St. Stephen's Chapel, Stanley, Hong Kong

Sermon given by the Rev'd Will Newman

 on Remembrance Day

at St Stephen’s Chapel, Stanley

9th November 2008

 It all began with two brothers. Cain and Abel, their names were. Very different characters, like brothers often are. Cain was always the settled one, happy staying at home and looking after the family. Abel was the adventurer. Even when he was a boy he was always running off into the hills, looking for something different. Eve loved them both of course. Good boys, in their different ways.  

And that was the way it went on. Cain settled down on the land and started growing crops. He learnt the seedsman’s skills, and seemed quite content. Abel was off with the herds and flocks, away from home for days, sometimes weeks at a time in search of the best pastures. But he always came home again, and Adam would go with his old smile and open arms to welcome him back; and if we were feeling extravagant, we’d even kill one of the fatted calves, or a sheep, and all sit round the fire and enjoy the feast, and the family would be complete again. 

But then it all went wrong. Something happened between the boys – a trivial incident, we thought. But somehow it brought to the surface what had been hidden so deep we didn’t even know it was there. Cain, the dutiful elder son, the one we could always rely on – inside, it seems he was secretly jealous, resentful of his little brother. Why should he always be the one who went away and saw the world? Why should I always have to stay here and never get any of the action? Why do you throw a party for him, not for me? You just take me for granted, don’t you. That secret resentment grew and grew until it was a hatred so strong it could no longer be contained. And one day our two boys went together into the fields……… and only one came back.  

And that was how it all started. And then it seemed that once it started, it could never stop. Hatred and jealousy and resentment – it’s like Pandora’s Box. We opened the lid, and all of those terrible things escaped into the world. And all down the ages it went on, men going off to war, into the fields to kill each other.  

Once there was a war worse than any other. So terrible, they called it the war to end all wars. It was the just the same as all the others – the men went off into Flanders fields, and started killing each other. The funny thing was, because of the red poppies, you never knew what was blood and what was a field of poppies, blowing in the wind. Finally, when they were so exhausted they had to stop, they said ‘Never again.’ And then twenty years later they were at it all over again, all over the world – even here, in this lovely peaceful place.  

It looks beautiful now, doesn’t it? But it wasn’t peaceful then. Look over there. Names on a list. Once they were as real as you and me. Husbands, fathers, sons, brothers, lovers. Flesh and blood. All dead – killed in the fields – or in the sea.  

Of course, it still goes on – Iraq, Afghanistan, Congo, Darfur, Somalia, Gaza…. Do we ever learn anything? Will it ever be different? Pandora’s Box – do you remember, there was one thing left after all the evil escaped. Only one thing to combat the evil with. Remember? Hope. Not much, is it? Like a fragile flower, so easily crushed. But it will come back again, time after time. 

It all started with two brothers. And then later there was another story about two brothers. It’s the same story – dutiful elder brother stayed at home, younger brother went off and had his adventures; younger brother came home, welcomed back with open arms by dad; and all the elder brother’s hidden resentment floods up to the surface. But this time the storyteller never finished the story. He left us in the middle of the story, where we are now. And that gives us hope. Hope that one day – maybe today – things could be different. In the United States, in South Africa, in Kenya, in Northern Ireland….. Instead of walking into the fields with our fellow-man to enslave or kill him,

We could walk in and enjoy the feast together.

 Amen.

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