Sermons - May 2025
Service Sunday 4th May
Service Sunday 11th May
SUNDAY 11th MAY 2025 11.00 a.m.
MORNING WORSHIP, VE DAY 80th ANNIVERSARY
ST COLUMBA’S, PONT STREET
(FOURTH SUNDAY OF EASTER)
“Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just,
whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable,
if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.” Philippians 4:8
From a collection of World War II verse, selected phrases from a poem entitled,
War Has become official, old friend, Geoffrey Matthews,
evoking the new landscape of a country at war in 1939.
“The searchlights lean their wigwam patterns
over a minster peeled of glass,
No tactless light breaks through the muffled streets,
kind for the lovers, the County Council and the thief.
Today I am sick of sandbags, news, announcements,
and cycle in calm September sunshine
across the plain at Ampleforth
Sheffield and Hull, Bradford and Leeds
have billeted children in these chequered villages,
happy and pale they pull the unripe apples down,
and what a sin it is, I think,
to carry a gas mask through cornfields like these.”
Six years later, the jubilant scenes of VE Day – crowds in London,
Dancing in the fountains – relief and joy.
On Tuesday, when Scots in London hosted an evening of discussion
about the significance of VE Day – then and now –
what emerged was the variety of experience, on May 8th, 1945.
Yes, there were the jubilant throngs in London,
but there were other smaller episodes, eloquent of humanity.
A member of the RAF (writing for Mass Observation):
Serving on a base near Luton:
On the evening of 7th May I was in the local village church
with a young chap
who had promised to show me the basic ideas of playing the organ -
a thing I've always wanted to do.
We were still there at 10:00pm when a very elderly and decrepit lady
inquired if she might lock the church.
She said that the news had come through of complete German surrender.
My friend said just a minute, and went back to the keyboard to play,
“Praise God from whom all blessings flow.”
Then we switched off the bellows, turned off the lights
and went down to the village
where people were singing and dancing outside the pub,
while others were decorating the houses with flags and streamers.
When the pub closed the people seemed to melt away.
We went to a transport cafe and ate fish and chips.
When we got back to camp, we found a great deal of excitement
as we were to close down from midnight until 8:00am Thursday.
Passes were arranged for all who could possibly get home,
and it was arranged to run transport from Luton at 4:30am,
which would serve those waiting for the first trains
both for London and the north.
(p188 The People’s Victory).
A stark contrast from the front,
is the recollection of member of our linked congregation, St Andrew’s, Newcastle.
Ian Gillespie – Normandy veteran and recently celebrating his 105th birthday in style,
records in the Scots in London 80th Anniversary publication.
“That day I happened to be the company Orderly Officer.
The main duties were company admin and security, involving setting the guard.
Uniquely, I was also guarding a captain in the Pioneer Corps who had shot his major
and was on a murder charge.
Everyone in the company was given a bottle of champagne to celebrate.
So you can imagine me guarding this captain,
both of us drinking the champagne;
I with my revolver at the ready, and he on a murder charge - a macabre scene.
He was shipped back to the UK for his court martial.
I don’t know the sentence.
Today he would have been treated medically for post-traumatic stress disorder.”
Ian has always kept a diary and when he opened the page for VE Day
he found the label from the champagne bottle,
Moet et Chandon, Epernay, France, Brut, 1937.
A friend advised him he shouldn’t have drunk the champagne –
today it would be worth £1,000.
Sydney Jary, another Normandy veteran who ended the war in Germany observed –
“Reaction to the end of the war, like aggression, increased
the further behind the lines you went.
The natural aristocracy of the battlefield, the infantry,
having fired a feu de joie of Very lights,
curled up and slept.
We had learned too much to indulge in shallow demonstrations.”
(!8 Platoon, p122)
For many of course there was continuing anxiety for loved ones –
those still away, those missing, those who had been prisoners of war –
and of course those who were still fighting.
VE Day was the end of fighting in Europe,
it was very clearly not the end of the war.
At St Columba’s, as the account read earlier by Stuart Steele explained –
there was no church building, following its devastation in 1941.
Instead, thanks to neighbouring St Saviours,
the congregation gathered to give thanks –
in the same way that there were services across the nation.
(At Westminster Abbey there were services held every hour, throughout the day.)
At St Saviours, the minster, Revd Dr Scott began:
“Dearly beloved members of Saint Columba’s,
it was in God's house that the tidings of war were made known to us
on Sunday, the 3rd September 1939.
Today, the 8th of May 1945, we meet again in God's house,
to give thanks to Him for final victory
achieved in the European theatre of this worldwide struggle
against the forces of tyranny and oppression.
It is not the same house in which we meet,
but it is the same God whom we worship.
The enemy has taken from us a cherished building.
He has not taken from us our unshakeable belief
in the God of righteousness and peace
revealed to us in Jesus Christ, our Lord.”
From these voices speaking to us across the years, what will we glean?
Simply nostalgia – an outing for the historian, if you like that sort of thing?
As with the annual Remembrance Day services,
perhaps the 80th Anniversary of VE Day is primarily a chance simply to listen –
to hear and honour the voices of those who were there –
old and young, serving personnel and civilian.
To comprehend, if only a little, their experience.
As one veteran summed up:
“Just ordinary people called to do extraordinary things.”
But in this house of prayer – a wondrous gift that has grown from the ashes,
We might choose to search for more.
Christian, currently serving, read Psalm 23.
So often sung or read – a go-to for many, in demanding times, danger or sorrow.
It’s most remembered image, is God as shepherd.
But, it also describes God as faithful, trustworthy, generous host:
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.
This afternoon we will retell, largely in his own words,
the wartime story of the Very Revd Fraser McLuskey, chaplain to the SAS;
longtime, and much revered, minister of this congregation.
Parachuted behind enemy lines into central France in 1944,
he lived the nomadic, dangerous life of the unit he was serving with.
Of church services held in secret forest camps he wrote:
“… our worship seemed natural and meaningful.
We worshipped where we lived;
in the clearing where we slept, round the campfire which was home.
In the most obvious and concrete fashion
worship was a part of daily life
and not divorced in any way from it.
The ground on which we cooked and ate and slept,
the ground on which at any moment
we might find ourselves defending our possessions and our lives,
was the ground on which we worshipped.
Common ground was sacred ground.”
And of communion - the meal and sacrament at the heart of our faith –
which he often celebrated –
“…circumstances robbed our celebrations of much of the usual ceremony.
(But) we lost nothing by the smallness of our numbers
and the simplicity of the service.
We gained rather a new realisation of the character of this family act
instituted by Christ, with a handful of men
as ordinary and human as we were,
in a home where a family lived its life
and did its work.
That first celebration was simple and unpretentious enough,
and we had the same essentials,
bread and wine, a group of unworthy believers,
and the presence of the Master.”
“…, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just,
whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable,
if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.” Philippians 4:8