postID: 7008; title: Remembrance Sunday
no collect_text found
groupKey: secondary
groupKey: other
Array
(
[date] => 2014-11-09 11:00:00
[scope] =>
[year] =>
[month] =>
[post_id] => 1185
[series_id] =>
[day_titles_only] =>
[exclusive] => 1
[return] => formatted
[formatted] =>
[show_date] =>
[show_meta] =>
[show_content] => 1
[admin] =>
[debug] => 1
[filter_types] => Array
(
[0] => primary
[1] => secondary
)
[type_labels] => Array
(
[primary] => Primary
[secondary] => Secondary
[other] => Other
)
[the_date] => 2014-11-09 11:00:00
)
2 post(s) found for dateStr : 2014-11-09postID: 6960 (The Twenty-Second Sunday After Pentecost)
--- getDisplayDates ---
litdate post_id: 6960; date_type: variable; year: 2014
Variable date => check date_calculations.
=> check date_assignments.
=> NO date_assignments found for postID: 6960
displayDates for postID: 6960/year: 2014
Array
(
[0] => 2014-11-09
)
postPriority: 3postID: 7008 (Remembrance Sunday)
--- getDisplayDates ---
litdate post_id: 7008; date_type: variable; year: 2014
Variable date => check date_calculations.
=> check date_assignments.
=> NO date_assignments found for postID: 7008
displayDates for postID: 7008/year: 2014
Array
(
[0] => 2014-11-09
)
postPriority: 1primaryPost found for date: 2014-11-09 with ID: 7008 (Remembrance Sunday)
Remembrance Sunday
Array
(
[date] => 2014-11-09 11:00:00
[scope] =>
[year] =>
[month] =>
[post_id] => 1185
[series_id] =>
[day_titles_only] =>
[exclusive] => 1
[return] => simple
[formatted] =>
[show_date] =>
[show_meta] =>
[show_content] => 1
[admin] =>
[debug] => 1
[filter_types] => Array
(
[0] => primary
[1] => secondary
)
[type_labels] => Array
(
[primary] => Primary
[secondary] => Secondary
[other] => Other
)
[the_date] => 2014-11-09 11:00:00
)
2 post(s) found for dateStr : 2014-11-09postID: 6960 (The Twenty-Second Sunday After Pentecost)
--- getDisplayDates ---
litdate post_id: 6960; date_type: variable; year: 2014
Variable date => check date_calculations.
=> check date_assignments.
=> NO date_assignments found for postID: 6960
displayDates for postID: 6960/year: 2014
Array
(
[0] => 2014-11-09
)
postPriority: 3postID: 7008 (Remembrance Sunday)
--- getDisplayDates ---
litdate post_id: 7008; date_type: variable; year: 2014
Variable date => check date_calculations.
=> check date_assignments.
=> NO date_assignments found for postID: 7008
displayDates for postID: 7008/year: 2014
Array
(
[0] => 2014-11-09
)
postPriority: 1primaryPost found for date: 2014-11-09 with ID: 7008 (Remembrance Sunday)
A Sermon by
The Rev. Canon Carl Turner
✛
Growing Through Death Into Life
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
My mum was no saint. She had her flaws like any other mum. But she is still my mum and I love her even though she died four years ago. In sorting the house in Exeter ready for our move here, my wife and I found many old photographs and letters. In fact, we found so many more things that reminded us of the past and especially of family and friends who have died – the memories were poignant and I was surprised how fresh and clear they became with just a little prompting.
Richard Holloway has written a book with a very cheerful title “Anger, Sex, Doubt and Death”. In the chapter on death he suggests that we do more than just remember – in our acts of remembrance, we could be called ‘remembrancers’ for we participate in the memory. He says this:
“We would be remembrancers even if we lived for ever, but it seems to be the presence of death that provokes the keenest remembrance. The living we can revisit, but the dead we can only remember. And we do: sometimes in little glimpses, like the credit flashbacks at the end of a film; sometimes in more elaborate sequences, in which we reconstitute as much about a person as we can. It is death that makes us look back in sorrow, makes us remembrancers. But it is also death that makes us look forward in dread.”
I now only have the photographs of my mum and the funny ways I live my life that she taught me. I will pray for her…like I pray for my dad and my dear friends who died too young and whose company I should still be enjoying now. Our prayer for the dead is a sign of two things; of our love for them which is not made any less real because of their parting and our faith and trust in Jesus who told us that he has gone to prepare a place for us. It is to be unselfish as all prayer is…that is why I believe Spiritualism to be wrong, not because poor, sad and lonely people want to be close again to their loved ones – that’s quite understandable – but because it is inherently selfish and not about growth.
I remember Michael Ramsey once teaching about purgatory; a word, he said, that Anglicans had come to dislike. But, he once said to me “Have you ever hurt someone but not known that you have done it and then discovered many weeks later how hurt they had been? Well, Carl, when you die and meet God face to face and discover all that you have done to hurt him, how do you think you will feel? That,” he said, “is purgatory…or paradise.” My friends, it is the coming to terms with the fact that death is not an just an end but also a beginning and that growing can still be part of who we are even after death – not in terms of years or the ridiculous practice of indulgences and winning favors to cash in after death, but the understanding that after death comes a new way of living – in God’s nearer presence.
Now we understand what Jesus meant when he talked in John’s gospel about going to prepare a place for us. Many old translations use the term ‘mansions’ or a place with ‘many rooms.’ Of course, we immediately get the idea that we will have our own place and our own little door to keep us safe or keep people out! Another problem of some Anglicans is that they think there will be a special Episcopal mansion just for them – and a rather grand one of that…with plenty of smoke detectors (though, as the old Dean of Exeter used to say when people pretended to cough at the incense – “there are only two smells in the after-life, incense or brimstone and you had better get used to one!”) Anyway, the Greek doesn’t really mean rooms as in static places, it really means ‘staging posts’ and suggests that even after death there is growth towards becoming the perfect image of God.
As Paul said to the Corinthians,
“If the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (I Corinthians 15:16-19)
Today we walk together in hope and love on our Christian journey, praying for our loved ones and feeling the loving prayer and fellowship of those who have gone before and enjoy the fuller presence of Christ.
Some words of Henri Nouwen:
“The same love that reveals the absurdity of death also allows us to befriend death. The same love that forms the basis of our grief is also the basis of our hope, the same love that makes us cry out in pain also must enable us to develop a liberating intimacy with our own basic brokenness. Without faith, this must sound like a contradiction. But our faith in Jesus, whose love overcame death and who rose from the grave on the third day, converts this contradiction into a paradox, the most healing paradox of our existence.” (A Letter of Consolation. p. 33)
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
