On Friday when many of us gathered both inside and outside this Church for the Dedication of the new Civilian War Memorial, our thoughts, quite naturally, turned towards the War in Epping – in particular, of course, to the bombing of Spriggs Court and St. Margaret’s Hospital.

Thanks to the painstaking research of Mike Osborne, the names remembered on the memorial were given their ‘story’ in the booklet printed by Epping Town Council about the two incidents. Not only did we learn a little of people like Adela Franks, whose relatives joined us for the commemoration, but also of Epping citizens like Millicent Stevens and Joyce Gowland who cared for the injured.

Millicent was a parlour maid at the Vicarage and in the aftermath of the bombing, she was to be found helping with the rescue and recovery of the young women trapped inside the wreckage. Hours later, dazed, emotional and tired and covered in blood and dust, she returned home.  Joyce was attached to the Red Cross First Aid post at St. Margaret’s Hospital and was soon to be found tending the victims, some terribly injured.

Before Friday’s Ceremony, some of us had gathered at the War Graves in Epping Cemetery where lie a handful of Epping men (and a few Polish ones) who gave their lives for their country.  There I came across Arthur Bird, the only naval man to be buried in an Epping War grave. I learned something of his story from two of his daughters who, each year, gather at his grave in sight of the main group. This was, for them – they told me – their private ceremony.

On Wednesday next we shall bury Fred Burton, a member of the Epping Branch of the Royal British Legion, who joined the Army at the age of 18 and spent eight years in India before postings in Norwich and Norfolk during the 2^nd World War.  More recently, we have been praying for his grandson, Ryan, who has just returned from a tour of duty in Afghanistan, which with Iraq, is the battlefront of our conflicts today.

Last year, showing a group of year 7 children from St. John’s School around the Church, we stopped at the War Memorial over there commemorating those who died in the First World War and some of the children identified their own names – they were the present generation of the same families.  Earlier this year, the Bishop of Chelmsford visited this Church, and on the memorial to those who died in the second World War he noted the name of Lance Corporal Gladwin, his own surname, and wondered if he might be a distant relative.

What links all these and all the others that we remember today is that they belong not only to our Nation but to Epping. Their story is part of our story.

Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, writing in yesterday’s Times about Remembrance Sunday, spoke of the importance of identifying our story with that of those whom we now remember and those being remembered everywhere across our Nation today.  To be part of a Nation, a Society, is to be part of its story.

The story of those who fought – and still fight – to preserve the freedom of our Nation and its values is both a collective memory – something we are remembering today – but also a reminder that our part in this story – still being lived out in our lives – is to add to that memory as we seek to shape and mould a Society whose qualities are worth handing on to the future.  It is within the collective memory of Epping that we place Millicent Stevens, Joyce Gowland,  Arthur Bird, Fred Burton, and all those we name today but who each have their story to tell us for their memory is not of the dead but of those who contribute to our living memory today.

Even more has been added to these memories through the BBC website, the People’s War which has collected the stories of individuals to form a permanent record – a unique record – of World War 2 . These are not great tracts about particular battles nor are they reflective insights by war strategists about the background of particular decisions. These are human interest stories of the kind my grandfather told me of the First World war in which he was wounded during the Dardanelles Campaign, and the stories my mother told me of her experiences plotting enemy aircraft over Birmingham during the Blitz.

It is these stories which are part of our National collective memory and which are part of our Remembrance today. They do not argue  whether War can be Just or whether it is a sign of the ultimate failure of diplomacy or even whether it can be defended in Christian terms as some believe. They are stories about ordinary, decent people who believe that the values by which the fabric of society is woven are worth preserving and who have shared in a collective purpose which, as Rabbi Sacks said yesterday, include for some a willingness to sacrifice for the future.

We, of course, are that future and to the story of those ordinary, yet at times quite extraordinary, lives that we add our own.  What Remembrance Sunday challenges us to do is to evaluate our own lives and our own contributions to the Society in which we live.  Fortunately, except for a few, we are not being called to engage the enemy in bloody battle as those we remember today were called to do.  Yet, like them, we are called, in the words of John McCrae in his famous poem, In Flanders Field - to  Take up our quarrel with the foe.  The foe is less obvious today but it is nonetheless as threatening.

Much has been written about both  World Wars and even more graphically recorded. Countless television programmes keep those struggles for Freedom in the forefront of our minds. Yet, today this freedom is under threat from terrorism and from forces within our world that can only best be described as evil.  We have to fight against preachers of hate, purveyors of terrorism, despots who destroy people at whim, and everything that threatens humanity’s right to freedom, justice and peace. We have to stand for Service to others, care of the vulnerable and needy; comfort of the distressed and weak; and mercy and justice for all.

These Values have to be translated in our lives as they were in those of our forebears whom we remember today – for they are merely words until they are made real through the story of people who lived and live bravely, courageously and with a determination to make a difference and to stand up for what is right.

We may seem to be a long way from the Prophet Malachi’s dream of a world where nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more but if we forget those values then we will not keep faith with those who died, as John McRae begs us to do nor shall we hand on a better world to future generations whose story is yet to be written but of which we are its preface.

For Christians, of course, the values of our Society – the values fought for by those we remember today – are caught up in an even bigger Story.  In the story of Jesus we see most powerfully how the values of God are translated into one single, unique and perfect life and yet for those values of freedom, mercy, peace and love to be ours Jesus was prepared to pay the ultimate price of death – of dying in an act of sacrifice and self-giving which has known no equal. It cannot be equalled because in Jesus it is God who gives himself for his people – for every generation, for you and for me and for those who come after us.

Not all whom we remember today may have shared the Christian faith and not all here today may ascribe to it, nor all those who come after us -  but this Nation’s story is bound up with the story of the Crucified even if it is but an echo for some heard across the battlefields of human endeavour.  For it is God’s values that we uphold and it is to God that we turn our hearts and thoughts in times of trial, conflict, danger and threat. We turn to God because His story includes the deepest care and love of humankind possible – a sacrificial love, A Crucified love. It is the working out of this love, in Christ Jesus, and in lives totally given to the defence and freedom of others which is the framework for our Remembrance today.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks begs us not to forget how painfully freedom is won, or we will lose it. If we take it for granted it will not survive.  Only if we keep faith with those whose story we remember with thanksgiving today and with God who is the author of those stories, will we have anything of value to hand on to our children and our children’s children.

This is our duty. May it also be our determination and our joy.