Today on the Evangelist Podcast, we're thinking about taking advantage of the World War One centenary celebrations.
SPEAKER_02The Evangelists Podcast from Revival. Find out what's new in telling people the good news about God, the world, and you. With Andy Brinkley and Glenn Scrivener.
SPEAKER_01Hello again, welcome back to the Evangelist Podcast. We're looking uh this time at uh World War One, and uh this is particularly because uh you were invited to go to a World War I commemorative event to speak.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, up in Hailsham. So uh amazingly in Hailsham, uh two of the church pastors there, uh real history buffs, both having uh studied uh history and uh at university, one of them actually was a history teacher here in Eastbourne. So uh Andy Johnson and David Bourne were giving talks to uh kind of the whole town, gathered at St. Mary's Hailsham in order to hear about the the causes of the war. That's what Andy Johnson spoke about, and then uh David Bourne spoke about the course of the war, what happened. We then had a bit of a comfort break and an act of commemoration, Lady Wreath at the at the War Memorial there at uh St. Mary's Hailsham. And then I spoke for about twenty minutes uh about Jesus the Prince of Peace. And um it was a great event, and uh I thought I'd just sort of talk about it here, because I'd love to see other people doing it. We're definitely gonna try and uh and replicate it here in Eastbourne, and uh if you can do it in your own hometown, I think it'll be really successful.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Bit of a s an unusual setting in a way.
SPEAKER_00I I wouldn't straight away think of uh an evangelistic opportunity as uh from a World War One from yeah each each and every kind of uh war memorial around around the world really has has, you know, John chapter fifteen verse is it thirteen Greater Love has no man than this that he lays down his life for his friends and um uh and actually that's that's sort of the the catchphrase for what hope in the UK is trying to do. So greaterlove.org.uk is uh a movement uh just trying to get churches involved in in commemoration because it's something that the whole country unites around, the whole world unites around, really. And uh just trying to think Christianly about it and how we can take opportunities to mark the occasion.
SPEAKER_01Okay, well, we've got the audio from from the talk, so uh we're gonna listen to it now. Take us through what you were trying to to do with this.
SPEAKER_00I think Andy Johnson and David Bourne, whose talks you can also uh hear, which are fan fantastic and really fascinating, and and I I do recommend you you hear those, we'll put those on the show notes. But um they were keen, and I was uh very persuaded by what they were saying, that what we didn't want to do is just present Jesus as the ultimate example of a soldier who makes the ultimate sacrifice. Th there's a there's a time and a place for for saying that about Jesus, that you know, he is the one who laid down his life for his friends in that kind of way. But that can sometimes unhelpfully sort of put Jesus as sort of the ultimate soldier. Um yeah, it's the there are drawbacks to using that kind of illustration. So instead, what we wanted to do was just talk about the causes of the war a hundred years ago, and then talk about how actually those causes are present in us today. It's not you don't just have to go back to the history books to find the causes of war. Um you'll find it in your own heart. Does Jesus have an answer for us today about what causes war? Um and as you'll see, hopefully uh we can point towards the peacemaking act of Christ on the cross to absorb our violence against him and and to to turn the other cheek to us and and and return with with peace. So that that was kind of the angle that we tried to take. See what you make of it, and and uh and if you want to put on an event like this, then uh please do uh have a look at the links in the show notes and uh and perhaps get in touch because uh I'd love to see these kinds of events uh happening further afield. Tell us a bit about the people that came to listen, what was their response like? It was I mean the church was absolutely packed with church folk, but but also just with people from the town. I think involving you know, can you involve the British Legion? Can you involve the scouts? Can you involve the cadets? Can you involve other people in this? That would be a great way of drawing in the local community.
SPEAKER_01So it was sort of all ages.
