Bible reading: selected from Jeremiah 6.

The Second World War was very much a living memory when I was growing up. There were derelict air-raid shelters in the local parkand, bombsites which had yet to be developed. Films such as “The Dam Busters”, “The Wooden Horse” and (a bit later) “633 Squadron“ and “The Guns of Navarone” filled the cinemas. My comics featured stories of plucky Brits fighting dastardly Germans who called their enemies “Schweinhund”. Boys enjoyed assembling (and then destroying) Airfix kits of Spitfires and Messerschmitts. War was made to seem exciting, heroic and even rather fun; perhaps that was a way of helping grown-ups to work their way through the trauma that so many had suffered.

This was an optimistic time, the start of a “new Elizabethan Age”, marked by technological advances which, we were told, would solve many of the world’s problems. The Space Age, too, was just around the corner: how long would it be before Dan Dare, pilot of the future, became a reality? Above all, to a child, this seemed to be a time of peace – but that was a harsh illusion. For although I was too young to know of the Korean War and the conflict in Palestine surrounding the birth of Israel, too young to be aware of the Suez crisis and the Mau Mau terror in Kenya, British forces were active (and dying) in places as far-flung as Aden, Malaya and Cyprus; while wars of independence (or for political superiority) were breaking out in Africa, possibly the bloodiest being in the former Belgian Congo.

But we, safely ensconced at home, didn’t have a television. And even if we had, filmed reports in that pre-satellite era took days rather than seconds to reach Britain. Radio news tended to be dispassionately factual; newspaper articles were beyond my reading ability. All in all, information was far less plentiful and immediate than it is today, which meant that I – and I think many adults as well – was lulled into a false sense of “You’ve never had it so good” security. To us, war seemed to be a fact of history rather than of the present. And we pushed to the back of our minds the terrifying thought that any future conflict would rapidly escalate to nuclear annihilation.

So Remembrance Sunday (which, in my childhood, seemed to be the only day for commemorations) was exactly what it claimed to be: a time for remembering. We gathered around the War Memorial, the Scouts and Guides in their uniforms; we sung traditional sombre hymns (although I can’t recollect a sermon or homily), we thought about “the fallen” who had “made the ultimate sacrifice” (terms which I very much dislike), we heard the Last Post sounded and dispersed in silence. The emphasis was very much on British service personnel who had died in the two worldwide conflicts; civilians such as merchant seamen or the victims of bombing weren’t mentioned. Also ignored were those from the Caribbean or what we called “the colonies”, and those killed in places such as Korea: – I never noticed the omissions.

Things are very different this morning. We have minute-by-minute updates on conflicts around the world. Brave foreign correspondents broadcast direct to us from Gaza or the Ukraine. We see shattered buildings, we hear the distressed cries of the injured and bereaved, we can even watch video footage of a bomb destroying an apartment block or gunfire ‘taking out’ a sniper. (I can’t cope with this footage and shut my eyes when it is shown: I don’t want to see people dying while I’m eating my dinner). Yes, we may have peace in our own land; but we daren’t be like those people of Jeremiah’s day who said “Peace, peace” when it was manifestly not the case. Yet, on today of all days, peace is something for which we yearn, perhaps without much hope.

What I want to do for the next few minutes is explore what Jeremiah would have understood by that word “peace”. As we do so, we need to remember that he was living in a time of crisis, six or so centuries before Jesus, when the very existence of his country was in doubt. Much of its land had already been lost to foreign powers; now the remaining part of Judah, including Jerusalem itself, was under attack by the mighty Babylonians. While we today would see this as nothing more than political empire-building, Jeremiah and his fellow- prophets were convinced that the situation had a spiritual dimension: Israel, especially its leaders, was corrupt to the core, had abandoned God, and was now suffering the consequences with Nebuchadnezzar, a pagan king, unwittingly being used as God’s tool of judgement. Yet some were still crying, “It’s OK, war won’t happen, peace will prevail”. They were wrong; just as I was wrong last year when I predicted that Russia would show off its power but then retreat without actually invading Ukraine. For Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians in 586BC.

