O God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal home;

O God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Be thou our guard while troubles last,
And our eternal home.

Blessed be God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit:

And blessed be his kingdom, now and forever. Amen

From Easter to Pentecost:

Allelulia. Christ is risen!

The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia

 In Lent and other penitential occasions:

Bless the Lord who forgives all our sins;

His mercy endures for ever.

The Lord be with you.

And also with you.

 Let us pray:

Almighty God, to whom all hearts be open, all desires known and from whom no secrets are hidden: cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your holy name, through Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Lord, have mercy.

Christ, have mercy.

Lord, have mercy.

Holy God, holy and mighty, holy and immortal, have mercy on us.

Almighty Father, whose will is to restore all things in your beloved Son, the King of all: govern the hearts and minds of those in authority, and bring the families of the nations, divided and torn apart by the ravages of sin, to be subject to his just and gentle rule; who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

O God, whose blessed Son came into the world that he might destroy the works of the devil and make us children of God and heirs of eternal life: Grant that, having this hope, we may purify ourselves as he is pure; that, when he comes again with power and great glory, we may be made like him in his eternal and glorious kingdom; where he lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

A Reading from the Book of Micah:

In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised up above the hills.  Peoples shall stream to it, and many nations shall come and say: ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.’  For out of Zion shall go forth instruction and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.  He shall judge between many peoples, and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away; they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more; but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid; for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken.  For all the peoples walk, each in the name of its god, but we will walk in the name of the Lord our God forever and ever.

This is the Word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

The Psalm is now said by the congregation

Psalm 46

God is our refuge and strength,
A very present help in trouble.
² Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change
And though the mountains slip into the heart of the sea;
³ Though its waters roar and foam,
Though the mountains quake at its swelling pride.

⁴ There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
The holy dwelling places of the Most High.
⁵ God is in the midst of her, she will not be moved;
God will help her when morning dawns.
⁶ The nations made an uproar, the kingdoms tottered;
He raised His voice, the earth melted.
⁷ The Lord of hosts is with us;
The God of Jacob is our stronghold.

⁸ Come, behold the works of the Lord,
^[i]Who has wrought desolations in the earth.
⁹ He makes wars to cease to the end of the earth;
He breaks the bow and cuts the spear in two;
He burns the chariots with fire.
¹⁰ Cease striving and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”
¹¹ The Lord of hosts is with us;
The God of Jacob is our stronghold.

A Reading from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans:

What then are we to say about these things?  If God is for us, who is against us?  He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?  Who will bring any charge against God’s elect?  It is God who justifies.  Who is to condemn?  It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us.  Who will separate us from the love of Christ?  Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?  As it is written, ‘For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.’  No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

This is the Word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

All stand for the Gospel reading.

The Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to John:

Glory to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.  If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.  I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.  ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.  No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.  You are my friends if you do what I command you.  I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.  You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.  I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

This is the Gospel of the Lord.

Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

The 11^th hour of the 11th day of the 11^th month – thus it was that the 1^st. World War, or the ‘Great’ War as it came to be known, drew to an end in 1918.  A ‘war to end all wars’, as it was hailed to be – the first ‘mechanised’ war, with slaughter on a scale previously wholly unimagined, finally was over.

This was a particularly significant moment back in 2018, being the centenary of the ending of the 1^st World War.  It is particularly important too that we are mindful of this today, falling as it does 75 years from the end of World War 2.  We had been hoping and indeed planning to meet here earlier in the year to celebrate VE Day, but alas, the pandemic put pay to that, and also to our Plan B for VJ Day, which in fact might well have had more resonance for us here in South-East Asia.  Since the 2^nd World War ended in 1945, due largely to the influence of organisations such as the United Nations, NATO (The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation), and what has subsequently evolved into the EU (The European Union), warfare on this scale has, thank God, been avoided, although there have been what must now run into hundreds of smaller-scale conflicts and attempted genocides, which have seen thousands upon thousands of people killed and lives wasted, particularly amongst the young, on whom the future of our civilisation entirely depends.

War, we might well feel, to be a sin, not only against God, but also against our neighbour.  Looking back to 1939 though, on the part of the Allies, there was very much the feeling that this was a ‘just’ war, to free us from the tyranny of Adolf Hitler, the Nazi jack-boot and the concentration camp.  Thus, just like the Crusades in the Middle Ages,  this became, in effect, a ‘holy’ war in which we were justified ‘by faith’ – terrible though it unquestionably was, to have sat quietly by and done nothing in the face of such overwhelming evil would have been infinitely worse.  As we heard in our 2^nd reading, ‘If God is for us, then who can be against us’?

Every year then since 1918, the Western World, in particular, has come to a halt at the 11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month to remember before God with thanksgiving the sacrifice made by so many in order that future generations might be able to live in peace, security and freedom.  A solemn silence is kept for two minutes, and heads are bowed whilst we remember the sacrifice of those who ‘gave their tomorrow so that we might have our today’.   Jesus told us in today’s gospel that to lay down one’s life for one’s friends is the ultimate act of supreme love, and it is of course in that word ‘love’ that the whole of Our Lord’s teaching is encapsulated.

