Remembrance Sunday
To remember is to RE- Member, to RE–Call, that is to bring that person back into our lives as if they were still with us. This morning we have added a new name to the list of those who we remember, Marjorie Viscountess Queninton, and we must tell her story if we are to truly remember her.
Marjorie was 33 when she set out to join her husband Michael in Egypt where he was serving with his regiment, the 1st Royal Gloucestershire Hussars. They planned to be together for the Christmas of 1915, but German submarine activity in the Mediterranean and the sinking of the P&O liner the ‘Persia’ where 343 passengers and crew tragically lost their lives, prevented her from leaving until 1916. She was accompanied by Victoria, Michael’s sister, and together they organised the Nurses Empire club in Alexandria. Tragically she contracted typhoid and died on 4th March 1916. Just a month later Michael was killed at the battle of Katia in what is known as the first Gaza war. They left behind them their baby son, again called Michael three and a half years old, the father of Micky St Aldwyn and David Hicks Beech.
Their stories and tragically short lives remind us of the many young lives lost not just in battle, but by the diseases that swept through military bases. Particularly disastrous was the so-called ‘Spanish flu’ that struck just as the war was coming to an end. I recently visited the British and French war graves cemetery on a trip to North Macedonia. Looking along the serried ranks of headstones I noticed a curious detail, many of the graves reported a date after the war’s end. These young men, many just in their twenties had not died of war wounds but of the ‘Spanish flu’, in fact, out of a total of twenty thousand casualties, ten thousand died of the flu. Among those who were the nurses who cared for them, like Majorie.
Marjorie Viscountess Queninton’s story finds an echo in the ministry of Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus who pours out a costly perfume over Jesus’ feet and then wipes them with her hair. The perfume we learn from Judas was worth around 300 denarii, about a year’s wages. Mary had likely been keeping this secret treasure for a special moment, maybe her wedding or for a funeral.
Mary is pouring out this perfume on someone who will soon be dead, it looks like a waste when it could be used for so many useful things to help the living but it is an act of worship that comes from a heart that is full of love. Love that leaves a fragrance and lingers in the air such that Jesus tells us that Mary has done something beautiful for God, a story we are to remember:
“Wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her” Mark 14:9
Memories
Those words “In memory of her” are significant. Think back to your earliest memories I expect there will be a smell associated with them. I remember the smell of carbolic soap at school and am taken right back to those days when I smell it!
When Jesus lifted the bread and the wine at the Last Supper just a few days after this act of love he said to his disciples.
“Do this in remembrance of me” Luke 22:19
When in John’s account of the last Supper Jesus washes the feet of the disciples he says:
“I have given you an example that you also should do as I have done to you” John 13: 15
Mary’s love and Marjorie’s models how we are to love and serve each other in response to the total love that Jesus has for us.
That is why her name and that of the many who gave their lives are remembered whenever the gospel is preached. It is the gospel itself!
The heart of the Christian faith
Jesus points to Mary as an example to us all of the true springs of service to others. It goes beyond actions to motives, true service is always the outpouring of love, a love that has a fragrance that tells us it is genuine.
We remember today the women who offered themselves in the service of others as nurses because it speaks to us of the dignity that Jesus gives to suffering and death. As we remember them today we see reflected in them our humanity which God loves and through Jesus pours himself out for:
The next time the disciples met for supper with Jesus he offered them bread and wine with the words:
“This is my body... this is my blood, given for you. Do this in memory of me” Matthew 26:26
The fragrance of that love is still with us today as we renew that love and gratitude through our acts of Remembrance and our service to others as we go out into the world.