So what does that word “peace” – or “shalom” in Hebrew – actually mean? It has been called a “multi-coloured word” and has a much richer meaning than our English equivalent, signifying far more than a cease-fire where two sides stop fighting but are ready to spring back into action at the slightest provocation. For the root meaning of “shalom” is “wholeness” or “completeness” and it can be applied not just to politics (such as the absence of war) or social life (the absence of quarrel and strife) but also to one’s personal sense of tranquillity and security. One writer says that “Shalom is a blessing, a manifestation of divine grace”. Its use isn’t restricted to international, intergroup or interpersonal relations. It implies a state of prosperity or blessed harmony, not just physical but also spiritual.

There is more. Ancient Hebrew sages regarded Shalom as the highest of all values, except perhaps justice. They also said that Shalom was the ultimate purpose of the entire Torah, God’s law: a Jewish commentary, written in around 600-800AD, states: “All that is written in the Torah was written for the sake of peace”. And we can go further still: Shalom is one of the names of the Holy One, the Messiah – we all know that passage in Isaiah where he is called “The Prince of Peace”. All this means that Jesus’ Jewish listeners must have been both pu shocked and puzzled when they heard him say, “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword of division”. That’s a passage we still struggle with today.

What I’ve said might have sounded a bit too theological or abstract – although I hope it hasn’t! But I’m now going to mention one final aspect of “Shalom” which I think is extremely relevant to today, a a time when we may be feeling so disappointed by the lack of peace in our world. It’s this: Shalom is intrinsically linked with the future and salvation, not just of individual people but of the whole world. Despite the terrible events, the injustice, anger, killing and destruction which so often tarnish human life, the entire Bible holds out the promise that one day things will be different, that those bad things will pass away and be replaced by a kingdom in which, to quote Isaiah, “The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat and a little child will lead them. The infant will play near the cobra’s den and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest. They will neither harm nor destroy on my holy mountain, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea”. That beautiful picture perfectly illustrates the hope of Shalom, a hope which Isaiah, Jeremiah and their colleagues had to keep alive in the darkest of days, a hope which we must cling to and proclaim today.

In a speech of September 1919, American President Woodrow Wilson spoke of his hopes for the League of Nations, shortly to be founded in response to “the war to end all wars”. He said, “The American people always extend their hand to the truth of justice and of liberty and of peace. We have accepted that truth and we are going to be led by it; it is going to lead us, and through us the world, out into pastures of quietness and peace such as the world never dreamed of before”. Those hopes weren’t realised as, of course, the world was back at war just twenty years later. Yet even as battle raged in 1941 America and Britain signed the Atlantic Charter, the forerunner of the United Nations charter, which declared their hope of “seeing established a peace which will afford to all nations the means of dwelling in safety within their boundaries, and which will afford assurance that all people in all lands may live out their lives in freedom”. Surely both these statements are nothing less than aspirations of Shalom.

Sadly, as we know too well, those noble hopes have been repeatedly dashed. Human lust for power, national self-interest, disputes over mineral rights and border, and a preference for settling disputes by violence rather than calm negotiation mean that, today, our world is still blighted by conflict, inequality, suffering and pain. The spirit of hope, freedom and global optimism which existed after the two world wars seems to evaporated – although we might wonder what state the world might be in without the United Nations organisation and its various agencies; I shudder to think!).

At the start of this message I reflected on two things from my childhood: the false illusion of peace when, in fact, much of the world was once again at war, and the way in which Remembrance, admittedly with good reason, largely focussed on the past. Today, six decades later, things are different. We cannot pretend that warfare is something that happened in history, nor that it is remote from us. Modern technology brings war into our homes “as it happens”, we can’t ignore it nor say that it has nothing to do with us. And, even though the images we see are horrific, perhaps that’s good as they may make us shout in rage, weep in grief, pray desperately, and crave peace all the more.

But what about Remembrance? Shouldn’t we be looking forwards as well as (or even instead of!) backwards? Shouldn’t we be doing anything we can to bring about Shalom peace? Shouldn’t we be saying, “Look! Jesus offers us a positive way forward, a way of harmony and peace”? Shouldn’t we be telling the world, “Yes, things are bad. But they won’t last for ever. For one day – we don’t know when – this old world will end and God will establish his perfect kingdom in his new creation”. Watching the news and reading the newspapers only give us grounds for pessimism. But Christians should be optimistic people who still believe and pray and hope for and expect God’s “shalom” to dawn.