For many years, he was the Chaplin General of the Canadian Armed Forces, and he was a very close friend of my late father. The Reverend Ray Cunningham served this country faithfully through the wars, by guiding chaplains and being a representative on days such as this. Ray was a wonderful man! Many times over the years, he and I spoke at length about his experience as a chaplain with the Canadian Forces. He once made this rather profound statement, “If there was a biblical text that should apply to the Canadian forces, it is Psalm 130. The more I reflected on that over the years, the more I realize how he was correct. There is something about that text that goes right to the heart of all the things that represent our Armed Forces.
It is one of the great Psalms of all time, written some 700 years before the birth of Jesus Christ when the nation of Israel was divided, between the north and the south. In fact there were two monarchs ruling at the same time. It was a time of confusion, sedition, and violence; the Psalmist wondered what had gone wrong. Then, in these profound words he begins to express all the things that manifest themselves in this incredible Psalm: lament, forgiveness, hope, redemption, patience. All of these great themes emerge from his words. He begins with a profound lament: “Out of the depths I have cried unto Thee, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice, and let Thine ears be attentive to the voice of my prayers. Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord. Hear me! Hear me!”
How many times throughout the history of humanity has that very same lament arisen? How many conditions of the human being have caused people to cry, “Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord. Lord, hear me! Hear me! Hear my prayers! This is the depth! This is my lament! This is my moment of need!” Those who have found themselves involved in war over the years, the lament has been an integral part of their experience. It is part of the music whereby we remember those who laid down their lives in sacrifice. It is a profound statement of the reality of the human condition when confronted by war: “Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord” has been the mantra of those who have found themselves suffering. Today, to steer us through these memories within our own nation of Canada and within our own church I want to share with you some stories that profoundly speak of the Psalm, but all from a Canadian experience.
The first comes from the book Battle Lines, written in the form of a letter in 1916 by a Newfoundlander by the name of Captain George Hicks. Before Newfoundland joined Confederation, the Newfoundland Regiment was a part of the British military, and it served faithfully, solidly and committedly in World War I. At Beaumont-Hamel, during the Battle of the Somme, Captain Hicks wrote of his experience. If this is not “out of the depths” I don’t know what is!
We were supposed to leave our trenches at 7:30 am, but the time was postponed to 8:45. We were told the reason for the delay was that the Brigadier and Colonel Hadder weren’t able to get a clear picture of the situation. I believe now that they knew that the enemy was ready and waiting. Prior to July 1st, two raiding parties had been sent out to the German barbed wire and cut gaps that later proved not to be very effective. They did not capture any enemy prisoners, which showed that they were ready and waiting for our attack. Rocks had been whitewashed and placed from the reserved trenches to the front line so that the men wouldn’t make any mistakes in getting through the gaps in the barbed wire. The order was given at 8:45 am that the Newfoundland Regiment will advance. A whistle sounded, and the men climbed up from the trenches in a single file. It is worth noting here that each soldier was burdened down with heavy equipment consisting of mills, shovels, pickaxes, ammunition, regulation kit, water bottles and even ladders. Each man was also issued a tin star, which was put on his back. The idea for this was that the British could trace the progress of the men by the glinting of the stars. Of course, it backfired, as they could be seen by the enemy and were clear targets. As the men marched off towards these gaps in the barbed wire in single file, they were picked off by the German machine gun fire and the artillery. The gap filled with dead bodies. Those who did not get through were mowed down on No Man’s Land; there was no British protection fire either. The impression given the men was that this push would be a quick walkover with no opposition. The Newfoundlanders were held up at the German barbed wire, and were sitting ducks to the enemy. With their field glasses, the enemy could aim accurately on the advancing army. I lead my platoon towards the gap in the wire, and knew that before I was shot in the shoulder, the bullet entering just above the lung and through my back, that now there was nothing more I could do. I was sitting down when my Sergeant rushed over to see if he could do anything. I told him I could make it on my own, but to lead the men on, and of course he was shot and didn’t survive.
