon Peter cried when his brother Andrew was crucified on an X-shaped cross. They, as we heard this morning, followed the call without knowing where it would lead, having just heard of John the Baptist being delivered up to the authorities. Followers of Christ are not reassured that mortal death is avoidable. But we are reassured of life. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
Remembrance can become saturated in death, like wine soaking into a tablecloth. But my Nanna Rita went on to get married, to train as a pharmacist, to bring up four children and to live a life, even while carrying her brother’s death as a sword that had pierced her soul. At this time of year, I remember to remember Great Uncle Alan, and my faith in Christ holds in my heart both the tears of a woman as if outside a tomb, and also the joy of the resurrection when, one day, Alan will say to her, ‘Rita’ and she will turn to see him again. The world will be released from despair, redeemed from war and hatred. Every tear will be wiped from her eyes; true death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more. On Remembrance, we remember not just the death, but the lives defended, and the life eternal.
We also remember to pray for those that have followed the call and serve today. As a British Army officer, I read where our Hebrews passage says, “the high priest enters the holy place year after year with blood that is not his own”, and I wonder about the holy places that we are sending people to. To be an army chaplain is to see the holy places, to go to them with our people, and I can only do it in the strength of Christ.
Christ on the cross, choosing to stay with the consequences of humanity’s attempt at life without God; Christ, calling us as he called to that pair of brothers, called to serve. Christ, the blood of the new covenant, bringing his followers into communion; Christ in the faces alongside me, golden twenty-five-year-olds, my brothers in arms, whose blood I might mop up one day.
The legacy of Alan, an officer who saved lives and went to defend lives, and gave his life because of it, has endured in the lives of his family, and life as I know it comes, in part, from his commitment to life. The legacy of all those who have fought our wars has endured in the lives all of us who came after, and life as our world today knows it comes, in huge part, from their commitment to life. The love of God has endured in the lives of all humanity, and life as we will know it one day will come, entirely, from God’s commitment to life.
He was so committed to life that he lay down his own.
So, as you hear the bells and drink from the cup, remember the lives, the holy places, the sacrifices, the self-lessness, and the enduring love. I pray that we all, my brothers and sisters and siblings by the blood of Jesus, commit ourselves to life.