Be Brave; Be Bold!
Rev. Dr. Bradley Broadhead,
Pastor, Oyen Evangelical Missionary Church
If you can think back to your school days, you may recall hearing about something called the Trojan War, fought between the Trojans and the Greeks and written down in verse by the Greek poet Homer. I bring this up because I want you to understand something about how people in the past thought about war. In Homer’s telling, the Greek hero Achilles is the most powerful warrior of all Greeks and Trojans alike. But for the first half of the poem he refuses to fight because of a dispute he has with a Greek king concerning a captured slave girl. However, when his best friend is killed he enters the fray, even though he knows through a prophecy that he will not survive the war if he decides to fight. He fights for glory; he fights for fame; he fights because he delights in displaying his power by killing others.
Let me set before you another example of an ancient warrior: Julius Caesar. You may have been forced to read Shakespeare’s play named after him in high school. Did you know that Caesar, to show how mighty he was, took his legions to conquer Gaul—present day France—and killed about a million of its people and enslaved about a million more? Were the Romans shocked and appalled at his murderous rampage and his oppression of the indigenous inhabitants of Gaul? Not exactly. They gave him a triumph in which he paraded through the streets of Rome with the captives and plunder he took in this campaign in his train.
Do you get the picture? Now let me quote to you from a work of fiction written by a British veteran of the First World War: “I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”[1] Which view of being a warrior do you prefer? What view of being a soldier do you think the men and women that we remember on this day would have taken?
Something changed between the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans and the founding of our nation. When we talk about our veterans and those who fell in the defense of our country, we don’t view them as great because they were conquerors who took from others what they were too weak to hold. No, we talk about their sacrifices and the freedoms that they restored to others and maintained for their own country. We honour their willingness to lay down their lives for others rather than winning glory and fame for the slaughter of their enemies.
Have you ever wondered why so many graves of the fallen are marked by crosses? In ancient Rome the cross was a symbol of horror and oppression. Stripping someone and nailing them to a cross was a horrible way of torturing them to death in the slowest and most shameful way imaginable. It was a way of terrorizing the conquered into submission. Everyone who saw the cross would cower in terror before the might of Rome. Today it means something quite different. Christians believe that the death of Jesus on a Roman cross nearly two thousand years ago was a sacrificial death that conquered the dark forces in the world and made it possible for people to be freed from the darkness in their own hearts and to be right with God. Whether you share this belief or not, the cross is no longer a symbol of terror, but of the ultimate sacrifice made in love for others.
Our nation was founded by and fought for people who were shaped by this belief. It is not self-evident that the strong should care for the weak rather than taking advantage of them. Not all cultures share the Judeo-Christian belief that every human being is of infinite value because they are created in the image of God. These are things that our forbearers believed were true, not on the basis of scientific evidence—science cannot give us reasons why human life is valuable—but on the ground that God had revealed these truths to them through his Word. Whether you are a Christian or not, Christian assumptions about the intrinsic value of human life, the idea of defending the weak and oppressed, and the idea of placing loving self-sacrifice above the pursuit of glory are your heritage as Canadians.
You and I enjoy the good things we do today because men and women lovingly made the sacrifices that were necessary to preserve them. We enjoy freedom of expression, freedom of speech, freedom in choosing our beliefs, freedom to choose our own leaders because our forbearers fought for these freedoms. They valued the well-being of others and of future generations more than their own lives. They had the courage to fight—not to take away from others what they were too weak to hold—but to defend what they loved at home and those being oppressed abroad. They acted not according to the lust for conquest and glory of Achilles or Julius Caesar, but according to the pattern of love and self-sacrifice modeled by Jesus Christ.
Unfortunately, their sacrifice cannot preserve these good things forever. In our world are people and nations who glory in the slaughter of their enemies and of taking what belongs to others by force. Russia continues its war of conquest against Ukraine; China threatens to conquer Taiwan. Not long ago, on Canadian streets we saw people burn a Canadian flag and heard people chant, “death to Canada, death to the United States, and death to Israel.”[2] Without question, we have enemies that wish us harm.
We can also be our own enemy. When we allow ourselves to get caught up in politics to the point where we let it poison our relationships with one another, we show that we value politics over people. When we lose our sense of identity as Canadians and instead decide to fight only for our own tribe—our own ethnic or social group, our own gender or minority status, our own religious or non-religious background, or what have you, we become suspicious and mistrustful of one another and our nation is weakened as a result. When we fail to exercise our freedom to speak the truth because we are afraid of what others might think or do, we betray what our forbearers fought and died for.
The time has come to ask ourselves if we will hold to the values that have been courageously fought for and handed down to us, whether we will choose a different path, or whether through cowardice or carelessness we let them slip away. I for one, believe that all human life—in whatever colour, in whatever shape—is valuable, that self-sacrifice is nobler than seeking my own glory, and that truth and freedom are worth fighting for. I believe that when people in our country have acted according to these beliefs, it has made our country a stronger and a better place. And where these beliefs have been denied or downplayed, our country has been the worse for it.
My foundation for these beliefs is my own faith; following Jesus means being willing to love and to sacrifice myself for others, as he did. You may not share my faith. If you don’t, can you find something in your own faith tradition, or lack thereof, that will enable you to value all human life, whatever it might look like? Can you find something that will make you care enough about truth and freedom that you are willing to give up something so that others can hold on to them? What is your foundation? What deep conviction can you draw upon when the chips are down and someone needs to step up? Is there a hill you are willing to die on, or are you willing to trade anything and everything for your own safety and comfort? This is a good day to ask such questions of ourselves.
If we cannot bring ourselves to give up anything to keep the values and freedoms passed on to us, if we seek our own comfort and prosperity above the good of the coming generation, then we will not be able to take up the quarrel against the foe—against enemies on the outside and the enemy within. When telling the truth means losing something, we will swallow a lie. When someone devalues the lives of a certain group of people, and calls for their destruction, we will not be able to resist. The Achilles and the Julius Caesars of the world will prevail. Instead of catching the torch thrown from the failing hands of those who have gone before, it will slip from ours, and we will have nothing, no hope to pass to the coming generation. And those who sacrificed for your sake and mine shall not sleep, though poppies grow in Flanders fields.
But, as one biblical author puts it, “Even though we speak like this, dear friends, we are convinced of better things in your case” (Heb 6:9). Let this not be just a day of Remembrance, but a call to action. True gratitude for what others have sacrificed for our sake should not result merely in a warm feeling or a fading memory, but a commitment to bravely and boldly uphold the values and freedoms that have been passed on to us and to carefully and deliberately pass them on to our children and our children’s children.
[1] Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, 698.
[2] https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/samidoun-doubles-down-says-death-to-canada-an-accurate-summation-of-its-goals