Amos 1.1–2; 5.14–15, 21–24
John 7.37–38
It is perhaps strange, on a
Sunday dedicated to remembering war,
that the prophet Amos calls us
not to remembrance but to repentance.
The words we have heard today
come from a man who lived in a
time of peace and prosperity
— when Israel’s borders were
secure and the economy was booming.
Yet beneath the surface,
something was rotting.
The poor were being trampled
down,
justice was being sold to the
highest bidder,
and violence was a daily
reality for those on the margins.
Into that comfortable
complacency came the voice of Amos:
“Seek good and not evil,
that you may live.”
“Let justice roll down like
waters,
and righteousness
like an ever-flowing stream.”
Amos speaks across the
centuries to us today,
as we gather in remembrance
— not to glorify war, but to
lament it;
not to justify violence, but
to seek a better way.
Remembering in truth
Remembrance Sunday always draws
together
grief and gratitude, sorrow
and hope.
We remember those who died
— soldiers and civilians,
neighbours and strangers —
and we honour their courage
and sacrifice.
But as followers of Jesus, our
remembrance must go further.
For we are called to remember
in truth
— not only what was done, but
what was lost;
not only the courage of those who fought,
but the horror of the violence
that consumed them.
We remember as those who belong
to the one who said,
“Blessed are the
peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.”
We remember as those who follow
the one
who told Peter to put away his
sword.
We remember as those who know that Christ confronted the powers of violence
not by meeting force with
force,
but by absorbing violence into himself
and transforming it through
love.
To remember rightly, in the
light of Christ,
is to mourn the cost of human
conflict
and to renew our commitment to
peace.
Dangerous Memory
But true remembrance, as
Scripture understands it, is never passive.
In the Bible, to remember
is not merely to recall; it is to act.
When God “remembers” Noah in
the ark,
it means that God moves to
save.
When God “remembers” the covenant,
it means that God intervenes
in history to deliver the oppressed.
To remember, in the biblical sense,
is to bring the past into the
present
so that the future may be
different.
Our remembrance, then, cannot
be content with nostalgia or pride.
It must become a living,
active memory
— what some theologians have
called a dangerous memory —
a memory that disturbs
complacency and stirs compassion.
For the Christian, to remember
those who have died in war
is to remember, too, the world
that allowed such wars to happen.
It is to recall not only
courage and sacrifice,
but also hatred, greed, and
fear.
It is to remember, painfully,
that human beings are capable of terrible things
— and that we ourselves are
not immune.
Remembrance Sunday is not meant
to make us comfortable.
It is meant to make us
faithful.
We remember not to enshrine the
past,
but to change the present.
We remember so that our hearts
might be softened,
our consciences awakened, and
our lives redirected toward peace.
And this is why we do not stop
at silence or at ceremony.
We remember in order to act.
We remember, so that — in
Amos’s words —
justice might roll down
like waters,
and righteousness like an
ever-flowing stream.
It is at this point that our
sculpture of The Violinist speaks to us
— not simply as art, but as a
living act of remembrance,
a testimony in metal and music
to what can be made new.
The Violinist
Here at Bloomsbury, our act of
remembrance is joined by a powerful symbol.
In our sanctuary today stands The
Violinist
— a sculpture made from
decommissioned weapons
from Mozambique’s
civil war,
part of Christian Aid’s
“swords to ploughshares” initiative.
He stands poised
mid-performance,
violin under his chin, bow
raised
— an image of art born from
the wreckage of destruction.
Where once there were rifles
and bayonets, now there is a musician.
Where once there was the power
to kill,
now there is the power to
create.
This sculpture proclaims
visually what the prophet Isaiah imagined long ago:
“They shall beat their
swords into ploughshares,
and their spears into pruning
hooks.”
The Violinist calls us to
imagine a world
where instruments of death are
repurposed for life;
where the tools of war are transformed into expressions of beauty.
And he stands here today as a
silent sermon in metal
— a testimony to the hope that
even from the ruins of violence,
new music can rise.
The world we remember
But we cannot stand before him
and pretend that this vision
has yet come to pass.
We live in a world still
scarred by war.
We think of Gaza, where a
fragile peace holds
but where trauma and rubble
remain
— and of the West Bank, where violence continues daily
and justice feels so far away.
We pray for Palestinians and
Israelis alike,
for all who long for safety
and dignity,
for an end to occupation and
fear.
We think of Ukraine, where
soldiers and civilians alike continue to die,
where homes lie in ruins,
where people face yet another
winter under the drone of missiles.
We think of Sudan, where
millions have been displaced by conflict
so brutal that the world
struggles to look.
We think of Myanmar and the
Democratic Republic of Congo,
where oppression and chaos
persist,
largely unseen by those who
enjoy peace.
And we name these places not as
distant concerns,
but as wounds in the one body
of Christ.
For as Martin Luther King, who
preached from this very pulpit, once said:
“Injustice anywhere is a
threat to justice everywhere.”
To remember rightly is to stand
in solidarity
with all who suffer the
consequences of violence
— to refuse the temptation of
comfortable forgetting.
The religion God rejects
Amos delivers a devastating
message from God
to a nation very proud of its
worship.
“I hate, I despise your
festivals,” says the Lord,
“I take no delight in your
solemn assemblies.
Even though you bring me offerings, I will not accept them.”
It’s shocking language —
especially on a Sunday such as this,
when we too gather in solemn
remembrance.
But perhaps it is exactly the
message we need to hear.
Amos insists that worship
without justice is meaningless.
