Remembrance and what it means

I can never visualise what an acre is. When Tom asked us how big a hectare was it dawned on me for the first time that in all likelihood a hectare would be 100 metres by 100 metres and so it would be 10,000 square metres. Lo and behold that was the right answer. That’s an area I can visualise. My diary informs me that one hectare is 2.4 acres. But I still find that difficult to visualise. Walking through Sandford Park the other day I passed the notice advertising the lido – set in four acres.

Very roughly that’s two hectares – maybe a little less. 200 metres by 100 metres.

For nearly two years Eric Liddell was kept in a Japanese internment camp that was 200 metres by 150 metres. Just a little bigger than the lido. He was one of 1800 people confined in that tiny space. He died with a brain tumour shortly before the end of the war. [For more on Eric Liddell click here and for more on the Japanese Internment camp at Wiehsien click here]

How do you sustain yourself in the face of such horrors? How do you survive? Not only did he keep the young people entertained with sports, but he also brought people together for prayer and prepared notes that would people in their own prayer times. It was only in the wake of the release of Chariots of Fire that someone, Herbert S Long, tracked down the two remaining handwritten manuscripts containing those notes. They were published in 1985 … and at the time made an impression on me. I had grown up with the story of Eric Liddell long before the film was made as he was one of those missionaries in China our churches had supported through the LMS, now the Council for World Mission, CWM.

I was telling the story to a group on our training course, and one of the people from Mark Evans’ church in Belvedere and Erith said he had only just heard an interview with a couple of people who had also been in that internment camp speaking of the very big impression Eric Liddell had made and the immense help he had been to them.

I’ve gone back to my copy of the Disciplines of the Christian Life to reflect this Remembrance Sunday on what we can draw from those experiences of Eric Liddell in the face of very different circumstances maybe, but in the face of our war-torn world today, with all the uncertainties of the financial crisis, and personal problems closer to home.

One of the first things to leap out at you from this set of prayers is that it is shot through with love, a sense of the love that God has for us, and the love we can share with each other. Right at the very outset is a page of quotations of verses from the New Testament about love.

God is love (I John 4.8)

By this shall everyone know that you are my disciples, if you have love one for another (John 13:35)

Love is very patient, very kind,
Love knows neither envy nor jealousy,
Love is not forward or self-assertive,
Love is not boastful or conceited, gives itself no airs,
Love is never rude, never selfish, never irritated
Love never broods over wrongs.
Love thinketh no evil.
Love is never glad when others go wrong.
Love finds no pleasure in injustice but rejoices in the truth.
Love is always slow to expose; it knows how to be silent;
Love is always eager to believe the best about a person
Love is full of hope, full of patient endurance
Love never fails (I Corinthians 13 paraphrase)

In amongst all the readings he maps out for people to follow through the year is a month of readings on Paul’s letter to the Romans. My eye fell on the heading that he gave to the reading I have chosen for today from Romans 12.

Writing towards the end of that third missionary journey from Corinth to Rome Paul’s letter to the Christian church in Rome contains a distillation of his thinking about the Christian faith. It’s powerful stuff, closely argued. But for Paul theology is of no value unless it shapes the way we live our lives.

Coming towards the end of Romans we reach that moment when Paul moves from the theory to the practice – there’s that tell-tale linking word. Therefore.

In the light of all that has gone before … therefore, this is what we must do in the living of our lives.

For Eric Liddell in Romans 12 three things are all important in the living of our lives.

Surrender to God

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Offer your whole selves, everything you are in service to God – this is spiritual worship. It means being willing to stand up and be counted, to stand out and be different – Martin Luther King in a sermon on this text challenged us to be transformed nonconformists who were prepared to be transformed by the renewing our our minds. We need to be on the lookout for what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Eric Liddell valued daily prayer that begins in stillness, moves on to thanksgiving and then seeks to surrender the day into God’s hands, looking out for God’s guidance for all that is to be that day.

In Romans 12 surrender to God is followed by

Love to your brother and your sister

Love is at the heart of all we are and all we do as followers of Christ.

Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honour. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.

