Sermon for Sherborne School Compline – 5 November 2014 - “Valour of Goodwill”

In our reading this evening, Jesus says: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple.”

This passage has always struck me as very odd.  Surely Jesus, who throughout his teachings talks of the commandment to love one another, even our enemies, is not asking us to hate our own families?  It turns out that he is not.  The Hebrew word here translated as ‘hate’ is more properly understood as to ‘love less’.  So Jesus is talking about how difficult it is to become a disciple and that he wants us to do it with our eyes open.  To follow Jesus, we must put him before all else that we hold dear. 

We must be prepared to sacrifice all that we have. 

And what makes true sacrifice really hard is that you go into it knowingly; it is not made blindly or foolishly.  As in the reading, before we build a tower, we estimate how much it is going to cost to complete.  You stand up and say “This is important enough to me that I am willing to give up my material goods or my status, my relationships or even my life”.  It is worth remembering of course that Jesus asks no more of us than he himself willingly gave.

I am going to be asking you to think a lot about sacrifice over the course of the next week.  Perhaps there have been times in your life when you have chosen to stand up for something which you believe in, even while knowing that it might make life more difficult for you.  Perhaps you have stood up for those whose lives are being made miserable by others – even when that puts your own friendships at risk.  Perhaps you have said no when others are encouraging you to do something which is wrong – even when this threatens your social standing.  You may have sacrificed some of the money which could buy you material goods for those less fortunate than you.  Some of you may even have put yourselves in harm’s way, to fight for a cause which you believe in.  Is this something which you have regretted, or which makes you feel proud?

In 1923 a former Headmaster here, Nowell Smith, stood right here talking to boys sat where you are now.  He had been headmaster throughout the period of the 1^st World War.  He had seen boys and staff go out to fight for the causes, as he describes it of “Right, freedom, home and country.”  However we may look back upon that war now, there is no doubt for me, having read what boys and staff like you and I were writing at the time, that they made their sacrifices knowingly.  They were not unaware of the horrors of the war which faced them.  They believed in their cause – saving their fellow man from as he puts it “a frightful menace, the menace of a doom of which we can barely imagine.”  As the choir will sing in our service on Sunday: “Greater love hath no man than this – that he lay down his life for his friends”

I’m going to read you now just some of the sermon which Nowell Smith gave in 1923, looking out, as I do at you now, at boys who were too young to remember much of the war.  The language is more difficult than we are used to, so listen hard:

 “I hear an appeal most clear and solemn to all of you who are spending a happy healthy boyhood in this School.  They died that you might live.  Those names which you pass every day as you go to and from the Chapel are silent witnesses of the debt you owe not only to the bearers of those names, but to all who served and suffered in the Great War, many thousands of whom we called to bear pains and privations which make death seem far the happier lot.  Everything that you enjoy, everything that you hold dear, you owe by God’s grace to those who gave up all to fight for right and freedom, for home and country.  Such is your debt.”

How then can we, some hundred years later, honour that debt and the debt to all those since then – including in the present day - who have sacrificed so much so that we might live in happiness and freedom?  In part we will honour them with our services and ceremonies next week.  How can we though pay forward such a debt to later generations?  Nowell Smith writes “God grant that from this School there may never be wanting a supply of those, who, whatever their profession or business, shall be duly qualified, aye and joyfully resolved, to serve God with the valour of goodwill towards men!”

It is this last part which I believe is key – the Valour of Goodwill.  Valour is the courage and strength to stand up for what is right even when it puts us in harm’s way.  Goodwill is the kindness and charity towards others which we stand up for.  The Valour of Goodwill.  We repay our debt to those who have gone before us by having the strength to make the right choices and sacrifices when the moments come each day, each week and each year, at home, at school and throughout our lives.  None of us will succeed all the time.  If you are like me then sometimes when faced with choices you may have taken the easy route out.  Sacrifice is hard, but it is what we are prepared to give up that makes us who we are and it is who we are, not what we have, which has the greatest impact on our world.

R Barlow
November 2014