SPEAKER_00It was all ages, yeah, yeah. There was there were there were many children there and teenagers as as as well as uh as you'd expect, sort of some older folk. And what was interesting for me was I I was going there thinking, let's take advantage of this opportunity and and speak of Jesus, but I was expecting that afterwards people would be talking about the war, and people would be talking about the sort of uh points of history. And and they were to some degree, but the first person who came up to me afterwards said, uh, I'm a I'm an atheist and I take issue with you on what you said about Jesus here and here, and and we got into a very long and and good conversation in which she was she she seems quite encouraged to to come along to church. So that that was really great, and there were other conversations about the gospel that were going on afterwards, and that that's what's made me really think, okay, this is something where the legacy of this is not just making people more informed about the causes of the war, but that there can be a true spiritual legacy to this as as we speak about Christ, the Prince of Peace.
SPEAKER_01Okay, well uh let's have a listen then. It's my pleasure to uh welcome Glenn Scrivener, a good friend to us. Many of you have met Glenn before from Eastbourne. Welcome, Glenn.
SPEAKER_00Thank you very much, uh, David and Andy. It's been so informative, hasn't it? It's been uh absolutely fantastic to come here. I I'm astonished. It seems like it must be some kind of uh test you must uh pass to be a Helsham church pastor. You've got to be a phenomenal war historian as well. Um so you're brilliantly well served here in Helsham. And I I've had a fascinating evening, I think we all have. As I begin to speak, you might uh begin to think I might have an opinion about Gallipoli, for instance. Um it's interesting, in in Australia, um uh yeah, Churchill is not remembered as fondly in Australia as over here, largely because of the Gallipoli thing, but um probably unfairly, but that's the way it is. Um tonight I'm just gonna reflect for a couple of minutes on is is there anything Christianly we can say uh about uh the Great War? Is there anything we can say from the scriptures about it? And and as I begin, I just want to get one question out of the way, and and that's if you're here and you're thinking uh Christians really don't have a right to talk about war, um perhaps you might be thinking religion is a cause of war, or perhaps even the cause of war, or sometimes you hear people say, religion causes all wars. Do you hear people say that sort of thing? And uh it's it's utterly false, of course. As we've heard from Andy tonight, all those sort of causes of war that we went through, none of them were particularly religious, neither in World War II were they particularly religious. In fact, if you consult Philip and Axelrod's three-volume encyclopedia of wars, chronicles, uh, 1,763 wars waged in history. And it and it names 123 as religious in origin, about 7%, uh, which is 123 wars too many. Absolutely it is, but it puts a lie to the to the so-called fact that religion causes all war. What we'll see tonight is that the causes of war are far broader than issues of religious identity, and the causes go much deeper than the history books. Leo Tolstoy once said uh, everyone thinks of changing the world, no one thinks of changing themselves. And uh I'd love to reapply that sentence to tonight. Essentially, what we're talking about tonight is this everyone thinks about the causes of war in their history, but nobody thinks of the causes of war in their hearts. And so we might finish on an uncomfortable note tonight to bring things a little bit closer to home. We can certainly point the finger at causes, and it's absolutely right to do so. But at some stage we also have to put our hand up and own some of the blame in our warmongering hearts. This was brought home to me uh recently during a trip to Poland. Uh, we were quite near to Auschwitz, and so we decided to go on a day trip there. The most uh sobering day uh I can remember spending. I remember being shown around by an excellent tour guide who was taking us through uh the monstrous but also mechanical industrialized murder of millions of people. And I remember going around Auschwitz, and two thoughts were constantly coming to the forefront in my thinking. I wasn't trying to think them, they they just were gut reactions. The one thought was that's evil, that's evil, that's evil, that's evil. But hot on the heels of that thought, again and again, and and completely unbidden by myself, another thought came and it was, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. And speaking to people afterwards, Christians and non-Christians, we all had the exact same experience. The pointed finger, that's wrong, but also the raised hand. That's me, somehow. Somehow I'm complicit in that. That's evil, and I'm sorry. And maybe tonight we can start to think in those sorts of terms, not simply pointing the finger at causes of war that are out there, but also raising our own hands and saying, there isn't just war out there, is there? There's war in me. Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote uh a celebrated and controversial novel called August 1914. It was about the Battle of Tannenberg, which uh Imperial Russia lost uh spectacularly. And he was a man adept at uh naming and laying bare the horrors of war and the evil of the human heart. But uh famously Solzhenitsyn speaks of the fallacy of dividing the world up between the goodies over there and the baddies over there. It's so easy to do that, isn't it, when we think about war. It's so easy to think in black and white terms of the goodies over there and the baddies over here. And uh Solzhenitsyn instead writes this. He said, If only it were so simple, if only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But, says Solzhenitson, the dividing line between good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? You see, it's not about the bad warmongering people over there and nice glen over here. Right here inside me, there is a peacemaker and a warmonger living side by side in me. And if you're the same, in you too. In the New Testament book of James, we read these words What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something, but you don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. James chapter four. Here is the Bible doing something quite profound. We always want to look for the causes of the fighting, and we always want to say it's the social structures, it's poverty, it's bad education, it's uh institutional racism, it's imperialism, it's it's socialism, it's nationalism, it's capitalism, it's communism, it's any ism, and the Bible says, no, it's me. It's me. I'm the cause of war. Uh famously the the Times ran an essay competition, what is wrong with the world? G.K. Cheston had the shortest answer. I'm sure you know it. He wrote into the Times and said, Dear sir, I am. I am. What causes fights and quarrels among you, don't they come from your desires that battle within you? It's so profound, the Bible. Your desires battling within you. You want something, but you don't get it, so you kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want, so you quarrel and fight. War is not simply a matter for the historians, it's also for the psychologists. It's also for us here in a church. There are desires that are battling it out, and these desires lead to coveting, wanting them for ourselves, and then if you stand in my way, watch out. Watch out. I'm gonna get angry, and if you keep standing in my way, I'm going to kill you. Maybe not with guns, but with words, with looks. I'm gonna assassinate your character, I'm gonna destroy your reputation, I'm gonna cut you off from family, friends, jobs. This killing begins in simple coveting, and we are all at it, all of us. Andy has spoken to us about the causes of the First World War, and as I was taking notes, I reckon he highlighted uh some key areas, perhaps four key areas. Perhaps nationalism, imperialism, the personal ambition and insecurity of the Kaiser, and finally a fractured domestic situation that was relieved to find a common enemy abroad. Does that sound about right? I was listening. Okay, good. But let's think about that. Nationalism. Don't we love to find our identity in our own national identity? Of course, this month the whole world is finding its identity very much in its own national identity until our team gets knocked out, and then we don't care. Who cares about the World Cup anymore? Don't know if you're like me for the next month. I'm part man, part sofa, just hurling advice at the greatest athletes in the world. It's wonderful. Um, feeding my face with the most unhealthy food known to man, and yet telling the fittest men on earth how to do it. Uh and yet, at these moments, don't we let sometimes our national identity get the better of us? Uh in my Twitter feed the other day, there was all sorts of nasty things said about Suarez before he bit the other guy. One of them said that nasty racist Suarez, another person without without irony, said, yes, typical Uruguayan. There's something deeply ironic there, but the person I don't think got it. Is there a nationalism in your heart? There's a nationalism in my heart, a fear of other people, and a and a pride in my culture that is unwarranted. There's imperialism too. Don't we all like to build our own little empires? Wouldn't we rather things got done our way under our regime and no one else's? Don't we protect our own little sphere of influence? We've heard about the personal ambition and insecurity of the Kaiser. Fascinating psychological study, isn't it? We heard Kaiser Wilhelm's words. He said, uh, we have conquered for ourselves a place in the sun. It will now be my task to see to it that this place in the sun shall remain our undisputed possession. Doesn't that sound like a toddler? Just saying, mine. And yet, isn't that like you and I? I mean, we get socialized out of that toddler behavior. But do our hearts really change? And then we we heard of Kaiser Wilhelm's jealousy of the British, but also his hatred of them. Isn't that interesting? Jealous of them, but he hates them as well. I wish I was like them. I hate them. Isn't that strange? And yet, isn't that also in your heart? The famous love