St. Paul’s
United Church Sunday, November 8, 2009
The
Wisdom of Widows –Rev. Cathy
Russell
Remembrance Sunday
1 Kings 17:8-24
Mark 12:38-44
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
December
14, 1941. A convoy of supply ships sets
sail from Gibraltar off the coast of Spain, for Great Britain. Among those escorting the convoy is Her Majesty’s
Ship Audacity, a small escort carrier.
German U boats become aware of the
convoy a day or two after it launches, and begins stalking the ships. A total of five u-boats join the hunt,
although one is sunk on Dec 17. On the evening
of Dec 21, the Audacity draws off,
faking an attack in order to draw the U boats away from the convoy. Unfortunately, the British believe that the
attack is real and send snowflake flares blazing up into the dark sky. The Audacity
is suddenly illuminated and revealed to be alone. Realising their mistake, other British ships race
to her aid, but they will be too late.
At 10:10 pm, a torpedo from U-boat 751 hits the Audacity’s engine room, knocking out her steering, and causing
water to come flooding into the ship.
Two more torpedoes from the u-boat cause an explosion of aviation fuel,
blowing off the ship’s bow. The Audacity sinks in 10 minutes, taking her
eight aircraft with her. Although some
of the crew are rescued, 73 men lose their lives. Among them is my paternal grandfather Petty
Officer James Cameron Russell.
Surviving
James is his wife Elsie Chambers and their two boys, Morris who is two and a
half, and Mervyn, my father, who is just 17 months. Both
of James Russell’s sons will grow up to have no living memory of their
father. Although she hears over the BBC
that the Audacity has been sunk,
Elsie’s first warning that Jim is not among the survivors comes from her best
friend, who has a dream in which she sees, plain as day, Jim’s sailor’s cap
floating on the surface of the sea. The
official notice, when it does come says simply “Missing presumed dead”. Nothing of Jim is ever recovered.
We
Honour the Sacrifice of our War Dead
My
grandfather like thousands of others gave his life, willingly, for King and
country, for freedom from the fascist forces that had swept across Europe and
threatened to conquer Great Britain. He
is among those we pause to remember and honour at this time each year, even as
the ranks of those who were lucky enough to survive his war grows ever frailer
and fewer. For the last six years, we
have been reminded each week of the sacrifice of our Canadian soldiers as their
bodies are repatriated from Afghanistan.
Whatever we think of war in general or any war in particular, most of us
feel a duty to honour this tremendous sacrifice, made willingly, and
courageously, out of a sense of duty and a desire to serve a higher purpose. The media, our government, our veterans all
work hard to ensure that we never take for granted those who died these
sacrificial deaths. We wear the poppy,
we lay wreaths at monuments in virtually every town across this enormous
country, we stand on overpasses waving flags and saluting when the bodies of
our fallen men and women come home.
We
Fail to Honour the Sacrifice of the Survivors
But
what about the sacrifices of those the dead leave behind- those like my grandmother, who, despite their own
shattering loss and grief, have had to carry on with the task of living, of
providing for and raising families without the support of their spouses? After
Jim’s death, Elsie went back out to work, cleaning houses on her hands and
knees to support the three of them. Bombing
raids on the south coast of England destroyed two of their wartime homes. If they hadn’t been visiting with family on
the second occasion, they would all have been killed by the blast that reduced
their house to rubble, and I would not be here today. Money was very tight, and so many things
including meat, sugar, tea, butter and cheese were rationed. The daily struggle to survive was regularly followed
by the nightmare of bombing raids in the dark.
But they got through it, thanks in part to luck, and support from
family, but mostly thanks to Elsie who, despite her diminutive size, proved to
be a tower of strength for the sake of her children.
Petty
Officer James Russell’s sacrifice ended Dec 21, 1941, the day he was lost at sea. On that same day, Elsie’s life of sacrifice truly began. Yet our awareness and appreciation for women
like her, our appreciation of their sacrifice, their sense of duty, their
courage and their selflessness is so low by comparison. Our attention is so focused on the smart
uniforms, the gleaming guns, the awesome planes, ships and LAVs, that we just
don’t see the widows and orphans left in their wake- they are, as it were, off
our radar.
