Sermon for Remembrance Sunday 2025
Preached by the Revd Dr Trevor Jamison at
Saint Columba’s United Reformed Church, North Shields, 9 November 2025
Watch the whole service on YouTube
‘For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him.’ (10:12)
In your mind, how do you divide up world and the people within it? We all do that, and sometimes it’s necessary that we do: if you didn’t make a distinction between land and sea, for example, and then just go for a walk, you could get into all sorts of trouble.
What about people? We do the same sort of thing. The Apostle Paul, a Jew who lived in the ancient Mediterranean world of two thousand years ago, talked in terms of men and women, slave and free, and (as in today’s reading) Jew and Greek, or Jew and Gentile. Most gentiles in his era, though, while agreeing with him that the world was divided up between men and women, slave and free, would not have given the existence of Jews a moment’s thought.
So what about us? How do we make distinctions about the people that we encounter or are aware of this world? Well, we make distinctions in all sorts of ways: nationality and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, religious and political affiliations, younger or older, richer or poorer, respectable or not, from around here or from elsewhere.
These distinctions that we make help us to navigate through life, but, as the focus of today’s Remembrance Sunday service reminds us, making distinctions about peoples can also have very negative outcomes. The First World War was a war between nations; where you came from, what nationality you claimed affected which side you chose in the conflict. That same thing was true regarding World War II, but here in Europe with an horrendous ethnic-religious twist, which Saint Paul would have recognised; making a murderous distinction between Jew and Gentile.
And today we see this drawing of distinctions upon ethnic, nationalist and religious lines underpinning so many conflicts around the world, with all sorts of people suffering as a result. For example there are Russians at war with Ukrainians; Israelis in conflict with Palestinians and adjacent nations; Arabic-speaking, Muslims in the Republic of Sudan versus South Sudan, with its mixture of cultures, religions and ethnic groups.
But it’s not the differences which lead to conflict; it’s how we respond to differences that does that. Saint Paul writes that ‘there is no difference between Jew and Greek’ that is, between Jew and Gentile, whilst at the same time believing that the world could be divided up between Jew and Gentile! There were obvious differences between the two. What mattered, though, was whether God chose to respond differently to the two groups; to make distinctions between the two.
And here’s the good news – God did not, and God does not make a distinction between the two: ‘the same Lord is the Lord of all,’ writes Paul, ‘and is generous to all who call on him.’ Just imagine that: Jew or Gentile, British or German, Russian or Ukrainian, Palestinian or Israeli, Arabic or African – the same Lord God is the God of all, and ever-ready to be generous to all. It’s not to say that there are no differences between people and peoples. It’s to say that God will not make those differences a basis for limiting God’s generosity; will not treat them differently.
What then does such divine generosity say to Christians on Remembrance Sunday? Well, first, it says that today is a day for remembering with thanksgiving and sadness, but not with any sense of nationalist triumphalism. We are thankful that we have survived major wars with much of what is good about our nation still intact; and we’re sad about the suffering and the deaths that were entailed in that. Yet we can’t get too triumphalist about it because God makes no distinction in God’s readiness to be generous to those who were on the other side.
Then, second, God’s determination not to make distinctions between peoples in being generous to all, tells us that we must not seize upon perceived differences to others as a reason for, or an excuse to be in conflict with them, or even to lack generosity towards them. On a day-to-day level, never mind at the level of high politics, this is what’s true concerning nationality and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, religious and political affiliations, youth or old age, affluence or poverty, respectability or the lack of it; whether they – whoever “they” are – are from around here or from somewhere else entirely. Difference should not affect generosity to others.
So, today, let’s give thanks for the lives of those who died, who by doing so ensured freedoms that we enjoy. Let’s remember, though, that God is equally ready to be generous to those who are different from us, and generous to those with whom we differ, even to the point of conflict: ‘For [as far as God’s concerned] there is no distinction between Jew and Greek [British or German, Russian or Ukrainian, Palestinian or Israeli, Arabic or African, or whoever else]; the same Lord is Lord of all [of us] and is generous to all who call on him,’ whoever we might be.
And so let us pray …
Prayer
O God we thank you that you are as generous to us as you are to others.
Inspire us, we pray, by your generosity to us, to be equally generous to others, whoever they are; whether we see them as the same as us, or different from ourselves.
Amen.