For those of us who have lived through some, or any part of such events, and quite possibly lost members of our own families in the terrible tragedy of war, there is an almost instinctive desire to keep these memories alive.  Anti-Semitism, which was such a significant factor in World War 2 is, alas, still only too alive and well today.  In both Europe and the United States, there are attacks against Jewish people as a regular occurrence.  Recently, we have seen racism rear its ugly head in another form, as highlighted by the ‘Black Lives’ Matter’ campaign.  Only this past week, we have witnessed atrocities in both Nice and Vienna.  People are becoming increasingly polarised in their views, and intolerant of one another to a degree which has not been seen for many years.  Donald Trump, whatever virtues he might be perceived to have, has been a very divisive influence in America, whilst the whole ‘Brexit’ situation in the United Kingdom has turned even families against one another.  Immigrants are seen now very much as a problem, and there are mounting pressures both in Europe and in America to stem the tide, with Trump even having started to build a wall to keep them out!

Islamic militants have been increasingly to the fore in recent years, and so now there is growing resentment of members of the Islamic faith which threatens to explode at any moment.  As I have said several times in the past, Jews, Muslims and Christians are all ‘people of the book’, in other words, what we know as the Old Testament, and yet there has been enmity between these groups for thousands of years, and until this can somehow be resolved, the situation in the Middle East will continue to be a veritable powder-keg.

Now, you might well be wondering, just why it is that I’m seemingly going off at a tangent from where we started?  Quite simply, it is because the conditions prevalent in the Europe of the 1930s are ominously rearing their ugly heads anew, and what happened then could all too easily be repeated now.  It is terribly important that the rising generation, especially all those who have never been any closer to a war than the other side of a television screen, are not only made aware of the sacrifices of their forebears, but then kept ever mindful of them, in the faint hope that conflicts of this nature can be avoided in the future.  Rolling 24/7 news has much for which to answer, and we are now so much more aware of what is going on, thousands of miles away on the other side of the globe, than ever we were previously, but from my own perspective the world has never looked to be as dangerous a place as it now is in 2020, the Covid pandemic notwithstanding.  The peace of God, for which we pray, seems to be increasingly endangered, as humankind hurtles with ever-growing velocity down the slope which leads to destruction, like the Gadarine swine in the New Testament, or the vehicle with brake failure in our own day.

The prophet Micah told us in our first reading: “He, the Lord, shall judge between many peoples, and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away; they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more; but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid; for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken.”

Then again, in Psalm 46, we read: “He makes war cease to the end of the earth; he breaks the bow and cuts the spear in two.   He burns the chariots with fire.”  War is not then in any way part of God’s divine plan.  Whether it be as individuals or as nations, whenever we have to resort to violence, then both reason and argument have failed. 

So we live in hope, and so we remember.  Unfortunately, our Act of Remembrance here in Pattaya can’t synchronise either with mainland Europe or the United Kingdom, which in Thai time would be either 1700 or 1800 respectively, but hopefully, it will be no less meaningful for that.  We shall use our intercessions, which will not follow their usual form, as both an introduction to, and also a preparation for this.  Let it be the prayer of each and every one of us, that the persecution of minorities, and all whose ways and traditions are different from our own, may not be allowed to take an ever-increasing hold, as happened so tragically in the period leading up to 1939.  It would be terrible if the supreme sacrifice, made by so many on our behalf, were to prove ultimately to have been in vain – from any such sacrilege, Good Lord, deliver us.  Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 

Amen.

Let us pray for the world and for the Church:

Prayers of intercession are now said and at the end of each prayer the priest says:

Lord in your mercy,

Hear our prayer.

or

Lord hear us,

Lord graciously hear us

At the conclusion of the prayers the priest says:

Almighty God, who has promised to hear our prayers.

Grant that what we have asked in faith we may by your grace receive, through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

All who are able, are requested to stand for the Act of Remembrance.

After the conclusion of the 2-minute silence, the priest will say:

They shall not grow old, as we who are left grow old.

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun, and in the morning,

We will remember them

We will remember them.

As part of this Remembrance Sunday, Members of the British Legion (and others) are invited now to lay their wreaths.

THE PEACE:

The congregation stands.

We are the Body of Christ.

His Spirit is with us.

The peace of the Lord be always with you.

And also with you.

Please greet each other with a sign of peace using a traditional Thai ‘Wai’.

Judge eternal, throned in splendour,
Lord of lords and King of kings,
With thy living fire of judgement
Purge this realm of bitter things:
Solace all its wide dominion
With the healing of thy wings.

Crown, O God, thine own endeavour;
Cleave our darkness with thy sword;
Feed the faithless and the hungry
With the riches of thy word:
Cleanse the body of this nation
Through the glory of the Lord.

THE OFFERTORY

Blessed are you, God of all creation.  Through your goodness we have these gifts to share. Accept and use our offerings for your glory and the service of your kingdom.

Blessed be God forever.

Let us pray

We do not presume to come to your table, merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in your manifold and great mercies.  We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table, but you are the same Lord whose nature is always to have mercy. Grant us, therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of your dear son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that we may evermore dwell in him and he in us.  Amen.