In his book Eric Liddell includes his creed. It’s my idea of what a creed should be. I love the great creeds of the church … but they all seem to me to miss out something crucial. They jump from Jesus born of the virgin Mary to suffered under Pontius Pilate. The creeds come from that period when the Roman powers that be under Constantine wanted to keep control of the church. So it was Constantine who got so many bishops together at the Council of Nicaea to produce the great Nicene Creed. Maybe he was uncomfortable with all that comes between the birth and the death of Christ in the Gospels. Eric Liddell builds that bit of Jesus into his creed …

I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Creator, infinitely holy and loving, who has a plan for the world, a plan for my life, and some daily work for me to do.

I believe iin Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God, as Example, Lord and Saviour.

I believe in the Holy Spirit who is able to guide my life so that I may know God’s will; and I am prepared to allow him to guide and control my life.

I believe in God’s law that I should love the Lord my God with all my heart, and with all my soul, and with all my mind, and with all my strength; and my neighbour as myself.

I believe it is God’s will that the whole world should be without any barriers of race, colour, class or anything else that breaks the spirit of fellowship.

He adds a definition of he means within that creed when he says I believe.

To believe means to believe with the mind and heart, to accept, and to act accordingly on that basis.

One of the moving things I find about that creedal statement is that it comes out of the experience of the horrors of war at their worst in that Japanese internment camp where the personal space Eric Liddell had measured six feet by three feet in a massively over-crowded dormitory. It is from inside the experience of the horror of war that a commitment to a very different way comes in the footsteps of Christ. Here is a vision from inside the war of the kind of peace that is to be built in the wake of war.

Surrender to God, love to your brother and to your sister.

Then we reach the third of Eric Liddell’s headings for Romans 12.

Kindness to your enemy

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’ No, ‘if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.’ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse them. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. If your enemies are hungry feed them; if they are thirsty give them something to drink. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Returning to that interview with other survivors of that prison camp, it was this that impressed one of those interviewees most. It did not simply impress him, but it went on to shape his life. At the time Steve Metcalfe was a teenager. Eric Liddell made an immense impression on him that was to transform his life after the war.

I just remember him as being a very happy man. He had a broad head, very broad shoulders. Very strong and robust, he would never talk about himself even though we would ask questions.

Because you all knew that he was an Olympic hero.

Oh yes we all knew about that but he wasn’t a jazzy man. He was a man of few words if anything. But the amazing thing about him as I got to know him was that he backed up all that he preached.

Steve helped Eric organise games for the children in the camp. He was a keen runner himself.

Steve Metcalfe goes on to describe how he used to run bare foot until Eric made him a pair of running shoes from make-shift glue and materials.

Eric Liddell also led bible classes at the camp. Steve Metcalfe doesn’t remember him as a great speaker but one moment did stick in his mind.

He read the verse, love your enemies do good to them that hate you. He said, I’ve started praying for the Japanese and he challenged us to do the same. And I did do that. It changed my attitude to them as being creatures of God and was what remained in my mind.

Eric developed a brain tumour, his health rapidly declined and he found comfort in hymns. And the company of Annie Buchan a Scottish missionary friend.

He just suddenly said, Annie, it’s complete surrender. And that was his last breath. He had been a man that had been surrendering to God all his life through. And I don’t believe that it cost him much to say complete surrender because he knew where he was going.

Be still my soul, the Lord is on your side,
Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain;
Leave to thy God to order and provide;
In every change he faithful will remain.
Be still, my soul; thy best, thy heavenly friend
Through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.

Steve Metcalfe: the funeral itself was absolutely packed. They chose me as one of the pall bearers. And we took the coffin. It was a freezing day. A cold wind blowing in from Siberia. We lowered the coffin down into the grave then read the Beatitudes I remember how absolutely shattered I was just walking home thinking here’s this world champion we buried him here in this prison camp. What’s life all about?

After Eric Liddell’s death Steve Metcalfe often thought about his advice to pray for the Japanese. Once the camp was liberated he found out more about Japan, and then spent 40 years sharing his Christian faith, working for peace. Eric Liddell passed on two things to him - a pair of running shoes and the baton of forgiveness .