Worship - 9 November 2025

Summary of this week's theme

The Anglo-American cemetery in Mahon holds quite a few American sailors from the 18th and 19th centuries. Why did they die here? Because they served in the fledgling U.S. Navy, protecting not only American interests but all nations’ ships from North African pirates. They served their country, but they also served the common good — the wellbeing of all who depended on safe passage through the Mediterranean. 

A century later, my grandfather joined the Royal Navy. Before that, he had been a footman — ‘in service’ in the old sense. When war came, his new service took him into a submarine, then into captivity, and eventually on a long march from Italy to Poland. His story, and those of the sailors buried here, remind us that those who serve in the armed forces often do so not for their own freedom, but for the freedom of others. 

It’s common to say that we remember those who fought and died for our freedom. Yet the truth is broader and nobler: they fought for people they did not know, in lands far from home. Their courage embodied a commitment to the common good — something greater than possessiveness or nationalism.  My grandfather created a diary of his experience as a prisoner of war, in which he recalled his dismay at the looting by some liberated soldiers. Victory, he believed, should reflect the values for which they had fought — decency, restraint, and integrity.

The common good sometimes asks us to give something up: possessions, privileges, even a measure of freedom, for the sake of others.  The Gospel reminds us that we are tenants, not owners, of what we hold — even of one another. We are entrusted to each other for a time. Imagine waking each day with the thought: Here is a person lent to me. How can I honour that trust today? Such thinking might turn fear into compassion and rivalry into care. 

In 1963, Martin Luther King wrote, “He is a part of me and I am a part of him. His agony diminishes me, and his salvation enlarges me.” Every major faith teaches the same truth: love your neighbour, care for the stranger, do no harm.  Those who rest in the Anglo-American cemetery, and those whose service we remember at this time, remind us that once people believed deeply in something greater than self-interest. To remember them truly is to uphold that spirit of shared humanity and peace.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.