chapter in the Bible, the Apostle Paul writes 1 Corinthians 13, and he says, Love does not envy it does not boast. And that's interesting because the Bible knows that our hearts do both envy and boast at the same time. We both say, I wish I was like them. And we say, I'm better than them, at the same time. Feelings of inferiority and superiority together, all at once. We are a strange mix. It's not just mad old emperors, is it? It's us. It's my heart, and it's your heart. And he spoke of a fractured domestic scene that was grateful to have an enemy that they could unite around, and yet I quite like that in myself. I've got sort of fractured desires in myself. I'm a mess, but at least I'm not as bad as you, right? Don't we all do that? I'm a mess, but there are some really bad people over there, so it's gonna be okay. You know. Don't we all have this? As we identify the causes of the first world war, we point the finger, but we also raise the hand. We say that's wrong, and we also say, that's me. So then what should we do? What should we do? I want to suggest that truly learning the lessons of the past involves not just a journey back, but also a journey down and then up. Let's take a journey down and then up. Firstly, we've already gone down, haven't we? We've already seen the depths of our hearts. We are part peacemaker, but part warmongerer as well. Let's look up for a second and see the Bible's solution to all of this. Do you know the phrase beating your sword into plowshares? You know the phrase, beating the swords into plowshares. It's a famous saying from the prophets Isaiah and Micah speak about this in the Old Testament. A time when they would turn the weapons of war into implements of manufacture and food and uh the things that would bring death are turned into the things that will bring life. Isaiah chapter two looks forward to this day. It says, In the last days, the mountain of the Lord's temple will be established as the highest of the mountains. It will be established above the hills, and all the nations will stream to it. Many people will come and say, Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the temple of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths. The law will go out from Zion, the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, he will judge between nations, and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plough shares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war any more. Come, descendants of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the Lord. After this evening, don't you long for that time? You long for the time when nation will not ever again take up sword against nation. This is the biblical hope. Swords being turned into plowshares, spears into pruning hooks, and they will not learn war anymore. That's the biblical hope. In 1918, uh the old gospel song, Ain't Gonna Study War War no more. Do you know that song? Um, Down by the Riverside. Uh that came out in was published in eight uh in 1918. Interesting, isn't it? Gonna lay down my sword and shield down by the riverside, down by the riverside, down by the riverside. Gonna lay down my sword and shield down by the riverside. I ain't gonna study war no more. I ain't gonna study war no more. When I first heard this, I I thought it was um telling us about how we wouldn't always have to do GCSE history. But no, it's now I've learnt it's actually from the Bible. Ain't gonna study war no more. The verses go on. Uh, gonna talk with the Prince of Peace down by the riverside, down by the riverside, gonna talk with the Prince of Peace. The final verse says, gonna shake hands all around the world, down by the riverside. Ain't gonna study war no more. In this future hope, proclaimed in the Bible, people will no longer train for battle because wars will cease to the ends of the earth. That's Psalm 46. So that's what they sang in 1918. Can you imagine them singing that in 1918? Ain't gonna study war no more. Ain't gonna study war no more. Armistice, peace. Lay down your swords. Well then imagine, imagine a true peace, a global peace, a cosmic armistice, an eternal armistice, peace between nations, peace with the world, peace with our neighbors, peace in our hearts, peace with God. Imagine that. Well, it will take more than a treaty to achieve this, won't it? You can cease all military hostilities, but what is going to bring peace to the human heart? How can we really make all wars cease? Well, Isaiah, who spoke of this future, spoke of the prince of peace who would come and bring this about. And when he came, he he took a very surprising attitude to the Roman armies. He did not inspire a revolt of the Jews, he did not begin an uprising to overthrow the Romans. Instead, he taught that we should love our enemies, pray for our persecutors. If struck on our right cheek, we should offer them our left cheek, turn the other cheek. If a soldier forces you to carry his pack for one mile, you should go the extra mile. Whistling while you walk. Jesus said, Don't live by the sword. Those who live by the sword will die by the sword. And in the end, Jesus gets his followers to put away their sword. While he submits to false