Widows
Have Always Been Partly Invisible
Those
who recorded the Jewish law thousands of years ago knew that widows could
easily become invisible. Time and again,
in books like Deuteronomy and Isaiah, Israel is reminded of God’s command to
provide for, include, and do right by widows, orphans and the resident aliens
among them- all those who lived at the margins of their society. And we
know that we only need reminders for those things which we are likely to
forget.
Certainly
the widow of Zarephath has been forgotten.
So desperate is her circumstance that she is about to prepare the last
remaining food in her house for herself and her son, fully expecting that death
is just around the corner. How did she
reach that place- why did things get so bad?
Well, she was off the radar, no one saw her, no one appreciated her
courageous struggle to keep herself and her boy alive, no one acted on God’s
commands to care for her as a vulnerable person. It
gets worse in our gospel reading in which Jesus accuses, the scribes, the
religious elite of Israel, of not only failing to follow God’s commands to care
for widows, but of actually scheming to get their hands on their houses! That is an explosive accusation of religious
hypocrisy and injustice, against a powerful class of people used to being
treated with respect and deference by all.
But Jesus is not the least afraid to make it, because Jesus sees people
with kingdom eyes.
God
Sees the Widows
God
doesn’t see the way people do- God does not get distracted by powerful people,
with their riches and their important positions. God sees past all our outer trappings to the
inside of the human heart- God sees what motivates us, what and who we care
about most. And this is the thing that really
struck me about our scriptures this week- God sees the widows. God sees them, acknowledges them and blesses
their sacrificial living. I said that no
one saw the widow of Zarephath- well God saw her. God saw her, and God knew her
to be a good person, a loving mother, a faithful person, ready to trust in the
promises of God’s prophet. That’s why
God sent Elijah to her, because God saw her and he knew that in the face of
Elijah’s need she would act sacrificially, courageously, selflessly, day after
day after day.
In
the same way, Jesus sees the widow in the temple. No one else noticed her, or if they did, they
probably didn’t give her a second thought- just another widow, just another
insignificant person making a virtually insignificant offering- only two copper
coins. But Jesus sees her and he sees
that her offering is a sacrificial act- an act of courage, of faith, of
selflessness, because as vulnerable as she already is, she makes herself even
more vulnerable by giving to God all her resources- all that she has to live on. The
widow is living a life of sacrifice, willingly, courageously, faithfully, and
while she may be off the radar of most of us, God sees her- Jesus sees her and
calls her blessed. In fact Jesus showers
some of the highest praise you will ever hear drop from his lips, on this nameless,
impoverished widow.
My
grandmother raised her two sons successfully- both of them went on to university,
a first for both sides of the family.
She even re-married when my dad was a pre-teen, and enjoyed a long, happy
marriage to George Chambers, the man my brother and I knew and loved as
grandpa. But the war and the loss of Jim,
her great love, took its toll. Her
innate strength developed into a kind of emotional toughness that did not allow
for much in the way of verbal or physical affection, even towards her own
children or grandchildren. I respected
my grandmother, I admired her tremendously, and I loved her. But we were never close. That frustrated me for a long time until, as
I reached adulthood, I began to see that the scars left on her heart just would
not allow for the kind of warmth from her that I so wanted. I began to see why she was who she was.
Seeing Our Way to Peace on Earth
We
have built monuments in hundreds of towns across this huge country, and
hundreds more around the world to commemorate those who died in war. Monuments
like this one in Japan which commemorate the survivors are far fewer in
number. But perhaps we, the next
generations, might give them a different legacy, one not marked by marble or
bronze, but by a change in our hearts, and in our vision. If we could see the widows and widowers, the
orphans and the refugees with kingdom eyes; if we could honour their
sacrificial lives as much as we honour our soldier’s sacrificial deaths, maybe
then there would be no more war anywhere on this earth. If we could, like Elijah and Jesus, apprehend
and learn from the wisdom of widows- their courage, their sense of duty, their
selflessness, their love, we would come a lot closer to a peaceful and blessed
earth for all. May God make it truly
so. Thanks Be to God, AMEN.