For many years now at St John's the Sunday after the Feast of All Saints is observed as Peace and Remembrance Sunday. Thus, the bible readings for today and the special symbolic acts of today`s service reflect the intention of this community to honour and remember those who have suffered the destructive consequences of war. And from a forward looking perspective encourage all who are presently engaged in safeguarding and making peace. Thus we pray for combatants, other professional agents of peace in society and ourselves as peacemakers.

One of the heartening things about this time of year is that the public media devote significant space to describing the lives of ordinary people who have done extraordinary things during times of war. Some of these people are our own grandparents, parents, siblings, and friends, sons and daughters. We are refreshed and encouraged by these stories of lives lived in the service and protection of others. We learn of their personal lives and of their ideals. Each year the civil ceremonies at the cenotaph here in Ottawa mark, especially, the contribution played by members past and present of our armed forces.

I read these accounts with mixed feelings. On the one hand I am encouraged by the essential goodness and capacity for self sacrifice of which humanity if capable. But I am also discouraged by the fact that it is the obscenity of war which has been required for us to see these qualities in one another. For each inspiring story told there are millions of untold stories of broken and impoverished lives when nations and ethnicities and religions are in conflict. And we don`t hear enough about the huge waste of resources spent in every war and the environmental damage.

Most western nations have some form of Remembrance Day- often called Memorial Day. These civic holidays were established largely throughout the last century with the intention of honouring combatant casualties and creating a national will to prevent the same from happening again. I would say that the first objective has been realized but not the second. We honour the dead but we have not stopped of the carnage and waste.

Currently, the production, distribution, and use of arms absorbs more time, money, and energy than any other activity of the human species. To reverse, or even diminish, our addiction to warfare is a huge moral challenge for the twenty-first century. Today, unlike previous ages, humanity possesses the military capacity to completely annihilate itself. Some believe that we can prevent this with more technology and others believe the challenge to be spiritual and not technical. Indeed, we know that it is a question of survival as well as moral integrity. Some predict that only a catastrophe of an unprecedented scale will push us to change our ways.

It is sometimes said that war can never be eliminated. It is said to be part of the very moral disorder of humanity. And yet, warfare is really a product of the Agricultural Revolution which occurred just a few thousand years ago- a small fraction of the time human beings have existed. Interestingly, warfare and organized religion both began when humans began settling down to carve up and claim ownership over parcels of land. These divisions became the basis for separate tribes, cultures, nations, and religions.

But one must ask the question: if humanity lived most of its history without war, why can it not do so again? War is not inevitable. War is not an inescapable corollary to human social order. But what will it take?

Stories of courage, goodness, and bravery. Stories of horror, ruined lives and ecosystems. The legacy of war. The Reverend Kevin Flynn, the new Director of Anglican Studies at St Paul University invited members of the diocese to read an article written by a friend of his, a Canadian, now living in Germany. I want to share some of this with you because it very much demonstrates how much our Remembrance observances are shaped by the cultural and historical forces around us. It also pushes us to reflect on that other unattained objective: sustainable peace. She posted, on her website this reflection called Remembering:

It is Remembrance Day. It`s a day-an hour of a day of a month -that I have honoured all my life, a life that until recently was located in Canada. This year I`m in Germany, Munich, and to be exact, I`m sitting in a café at Odeonsplatz, right beside the Feldherrnhalle. It`s the site that intimately connected with the history of National Socialists, and was the Nazi`s spiritual centre. The people around me are mostly young-stylish, vibrant,and intellectual. The architecture is old and beautiful, but the atmosphere is modern and liberal. I never expected to be here...It's a change in perspective that goes far deeper than scenery.

I woke up this morning wondering how to mark the day. Obviously there would be no poppies, and none of the military displays honouring the fallen dead that I`ve grown used to in Canada. I`ve never questioned too closely what it was that I was"remembering" on November 11. I simply showed up out of respect for the dead, an unexamining giving of thanks for the "good guys"who gave their lives to defeat the "bad guys", so that the next generation could live in peace. Not too sophisticated, in theory nor in practise.

