FOR YOUR TOMORROW WE GAVE OUR TODAY

 

NOVEMBER 10, 2023

Micah 4:1-5 

In the last days
the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established
as the highest of the mountains;
it will be exalted above the hills,
and peoples will stream to it.

2 Many nations will come and say,

“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the temple of the God of Jacob.
He will teach us his ways,
so that we may walk in his paths.”
The law will go out from Zion,
the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
3 He will judge between many peoples
and will settle disputes for strong nations far and wide.
They will beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
nor will they train for war anymore.

4 Everyone will sit under their own vine
and under their own fig tree,
and no one will make them afraid,
for the Lord Almighty has spoken.
5 All the nations may walk
in the name of their gods,
but we will walk in the name of the Lord
our God for ever and ever.

In 1916, during the First World War, the theologian P. T. Forsyth gave a series of lectures called The Justification of God. His work was a response to the question “Where is God in all of this?” The “this” being war. I dare say many of us have been asking that question in these recent days when considering Russia/Ukraine and Hamas/Israel. Forsyth warned against any simple attempt at finding God in the events of war. “An event like the war at least aids God’s purpose in this,” he writes, “that it shocks and rouses us into some due sense of what evil is, and what a Saviour’s task with it is.” (The Justification of God p. 25) In the war he suggested, “We are having a revelation of the awful and desperate nature of evil.” (The Justification of God p. 23)

 

In Forsyth’s view, the horror of War pointed to the need for Redemption. For healing and forgiveness through Jesus Christ. The war pointed to the conviction that we hear in those well know words of Job from the Old Testament:

“For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and that at the last he will stand upon the earth;
and after my skin has been thus destroyed,
then in my flesh I shall see God.” [Job 19.25-26]

Too many lost their lives in wars and service, and we have remembered them this week, especially tomorrow. There is an inscription commemorating the end of World War 1 that says, “When you go home tell them of us and say, for your tomorrow we gave our today.”  May their story and death awaken in us an understanding of our need, our calling to break down barriers of hate and join in the call to all of humankind to discover in each other their common, God-given humanity, then we are remembering them as they should be remembered. And remembering what they gave for us. That we might build a better world. I desire and long for the day that today’s scripture reading will be fulfilled when “they will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.” Or as The Message interprets it “They’ll trade in their swords for shovels, their spears for rakes and hoes. Nations will quit fighting each other, quit learning how to kill one another.”

Let us conclude with a Remembrance Day prayer I heard this week in a service,

Let us commit ourselves to responsible living
and faithful service.

Will you strive for all that makes for peace?
We will

Will you seek to heal the wounds of war?
We will

Will you work for a just future for all humanity?
We will

Merciful God,
we offer to you the fears in us
that have not yet been cast out by love:
May we accept the hope you have placed
in the hearts of all people,
and live lives of justice, courage, and mercy;
through Jesus Christ our risen Redeemer.
Amen.