Singers for the 1000 voices choir to be staged on Liberation Day (9th May) 2010 are invited from our church congregations and music groups/choirs. There will be a rehersal on 1st November and then on 4th January.

When a new Pope is elected, it is customary to give him a new car.  So, Pope Benedict sold his old green Volkswagen.  The event got into the news, because when the new buyer checked the documents, he noticed who the previous owner was.  The story made it onto the programme: Have I Got News for You, and it was reported how the new owner sold the car on, at a higher price.  The car was then sold a third time at an even higher price still.  So, as the presenter said: On the third day it rose again!

Now, it is interesting that this story makes you smile or laugh.  For you have obviously understood the reference to rising on the third day, even though – statistically – people today are supposed to be a more ungodly and unchurched lot than they were in wartime Guernsey of the early 1940s.  Yet, despite all the secularisation of our society, there is still a religious memory.  There are moments when people are struck by something deeply religious: e.g. the 9/11 picture of the New York Fire Department Chaplain being carried dead from the rubble of the twin towers.  This is something that resonates deep within each one of us. It is seared into our memory.

Each year here in Guernsey, the same deeply religious experience strikes all of us.  By this annual service, we confront those who would find it convenient to forget what happened so long ago.  But, by our presence here, we keep alive the determination that nothing so evil should ever happen again.  The people we remember are our very own.  We feel proud to honour them in this church and at this service. They deserve the efforts of the living to give thanks for the efforts of the dead – and the few who are still alive. But more than that, we the living must shout from the rooftops the words of Pope John Paul II: War is never a solution – It wasn’t then, and it isn’t now. Amusingly, given the recent debate about whether it was the Royal Air Force or the Royal Navy that saved Britain from invasion in 1940, perhaps the Germans should have sat back and let the Navy and the RAF fight it out between them.  I suspect flying-boats would provide a compromise answer!

Will we ever learn that war is never a solution?  Iraq, Zimbabwe, Sierre Leone, Rwanda, Palestine, Afghanistan.  All these conflicts mean that the yoke still remains to be eased; the burden still remains to be lightened.  When will we ever learn?  When will God’s Kingdom come?

God’s Kingdom will be ushered in when attitudes change.  For:

The world too often says:  Put up your fists.
But the Gospel says:  Love one another.

The world says:  Bloody his nose.
The Gospel says:  Wash his feet.

The world says:  Worship other gods: like money, status, power, promotion.
The Gospel says:  Come to me all you who labour and are overburdened.

The world says:  They don’t deserve what they’ve got.
The Gospel says:  You’re right, but neither do you.

The world says:  Take your revenge.
The Gospel says:  Receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

The world says:  Don’t let him get away with it.
The Gospel says:  Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

The world says:  Be ambitious.
The Gospel says: Blessed is he who laid down his life for his friends.

This is a high calling.  There is no calling higher than the moment when the Lord laid down his life for sinful mankind.  And in human terms, there is no calling higher than the moment when soldiers, sailors and airmen have laid down their lives in defence of the livelihoods and values of a nation threatened by a hostile foe. Yet, today, it can often seem that the reverse is true: that too many now lay down their friends for their lives: trampling on others to get ahead, get promoted, get something first. No, Blessed indeed is he who laid down his life for his friends.

What we are doing here today in this church recalls a remark made by that great England and Yorkshire cricketer, Freddie Trueman, many years ago. He was one of my childhood heroes. Yet, he would be as much surprised as you probably are that his words might be applied to this occasion too.  He would be even more surprised that someone like me, brought up in Lancashire, could quote something good coming out of Yorkshire. Freddie was fielding in the slips with that other great cricketer, David Shepherd, who went on to become the Anglican Bishop of Liverpool.  Bishop David dropped a relatively easy catch.  Immediately, Freddie Trueman turned to him and said:  Eee, lad, can’st tha not do what tha does on Sundays: like, put tha hands together! We today put our hands together in prayer as we retain the memory of events and people that occurred almost 65 years ago – events remembered by many a plaque and inscription on the walls of this church and elsewhere in these islands.  If only they could speak and teach us today.  They ask us to keep their memory alive, to continue to carry their burden of freedom in our own age.  They showed complete selflessness and self-sacrifice, and suffered in a good cause.  They rose to the occasion, with a spirit and a strength that they never knew they had before.  For when they were down to nothing, God was up to something.

Nation goes on warring against nation, and among peoples within nations.  The world remains unstable, because Jesus Christ is absent from the world.  He is no longer wanted.  He is not seen as satisfying mankind’s needs. We want everyone else to change, but not ourselves.  If we find it so difficult to change ourselves, imagine how difficult it is to change others. Conversion, for that is precisely what we are talking about, is not a single, dramatic event. There might not be a blinding light, as happened to St Paul on the road to Damascus – or as one child wrote: on the road to Domestos! Conversion requires a leap of faith, a leap into the unknown.  Yet, it is not a leap across just one gigantic chasm, after which the going is straightforward. It is more like the journey across a glacier, as described by Sir Edmund Hillary in his book: The Ascent of Everest.  I was just going on 9 years of age when I was fascinated by his climb and his determination, with such primitive equipment.  One particular paragraph in the book that he wrote later on caught my attention, where he says:

We approached a shallow gully split from side to side by gaping crevasses. The area was in constant and audible movement.  No day passed without some striking change occurring, calling for a fresh reconnaissance of the route.

Let us listen to these words again, in our own day, and see how they apply to our own struggles and our own journey of faith through difficult moments in a fragile world:

We approached a shallow gully split from side to side by gaping crevasses. The area was in constant and audible movement.  No day passed without some striking change occurring, calling for a fresh reconnaissance of the route.

Any journey of faith, climbing up an inhospitable mountain, or coping with the ravages of war, or simply dealing with the routines of daily life, involves facing many an abyss over and over again, in unpredictable places, and without warning, and obliging us to find new routes to the same goal.  It is not a matter of finding grounds for faith, so much as finding faith when the ground disappears.

How do we do that?  Well, King George VI gave one answer, in the very first royal broadcast on Christmas Day in 1940, as Britain battled against invasion.  He quoted a little-known poet called Minnie Louise Haskins, who said:

Put your hand into the hand of God,
and go out into the unknown.
That shall be for you better than a known way.

Go out into the unknown. It could be the motto of this island.  But, oh, how we fear uncertainty.  Oh, how we are reluctant to LET GO! LET GOD!  to let go of what we’ve always known, to move on from familiar ways. The hardest work of all is to let God do in us what we dare not even think of. It would change the world.

Some advice from Oscar Wilde would also change the world.  He told us: “Always forgive your enemies.  Nothing annoys them so much!”

+Tom M Burns SM BA BD
Bishop of Menevia
(former Bishop of HM Forces: 2002-2008)

This year we are hosting the annual thanksgiving service in St. Joseph’s Church at 11am.

The Rt. Rev. Thomas Burns, Roman-Catholic Bishop of Menevia, Wales, will be the guest speaker.

Fr. PJ will be the celebrant, children from our three Catholic schools will be performing and a presentation of images from the first Liberation Day and subsequent anniversaries will be shown.

Everyone is most welcome to attend. Parking will also be available in Vauvert School. A retiring collection will be taken for Les Bourgs Hospice.