Remembrance Day

Remembrance Day is coming up - always an interesting time for a pacifist, and especially a pacifist pastor of some not-so-pacifist but very beautiful people!

I have a great deal of respect for those who took/take their duties to their country so seriously that they were willing to put their lives on the line for it. Their motives, in many cases, were noble. I'm also aware that pacifists (or whatever you want to call us) are lousy at honoring veterans.

That said, the rhetoric often used around Remembrance Day troubles me. "We need to honor those people who fought and died for our freedom." That is the line I often hear. Here are a few things I find troubling about it:
First, these people not only fought and sometimes died for the peace and freedom we enjoy; they also killed for it. Remembrance Day rhetoric tends to hide that fact.
Second, take a look at the peace and freedom we enjoy. Would you ask someone to kill on your behalf so you could have this? Is it that important? That peace and freedom which counts in the NT is that which was purchased for us by the Lord Jesus Christ when he chose to die at the hands of his enemies.
Third, as Christians our citizenship is first and foremost in the Kingdom of God - not Canada or any other country. If we take this at all seriously, we can never pray for just our veterans - we must also then pray for those whom our troops are fighting, and for the widows and orphans of the men whom our soldiers kill.
Fourth, as Christians we say we believe that we have peace with God and others through Jesus' sacrifice of his own life on the cross at the hands of his enemies. That kind of understanding of peace runs clean contrary to the rhetoric of the Pax Romana of the first century. According to the Empire, peace came to the people through the military might and administrative abilities of the Empire, symbolized in whoever the current Caesar was. For Paul to write to the Colossians (for example), "Grace and peace to you from God our Father" was to directly contradict the claims of the Empire. Is it too much to imagine that that Christian claim still runs contrary to what the world tells us about how peace is made and who makes it?

"What do I communicate to a man about the love of God by being willing to consider him an enemy? What do I say about personal responsibility by agreeing to consider him my enemy when it is only the hazard of birth that causes us to live under different flags? What do I say about forgiveness if I punish him for the sins of his rulers? How is it reconcilable with the gospel - good news - for the last word in my estimate of any man to be that, in a case of extreme conflict, it could be my duty to sacrifice his life for the sake of my nation, my security, or the political order which I prefer?" (J.H. Yoder, The Political Axioms of the Sermon on the Mount)

What do you think? What does it mean for followers of the crucified Lord to honor our veterans and take part in Remembrance Day?
Shalom (and I mean it),
David