Micah 4:1-5 and Matthew 5:1-10
On the night before Palm Sunday, 29 March 1942, 234 Wellington and Stirling bombers set off to attack the northern German city of Lübeck. That clear night was the first time a German city as a whole was being targeted, for Lübeck was an experimental raid, carried out to assess both the damage that could be caused to a medieval city (with the resulting deterioration in enemy morale), and the losses that would be borne by those who carried out the raid.
The results, on both fronts, were clear. The 400 tons of explosives dropped in those nighttime hours created a firestorm that destroyed much of the old town, leaving over 300 dead, 800 injured and 15,000 homeless. Three of the ancient churches, including the 800 year-old cathedral, were gutted.
As to those who carried out the attack, twelve of the RAF crews never came back. Around 55 men lost their lives that night, including Sergeants Woodhouse, Jones, Hunt, Hartley and O’Leary from a Wellington bomber from 115 Squadron RAF. Five individuals among the many whom we recall and honour on this Remembrance Sunday.
Four Sundays ago I stood up to preach in Lübeck Cathedral, in a pulpit which like much of the Cathedral had been restored only some decades after the damage sustained in March 1942. Earlier on I had visited the Marienkirche, St Mary’s Church, where two bells, partly-melted by the fire’s heat, lay exactly where they fell to the brick-tiled floor over eight decades ago. By them is a solitary candle, a cross of nails gifted by Coventry Cathedral, itself destroyed in a German bombing attack, and a prayer for peace.
Durham is prayed for every Sunday in Lübeck Cathedral. The community will be praying for us today. The relationship between our two historic centres of prayer and worship goes back to the 1990s and is rooted in a belief that, whatever the sources of division, the reconciling love of Christ, poured out on the cross, is enough to bring former enemies together.
Remembrance Sunday, here in Durham and throughout the UK, has as its right and proper focus the honouring of those who lost their lives fighting for this country, to secure the peace we enjoy today. Their sacrifice must never be forgotten and our two minutes silence will never lose its power.
We are also invited, alongside this act of remembrance, to take two further steps.
First, we are invited to recall afresh the wider cost of war. It was seen that Palm Sunday night in Lübeck. It was seen in the weeks to come when four young Christian ministers from that city – three Catholic priests and a Lutheran pastor – were rounded up and executed for putting allegiance to Christ above support of the Nazi regime; they spoke out against the authorities and paid the ultimate sacrifice. And it is seen in conflicts around the world today, in Ukraine, in Gaza and Israel, in Sudan, where those fighting and those just trying to live experience the horrors of loss and grief. War often brings stories of great bravery and sacrifice. But war always brings stories also of great loss.
Second, we are invited to reflect on what we can do to work for peace. ‘Give peace in our time’ we pray every night here in Durham Cathedral, and we heard Jesus say that ‘blessed are the peacemakers’. There will be different ways we can work for peace. Some will serve in armed forces, both regular and reserve, to keep the peace in a world where bellicose leaders seem to flourish. Others will speak truth to power and campaign for the justice of which the prophet Micah wrote. Others will work to bring peace in local communities where there is mistrust and even hatred. Whatever faith or belief is held, all are in our prayers.
As a Christian, I remember what I felt that weekend in Lübeck, that the reconciling blood of Christ is thicker than the waters of hatred and war. The half-melted bells and the Coventry cross of nails invited me to recall that Jesus went through a traumatic ordeal of his own, a Roman execution to bring the world not only peace with God but also peace with one another. And so the lighted candle invited me to pray afresh for peace, confident that the peace God offers will never ever fade.
As we recall those who never came back, we are invited to consider faith and hope in the one who did, who rose from the dead, the Lord of love, Jesus Christ, who calls all, in Lübeck, in Durham and throughout the world, to find lasting peace in him. Amen.