arrests, false accusations, trumped up charges, and he dies as a defeated enemy of the state. And you think that is a really weird way of bringing peace, isn't it? What a very strange way of fixing the problems with the world. How does that help anyone? Because according to the Bible, it does. According to Colossians chapter 1, verse 20, Jesus is making peace through his blood shed on the cross. How on earth does that work? Well, think about his saying, turning the other cheek. Think about that. An aggressor strikes you on one cheek. What kind of courage does it take to stand your ground and to turn your face to them again and say, look, it doesn't work. Your aggression didn't work. I'm not running away and I'm not striking back. I'm turning my face towards you again. Can we be reconciled? What does Jesus do? The Lord of heaven. Well, he comes down into our midst, and if you like, on the cross, he he's struck. We do our worst to him. All the warmongering that's in our hearts gets revealed when the Lord is among us. We strike him on that cross. What's he gonna do? Is he gonna strike us back? Is he gonna just retreat now to heaven and never visit us again? What does he do? He rises up from the dead, and if you like, he turns his face towards us. He turns the other cheek to us. And he says, It didn't work. I'm still here. I'm not gonna smite you down, I'm not gonna run away. I'm here to bring peace. Do you want me? And anyone who says, Yes, I want you, instantly you have peace with God. Instantly. That is peace with God. To be face to face with this Lord. And then this Lord can teach you how to turn the other cheek to others, to stand for what is right when it is right to stand, and to offer grace, when it is right to offer grace. He will teach you how to do that. And at the end, he will bring out he will bring in this glorious kingdom of peace. Crown him the Lord of peace. His kingdom is at hand. From pole to pole, let warfare cease and Christ rule every land. All hail, redeemer, hail. For you have died for me. Your praise shall never, never fail throughout eternity.
SPEAKER_01Well, that's great, Glenn. Um what would you say the steps to get something going in your own local church then?
SPEAKER_00I would uh recommend checking out the talks from uh from the Hailsham Church uh where I was. Uh they'll be available in the in the show notes. Uh I'd also recommend having a look at what resources are out there. So Hope um have produced a number of different resources, including a very attractive John's Gospel, which uh has been produced uh sort of in the same style as the John's Gospels that soldiers were given. And you know, they were told to read John's Gospel every day. And I think I just read uh today that they've they've already uh gotten rid of uh 200,000 of of such John's Gospels. So those those can be a great sort of outreach tool. Think about how you can use them. There are plenty of other resources if you go to greaterlove.org.uk or um yeah, there's a link there to to hope and the resources that they've got there. And just get creative about it. You know, is is is there something you could do perhaps with uh local primary school? You know, they could have, you know, uh based on the war poets, for instance, could you have poetry readings and could you have children contribu contributing things, could you have children doing artwork on the First World War? Could you turn your church into a into an art gallery and invite the town in?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so where when would this happen if it was done?
SPEAKER_00There are lots of different um anniversaries of the of uh uh of the hundred years. The fourth of August, I think, is officially when Britain entered the war, 7th of August, uh is when they sort of uh engaged in Europe, I think that's right. Obviously around uh November and and uh Armistice Day, Remembrance Day, Remembrance Sunday, first uh is it the first or the second Sunday in in November, uh the details of which are are on the the Hope website. And also Christmas. So Hope really wants to uh make use of that that first Christmas at at which you know the everyone sang Silent Night together, the Germans and the and and the British troops together, played football in no man's land, all that sort of stuff. And there's some really very powerful resources that that talk about incredible peace descending on a time of incredible war and how Jesus, you know, was able to do that 1900 years after his birth. Suddenly the Prince of Peace was able to bring peace in that tiny little snapshot. Um are there ways of of uh of speaking about that uh at Christmas services? So there's there's all sorts of um anniversaries of of the First World War that that are happening. Given the time scales, I guess August is is a bit bit early for for a lot of this stuff. But perhaps we can all be thinking about November and uh what's what's possible for then.
SPEAKER_01Okay, well uh we'll have all the details as many as we can in the show notes uh links and videos and that. Web address to go to for this would be revivalmedia.org slash tep63. So that's it for now. Um thanks very much, Glenn, and uh we'll see you next time. See ya.