I'm told that Germany observes Volkstrauertag ( Memorial Day) on the first Sunday in Advent. Unlike me, the German people have thought long and hard about what it is THEY are remembering. So much so, that there is a second national day of mourning each year-one to remember the victims of war and tyranny, and another to mark the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp....(deletion)...There`s no pat distinction between "the good guys" and "the bad guys" here. Through bitter experience and hard-won wisdom, the German people understand that the capacity for doing evil-or at least succumbing to it-lies within us all.

She then recalls the voice and face of the German tour guide with whom she spoke several months earlier. She remembered his anger and contempt as he translated the inscriptions to the "glorious dead" of WW1 and the victims of WW 11 at a monument in Bavaria. He remarked,

"How is it that at the end of WW11, there were suddenly no Nazis? Everyone was suddenly a "victim"! No one would admit to having belonged to the party...my own father and grandfather! How is it that they could have joined, and believed in, such a thing?"

I remember feeling compassion-for him-and for his father and grandfather, who lived in a frightening time when people`s souls were strangled by brutality and evil. Would I have done any better if I had lived during those times? Would he? We all like to think so, but the bitter truth is that we can`t know. I put a red rose on the tomb-not a poppy, but a symbol of love, nonetheless- and I sent up a fervent prayer for the world in which we live today, in which it`s getting awfully hard to tell who the "good guys" are anymore.

I think the inscription on the Siegestor - the triumphal arch on Ludwigstrasse-says it all. Its inscription, which was changed when it was restored after WW11 says ( English translation)

Erected in victory. Destroyed in war.
An admonishment to peace.

As I read this I asked my self the question: what role has the Christian Church to play in the quest for peace? The reply that came to me was another story- a story familiar to most of you. It is the story in the gospel of Matthew about the wedding feast a king prepared for his son. Like many of Jesus`s stories or parables its purpose is to uncover our assumptions and challenge us to turn them around. The king assumed that his family and friends would accept the invitation to the feast. They did not and the fact that they did not was a unforgivable insult in that culture. The king's response was to send out his servants to find others to join the celebration. And so they did. The implication is that king now had a whole new set of friends and family and the old order had been set aside and forgotten.

Every parable, in its own narrative language, is meant to spark our imagination about God`s vision of the world. And every parable is a delight as it unfolds the dimensions of God's unfailing love and mercy. In today's parable the world is a great feast, a royal celebration to which we are invited. The invitation is both a privilege and an obligation, a right and a duty. If the king represents God and the guests the church, then it is clear that God will not hesitate to find others to pursue his vision if the church cannot.

So what do you think? Have we, as a church, accepted the invitation to build the peaceable kingdom of God or haven't we? Historical evidence is not encouraging as it indicates centuries of church complicity in dominant social values based upon cohersion by military systems as well as other social structures. Christians continue to be amongst the world`s most vociferous war mongers. What a scandal !

Can we do a new thing? Just as we have been moved this week by accounts of the bravery and idealism which have marked the stories of ordinary lives in times of war, so can our lives, lived with Kingdom peace values, be an inspiration to others now and in years to come.

Let us strive to be a church which is "an admonishment to peace". In order to be so we may need to be rebuilt like the triumphal arch in Ludwigstrasse. We may need to demolish and abandon old values and attitudes, otherwise the king may prepare a new guest list for the great feast, a guest list on which our names will not appear.

To complete this reflection Pat Bowen will lead several members of our congregation in a gesture indicating the gospel call to us to move beyond violence to non-violence. The gesture is a walk marked by slow determination and by the tremendous urge to look back to the old order. But is a hope walk as this group walks together from the cross, the sign of suffering and human sin, towards the font, the source of renewal and new birth.

Please remain seated for this walk to peace. It will be followed immediately by the prayers of the people.