Remembrance Sunday Service 2020

We Remember Because We Should Remember

Remembrance Sunday is one of those occasions that catches you differently depending on where you are in life. For some, it is a formal observance — two minutes of silence, a poppy on a lapel, a nod to history. For others, it is deeply personal. Matt Edmundson discovered just how personal it could be only weeks before this service, when his father sent him a photograph he had never seen before.

It was a picture of his great-grandfather, Wilfred Edmundson, a driver in the Royal Field Artillery who was killed just before the end of the First World War in 1918. His grave is in Jubbulpore, India. A kind stranger had recently managed to photograph it.

"It's amazing to me that I only really found this out a few weeks ago," Matt said during the service. "This is my own family. And there are so many untold stories, even in our own families, of bravery and sacrifice."

Why a Poppy?

The service opened with a video from Phil Watson, filmed at Toxteth Cemetery in Liverpool, where a war memorial lists roughly eighty names — eighty families who lost someone in the Great War.

Phil was direct about why remembrance matters: "You might have all sorts of opinions on just war, right war, wrong war, the colour of the poppy that we should wear or not wear. But to me, we should just remember. Because we should remember. We should remember as a sign of respect."

Matt then traced the origin of the poppy back to the battlefields of Flanders. During the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915, a young Canadian artillery officer named Lieutenant Alexis Helmer was killed. His friend, Major John McCrae — a military doctor serving in the same unit — was asked to conduct the burial because the chaplain had been called away.

It is believed that later that evening, McCrae began drafting the poem that would become one of the most recognised pieces of war literature in the world: In Flanders Fields.

Sally Birch read the poem during the service: "In Flanders fields the poppies blow, between the crosses, row on row, that mark our place; and in the sky the larks, still bravely singing, fly, scarce heard amid the guns below."

The final stanza carries a charge that has lost none of its weight: "To you from failing hands we throw the torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die, we shall not sleep, though poppies grow in Flanders fields."

Nuclear Giants and Ethical Infants

Matt quoted Colonel David Hayes's address about the armed forces, which spoke of being "humbled by those loyal young people who possess a generosity of spirit, of courage and endurance, and of light-hearted gallantry — those qualities that are the heart of Christian discipleship."

Then came a quote that stopped the service in its tracks: "The intent to destroy through maiming and killing will prevail. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about living. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the sermon on the mount."

Matt sat with that for a moment. "The Bible never glosses over human suffering and loss that is inevitable from war. It doesn't talk about the triumph of the resurrection without first describing the agony of the crucifixion."

War, he suggested, is an inevitability of the human condition. Sometimes it is fought with weapons. Sometimes with pen and paper and greed. But within the Christian story, there is a thread of hope — the conviction that death and suffering do not have the final word. "Central to the Christian faith is a truth that Jesus came as God to earth to rescue mankind. He took upon himself all of our evil, all of our hatred, all of our violence, all of our shame and our guilt and our greed and our selfishness... and he died a violent and painful death as a result. But he didn't stay in the grave."

The Letter You Would Leave Behind

The photograph of his great-grandfather set something in motion for Matt. It got him thinking about legacy — not in the financial sense, but in the way that truly matters.

He referenced Proverbs 13:22: "Good people leave an inheritance to their grandchildren." And then he pointed out what Remembrance Sunday teaches about inheritance: "We don't think about how much money people left, do we? We think about their lives and the way they lived."

So he asked himself: if he could write a letter that his children would read after he was gone, what would it say?

What followed was one of the most personal moments in any Crowd Church service. Matt shared what he would put in that letter, unscripted and unhurried.

"To my boys, I'd tell them to be men. God men. Men that love their wives and their kids. Because I think the world needs fathers. It needs husbands more than it needs most things."

"To my daughter, I'd say don't ever feel like you're not good enough. You don't ever have to compare yourself to anyone. Enjoy being you. And find a man that will love you as Christ loved the church. That is the standard."

He would tell all his children to be good stewards of their bodies, their time, their talents, and their treasure. To laugh as often as possible, especially at themselves. To ask for forgiveness often. To make memories, even small ones. To give to God first and to trust him even in the storms. To love God. To take risks. To learn to handle failure well. To invest heavily in other people and encourage them at every opportunity. To forgive. And to "fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds' worth of distance run."

He would end by telling them how proud he was and how much he had loved every minute of being their dad.

The Glaring Question

But then came the harder part. As Matt started writing those ideas down, a question confronted him that he could not avoid: "Am I living the legacy that I want to leave?"

"Will my kids actually read that letter and go, 'I saw my dad do every one of these things'? Do my kids see me being a God man? Do they see me investing in them? Do they feel like I love them? Does my daughter see a man love his wife as Christ loved the church? Do they see me trusting him even in the storms?"

He paused. "Sometimes I just have to say ouch to some of these things."

The gap between what we say matters and how we actually live is the real measure of legacy. Remembrance Sunday honours people who took action — who did not just talk about courage but lived it, often at the ultimate cost. And that standard, Matt suggested, applies to the rest of us in the ordinary moments of life.

Holding the Torch High

The service included a video of Bernard, a member of Frontline Church and a veteran who had made it home from the battlefield. Bernard had since passed away, but his prayer — recorded five years earlier — was played as an introduction to the two-minute silence.

"Thank you, Lord, for those who gave their lives and did not come back. We thank you, our Father, for we think at this time of the parents whose sons and daughters never came back."

After the silence, Matt returned with a reflection that brought the threads together. The poem says "to you from failing hands we throw the torch; be yours to hold it high." He felt the weight of that charge personally.

"I have a duty, I have a sense of responsibility, to take what they did and to hold that torch high as they've passed it on to me with their failing hands."

Remembrance, in this framing, is not just about looking backward. It is about living forward — carrying the values of courage, sacrifice, and faithfulness into the everyday decisions that shape a legacy.

The Question That Remains

Matt ended with an invitation that was as much for himself as for anyone watching. What would you put in your letter to the next generation? What would you want to be known for? And — here is the part that stings — are you living it right now?

"If it's what I do and how I live that builds my legacy, and it's what I do that determines how I would be remembered — that's an important thing to remember, isn't it?"

What would your letter say? And would the people closest to you recognise the person described in it?