As I’m sure you all know, Sir Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Physics is that:

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Having been persuaded by my Physics teacher that I ought not to continue my studies in this subject, I did not have the full benefit of knowing much about this Law but in a sense, my giving up Physics is a kind of illustration of it.  The action of my failing to keep up with my study of physics led to an equal and opposite reaction by my Physics master – I was shown the door!  Of course, Newton’s Law is very helpful when we are looking at how physical things work in our world.

Take a car for instance. It is equipped with wheels which, when driven by an engine, spin backwards. The road reacts to this action by pushing the car forwards. The size of the force spinning backwards is met by an equal force doing the opposite and, hey presto, we have motion!  However, it is not just in physics that Newton’s Law works.

Thinking of the events we are remembering today, the end of World War I produced an action by the allied Victors which led to the reaction of Hitler’s rise to power.  So stringent was the punishment meted out to a defeated Germany that it inevitably led to resentment which festered until it became a reaction of equal force to the action.  Hitler was able to use the resentment of the German people to devastating effect. He promised to overcome the ‘guilt’ which had been laid solely on Germany (and not their allies) in the Treaty of Versailles – and give them back self-respect and a thirst to overcome their plight by a renewed striving for power.  When Hitler acted to fulfil his promises there was a subsequent reaction by others, not least Britain, and this led, through a complex set of circumstances to World War II.

And so it has gone on. The repercussions of World War II are still being worked out, not least in former Communist States who have rejected an ideology which, itself, gained impetus as a reaction against Fascism and Nazism. Communism was not, however, to be the final solution in a chain of action and reaction.  It did not peacefully lie down and die gracefully. It may seem a long time ago now that the states which made up former Yugoslavia turned on each other, but only the other day the Consequence of that action was brought home to me in an email I received from a friend who is now the Director of the British Council in Croatia. Speaking of Bosnia (in which British troops were particularly active) he said that it is “very much a post-conflict place and sometimes it doesn’t seem very ‘post’. War has left deep scars and there is a general malaise in the very air…”

When people are dispirited, they react and that action can lead to conflict. We have seen it, if we are honest, in Northern Ireland where spirals of violence on one side have produced a reactive violence on the other. And so it goes on – and has gone on for centuries.  I suspect we shall go on seeing this happening for a very long time in Iraq, and, of course, politically, the fall-out reaction to our involvement in that particular conflict, continues to be felt – as Mr. Blair discovered to his cost only this week.  Throughout the world then, we can see how action and reaction continue to produce situations of conflict.

Not all of this is violent but it is often long-standing. I was hearing this week how 4 villages are being asked to come together into a Team of churches and it is proving difficult to achieve this because two of the villages were strongly Royalist and two were for the Cavaliers all those centuries ago!  At some point we have to try and move away from this see-saw of action and reaction if we are to make any progress as a human race rather than rush headlong into a spiral of self-destruction.

We talk a lot on days like this of the freedom our comrades bought us when they ‘laid down their lives for their friends’ to quote this morning’s Gospel. Their action for our freedom led to the reaction which was their deaths.  Freedom to be real must be bound up with Justice and also with the kind of mercy that leads to reconciliation. Otherwise what our countrymen sought to do 60 plus years ago might be considered futile and in vain.  Mercy must also be extended to the defeated.

One of the things that is emerging in the renewed interest we seem to be having about the World wars, and particularly the Second, is the fate of those in Germany who were defeated. Some of you may remember the sermon I preached a short while ago in which I mentioned the photographic exhibition I went to in the Czech Republic in which I saw the pictures of suffering Berliners who were refugees in their own city.  That exhibition covered the period from 1945 to 1948 but even today the wounds of war are still festering in Germany.  Last week I had an interesting conversation with Johannes, a young German now working in London. I ventured to suggest that, by now, the young generation in Germany had moved on from the consequences of the War but he said that this was not so. At School, his teachers had instilled in them the shame and the guilt the German nation feels and must go on feeling for the War.   Those teachers all grew up in post-war Germany which, like us who grew up in post-war Britain, was a period of deprivation and reflection. For those Germans it was a period when guilt was etched deep into their consciousness and today they are passing it on to the younger generation.  This saddened me but it also challenged me because my reaction to the programmes I see constantly on television which analyse the Second World War - especially, the programmes that are being made about places like Auschwitz - has been to feel anger and at times hatred towards the German nation. This reaction is a product of being brought up in a post-war generation for whom the War was almost as real as for those taking part in it. The loss of human life was still a raw nerve and the austerity was very real. No doubt it is part of the scar tissues of the brain and I dare say that I could keep an analyst supplied with Chardonnay and Canapés for many years!

The challenge for me, and I suspect for others, is to move beyond recrimination towards reconciliation. 

I am glad that here in Epping we have a relationship with the German town of Eppingen which has gone beyond all that and into the realm of friendship. At that level we move out of the spiral of action and reaction into an entirely different realm.  Guilt is something which if it festers unchecked is totally destructive. Whether that be the guilt of nations or the guilt of individuals. If we continue to lay guilt on others for what happens in any conflict then we do to them what Versailles did to the German Nation – we build up resentment and unfairness which eventually either implodes creating total breakdown or explodes in a violent reaction.  There has to be another way – and this applies to any conflict whether it is between nations or between individuals. We must never  forget that the seeds of war are to be found in how we treat each other.   If we are constantly finding fault with others; if we spend our energy in criticising them; and if we seek to do others down, then we are creating the seedbed where conflict can grow.  Usually we do it because the other person threatens us and it is our own insecurity which fans the flame of conflict but we have to step back from our action because the reaction could be too devastating – for us and for others. If we can learn a lesson from the European situation of the 1920’s and 1930’s and avoid what happened in the 1940’s we will have learned a valuable thing – and it applies as much to individuals as it does to nations.

As I said, there has to be another way.

That other way finds its beautiful expression in today’s Gospel where we are given a supreme command by Jesus. We are to love.  What Jesus says in the passage from John 15 sounds as simple as it is beautiful and anyone reading it will quickly nod at its truth. However, we know that simple things are often the hardest things to bring to fruition.   Yet, there is nothing simple in what Jesus is telling us. It is one of the hardest things we have to tackle because Love to be genuine must also be unconditional. It must also be prepared to endure despite what others and the world throws against us.  It is not without significance that Jesus spoke these words to his disciples immediately before his arrest, trial and Crucifixion. All actions which tested his Love to the hilt.  The reaction to that Action might well have been retribution – he could, he assured his captors, call down Legions of Angels and I do not doubt it.  But that was not, and is not, God’s way. The reaction to the hatred was to Love and what we have is a devastating statement of that Love poured out from the Cross towards the World.

A Love which is bound up with forgiveness – they know not what they do -  and with reconciliation – today, you will be with me in Paradise.  Only Love which includes forgiveness (and at times being forgiven) and reconciliation can take us away from the violent spiral of action and reaction which brings conflict.  God’s reaction to the Crucifixion of His Son is Resurrection – the opportunity to live a new life, a Risen and Redeemed life.  That is what my young friend Johannes needs to feel in his Germany of today and what must be brought to the heart of every human conflict.

St. Paul in the part of his letter to the Romans we have heard this morning, reminds us that nothing – absolutely nothing – can separate us from the Love of God in Christ Jesus.  Except, of course, hearts that have closed themselves off from its redeeming power to heal and to save.  If our friends whom we remember today are to be truly honoured, let it be through lives so filled with love that the conflict they endured will be no more