Religion that offers piety to
God
while ignoring the suffering
of others is hypocrisy.
If our remembrance becomes
merely sentimental,
or if it serves only to
sanctify nationalism or to justify violence,
then we too risk offering
worship that God despises.
God does not ask for ceremonies
that make us feel noble.
God asks for lives that seek
good and not evil,
for communities where justice
flows like a river.
Our remembrance, if it is to be
faithful, must move us to action
— to peacemaking, to
solidarity, to compassion.
Violence, conscience, and
costly peace
Of course, this is not easy.
We know that some who take up
arms do so not out of hatred,
but from a conviction that
violence is the least-worst way to confront evil.
We think of Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, the German pastor
who joined the plot to
assassinate Hitler
— a man whose conscience led him to an act he could not justify,
yet could not avoid.
We may understand such choices,
even honour their courage,
but as followers of Christ we
cannot celebrate killing.
We believe that every life is
sacred,
that every act of violence is
a tragedy,
even when it is done in the
name of protection or justice.
The peace of Christ is not
naïve;
it does not deny the existence
of evil.
But it refuses to let evil define the terms of our response.
Christ calls us to resist the
powers of death through the strength of love
— through truth, compassion,
courage, forgiveness.
As Dr King put it, “We will meet your physical force with soul force.”
This is the path of the gospel:
not passive acceptance of
injustice, but active, costly peace.
It is the way of the cross — and therefore, the way of resurrection.
Bonhoeffer and King
Yet if we are honest, part of
the challenge of peace
is that it demands more of us
than we often wish to give.
It is easier to remember than
to repent.
Easier to honour the heroes of
the past
than to face the injustices of
the present.
Easier to speak of peace in the abstract
than to live it in the
concrete.
The prophet Amos names this
with startling clarity.
His vision of justice is not
simply about personal morality or private virtue.
It is about the ordering of
society
— about the structures that
crush the poor,
the systems that privilege
some while excluding others.
When Amos cries out for justice
to roll down like waters,
he is not describing a gentle
stream for personal refreshment;
he is calling for a flood that will sweep away
corruption, greed, and
indifference.
It is a call for transformation
— not just of hearts, but of
economies, of politics, of relationships.
This is why both Bonhoeffer and
Martin Luther King
found themselves in conflict
with the powers of their age.
Each, in his own context,
recognised that the gospel’s demand for peace
is inseparable from the demand
for justice.
Peace is not the absence of
conflict
but the presence of
righteousness.
For Bonhoeffer, this conviction
led him to resist the idol of nationalism
that had enthroned Hitler as
Germany’s saviour.
For King, it led him to resist
the idol of white supremacy
that cloaked itself in
American Christianity.
Both knew that the cross of
Christ stands as judgment
on every empire that builds
its peace through violence.
And both understood that peace
must begin
with the conversion of the
human heart
— because only a heart set
free from fear can love its enemies,
and only a heart released from
greed can work for the common good.
So when we pray for peace,
we are not asking God to wave
a wand over the world;
we are asking God to change
us.
To make us into instruments of
that peace
— as courageous, creative, and
costly
as the transformation that turned weapons of war
into the figure of our
Violinist.
Let the waters flow
Amos gives us one of the most
enduring images in Scripture:
“Let justice roll down like
waters,
and righteousness like an
ever-flowing stream.”
Justice, in this vision, is not
a static state of affairs;
it is something that moves,
that surges, that flows.
It is as unstoppable as a river breaking through stone.
And when Jesus later cried out
in Jerusalem,
“Let anyone who is thirsty
come to me,
and let the one who believes
in me drink,”
he added,
“Out of the believer’s
heart shall flow rivers of living water.”
The two images converge.
The living waters of Christ are
the same waters of justice Amos proclaimed.
When the Spirit fills our
hearts,
the stream of righteousness
begins to flow through us and into the world.
This is how peace comes
— not imposed from above, but
rising from within.
It begins in changed hearts
and flows outward into changed
communities.
The river of God’s justice
begins as a spring in the soul.
Hope in a violent world
Friends, we live in a violent
world,
but violence is not the end of
the story.
The last word belongs to God,
and that word is peace.
The Violinist stands as witness
to this hope.
Made from weapons, he now
embodies music.
Shaped by the materials of war,
he has become a sign of
beauty.
He is not naïve — his metal
still bears the marks of its past —
but he stands transformed.
He reminds us that God can redeem
even what seems beyond
redemption.
In him, we see the gospel made
visible:
what once destroyed can, by
grace, be made creative.
And in the cross of Christ,
we see that same pattern
written on the heart of God:
violence transfigured by love, death defeated by life.
This is our faith — that the
love of God is stronger than human hatred,
that peace is stronger than
war,
that hope is stronger than
despair.
A call to act and to hope
So on this Remembrance Sunday,
as we honour the past and face
the present,
let us also commit ourselves
to the future.
Let us remember that peace does
not begin in parliaments or treaties;
it begins in hearts willing to
forgive and to change.
Let us remember that justice
does not roll down automatically;
it flows when people act with
courage and compassion.
Let us remember that hope is
not the absence of fear,
but the refusal to let fear
have the final word.
May we be like The Violinist
— our lives forged in the fire
of human conflict,
yet transformed by grace into
something that sings of peace.
May we be like the rivers of
Amos and the living waters of Christ
— allowing justice and mercy
to flow through us into a thirsty world.
And may we hear, even now, in
the silence between the notes,
the music of the kingdom
— the song of peace that will one day fill the earth.
Amen.
