Remembrance Sermon

Sermon by The Revd Tiann Morgner CF, Chaplain to the Household Cavalry Regiment

Luke 20:27-38

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there. I do not sleep.

These lines are the first of a poem by Mary Elizabeth Frye that has been used in Funerals and memorials throughout the years. It is a simple sentiment that carries with it the hope of the scripture and the heart of remembrance. It was written by Frye in an effort to console a friend, Mary Schwartzkopf, who was living in the US and was unable to visit her mother after she passed away because her mother was in Germany in the 1930s and they were Jewish.

The inability to say goodbye is a reality that many families of the fallen face. It is something we all face when we lose someone we love. Bringing them home and trying to say goodbye to our loved ones is something that is still taking place decades after wars have ended and fields stained by the blood of our brothers and sisters are covered with blooming poppies. We long for closure and an understanding. What happened, where are they, why? The loss can at times be all consuming and leave us focused on the things of this age, the here and now, the temporal and finite. The poet urges us beyond that, scripture urges us beyond that.

We are urged to moments of remembrance, moments where we remember the lives lost, the loved ones, friends, comrades in arms, complete strangers, ancestors and the countless names etched on markers throughout the world whose blood was spilt on foreign soil. Those who are buried in foreign lands, whose stories we continue to tell. When we say their names, when we tell their story, we remember and their lives
live on.

Jesus reminds us in our Gospel lesson today, “God is not a God of the dead but of the living for to him all of them are alive.”
“God is not a God of the dead but of the living for to him all of them are alive.”
Jesus is reminding us that there is something greater to hope for in the end. That being a child of God, being beloved by God, transcends all of these worldly issues. The ways of God are not the ways of humanity. The rules that we put in place to navigate this world fade away when it comes to the resurrection, they are no longer the focal point when it comes to the Kingdom of God. He is reminding us that we are not to stand at the grave and weep because they are not there. Not Jesus, not the widow with 7 husbands, not our fallen brothers and sisters who gave their lives. They are amongst the living with God, for our God is not a God of the dead. If we are to live in this resurrection truth, if we are to strive as Christians to bring about the kingdom of God, here and now, one way we do so is through the act of remembrance. Remembrance at the table, remembrance of the stories, remembrance of the names, remember.

Flight Officer Bill Jack Cook was born in 1919, just after the end of the 1st World War, he was the second son of Pyrrha and Edgar, and brother to Robert. He grew up in a simple Texas home, not needing for much, but early in his life his father passed away and he was sent to the orphan home for boys with his brother at the age of ten because his mother could no longer provide for them. While at the masonic home they learned to play football, American football, and were able to have 3 meals and a roof over their heads in addition to an education. This was the reality for many children during the great depression, but Jack and Bob grew and thrived. They married their sweethearts and began to establish their lives and families and, as most men did at the start of the US involvement in the war, they joined the military.

Bob, commissioned in the navy and was sent to Cornell, NY and Jack commissioned into the Army Air Corps and was sent to the 392nd Bomber Group, at RAF Wendling in Norfolk, England late in 1944. Jack’s wife Jeffa was pregnant during this time and she gave birth to their first child, a son, Darryl on the 14th of November 1944. On December 2nd 1944, a few short weeks after his son was born, Flight Officer Bill Jack Cook departed in the morning on his first mission from RAF Shipdam. He was the Co-pilot of a B-24 Bomber that was tasked with bombing a strategic logistics site for the Nazis- the marshalling yards at Bingen, Germany. They successfully dropped their payload and were beginning to make their turn to return home. Around 1230, the formation was separated by clouds and they were soon attacked by enemy
fighters. Jack’s plane was not going to make it home. Flight Officer Bill Jack Cook’s remains were returned home to the US years later where he found his final resting place with the rest of his crew in a national cemetery in Kentucky. For Pyrrha, his mother and Robert, his brother, for Jeffa, his wife, and Darryll, his son, Jack lives on as they tell the story, as they remember him, and their hope was eventually found in the things to come. Remembrance is about the fallen, but the task is to those who remain, it is for us to tell the story, to remember and to carry that sacred memory forward so that they live on both here and in the time of things to come.

Remembrance is about the matters of this world and the next. Like the gospel account, we are to care for the widow in the here and now with the knowledge and hope for the resurrection in the hereafter. That was the point of the law Moses wrote, to care for one another, to ensure the legacy and lineage. I’m sure this scripture was also on Jeffa’s mind a bit because by the time she passed away in 2003, she had been married and widowed 2 times and yet, belonging to the resurrection for her meant that she could love and cherish the memory of Jack while still continuing to live and love.

For those Soldiers during WW1 stuck in the trenches, this scripture brings a message of hope “God is not a God of the dead but of the living for to him all of them are alive.” As they held silence at 1100 hours on November 11th for the first time in 1919, as the lives of all of those lost were present in the midst of the silence and all the years after, “God is not a God of the dead, but of the living”. For the warriors pressing forward onto the beaches of Normandy, God is not a God of the dead but of the living for to him all of them are alive. For those Service members in the
Falklands, the troubles, Iraq, and Afghanistan and all of those who remember the story and the names “God is not a God of the dead, but of the living for to him all of them are alive.” When blood stained fields are turned into fields carpeted with red poppies, God is not a God of the dead, but of the living for to him all of them are alive.”

Resurrection means that death does not overcome, not then, not now, and not in the times to come. It means that we live the words of the Kohema Epitaph: “When you go home, Tell them of us and say, For your tomorrow, We gave our today”

I have not always been the best at this. But I guess its hard to tell the story. I appreciate the gift it is to listen, to listen to the story of another, to listen to the story of the fallen. I wish I had paid attention when Bob-bob, my grandfather, Robert E. Cook, told me stories of his brother, told me stories of his upbringing, shared his life with me. I wish I had listened to my dad, tell the stories of his friends who gave their today in Vietnam for his tomorrow before that opportunity was gone. As a chaplain, I am privileged to bear witness to the sacred stories of our brothers and sisters, and I am called to tell the story of the comrades in arms that I served with.

We are both living in the gift of tomorrow and the reality of today. We are all here because of the sacrifices of those brave warriors who laid down their lives upon the altar. Remember them, and their stories live on because God is not a God of the dead, but of the living for to him all of them are alive. We will remember them.