What hell that that must have been! “Out of the depths I have cried unto Thee, O Lord! Lord, hear my voice, and let Thine ears be attentive to the voice of my prayers!” For so many, the reality of war is the reality of the depths. Psalm 130 speaks it all! But this is not all that is in the Psalm.
There is also a profound sense of forgiveness. The writer of the Psalm thought that maybe he had done something wrong, or maybe the nation had done something wrong that had thrown them into the midst of all this. There were enemies and scapegoats and finger pointing, and yet there was a need deep within the soul of the psalmist for forgiveness. They can call on the Lord, and “there is forgiveness in You” writes the Psalmist, “that Thou mayest be revered.” There is forgiveness in you, O God! You see, the positive part of a Remembrance Service is that we remember sacrifice, we remember those who gave their lives, we remember the camaraderie, the courage, the pain. We remember The Armistice, the peace, seventy years ago, we remember the end of one of the great World Wars. We remember, and it is good. Remembering can also bring back old hostilities. It can cause us to forget the humanity of the other, to forget that in fact all of humanity when war occurs cries out of the depths, and we need forgiveness.
In a story of some redemption, I read not long ago about a very famous German pilot named Baron von Werra. He flew over the Battle of Britain. He brought down British and Royal Canadian Air Force planes. Eventually, he was shot down and landed in Kent in September 1940. Von Werra was arrested and interrogated. He always wanted to escape, and escape he did. Having got caught again in the south of England, they decided to send him to the north of England where they felt he couldn’t escape in the Lancashire veldt. So they held him there, and he escaped again! Finally, he was taken down to the south of England, to East Anglia, where he was held again, and he escaped again! So frustrated were they with von Werra that they decided that they should send him to Canada. They brought him to Lake Ontario, incarcerated him here and interrogated him, and he escaped! He went to Smiths Falls, where he was incarcerated again, and he escaped! He crossed over to Ogdensburg in northern New York State and there, because the United States were not part of the Allied Forces at that time, he was free to go to New York to the German Consulate, who sent him to Brazil, who sent him to Barcelona, who sent him to Rome, and back to Germany. Here is where it gets interesting. Once von Werra got back to Germany he wrote a very famous piece entitled Miene Flucht aus England (My Escape from England). This was eventually presented to the German High Command. They read what von Werra wrote and afterwards concluded that because he had been treated so well and interrogated so fairly, that the Germans should adopt the same methodology. While not across the board, it had a profound effect on saving Allied lives and helping those who were incarcerated, the irony being that it was someone from the other side who brought about a change that saved lives. Let us never forget the common humanity that is part of war!
There is also a need for the psalmist to hope. He says, “My hope is in the Lord. My redemption is in the Lord.” It is this hope that spurred him on to believe that what had been broken and fractured would eventually be united and mended. He hoped for a common monarchy. He hoped for a time of peace. He hoped for an end of war and division. He held out hope even when everything seemed hopeless.
Last year, I was given a book by a Canadian author Ted Barris. It is his account of the very famous story of The Great Escape. Most of us have seen the movie, and cannot ever forget Steve McQueen and his motorbike! But there is far more to that story than meets the eye – far more of a Canadian role than most people know. In writing about this, Ted Barris summed up the story of The Great Escape in his book with this:
Here are the facts of the escape. On the night of March 24th, 1944 eighty commonwealth air officers crawled through a 360 foot long tunnel and slipped into the darkness of a pine forest beyond the wire of the north compound of Stalag Luft III near Sagan, Poland. The intricate breakout more than a year in the making involved as many as two thousand prisoners of war and extraordinary co-ordination, and battle of wits inconceivable for the times. As dawn broke on March 25th however, Nazi guards outside the compound spotted prisoners emerging from the exit hole, set off an alarm, and over the next few days managed to recapture all but three of the escapees. In a rage over the incident, Adolf Hitler called for the execution of all the escapees. Instead, because of the Luftwaffe, the death list was adjusted downwards. Fifty commonwealth air officers were executed, the perpetrators claiming the prisoners were shot while attempting to escape Gestapo custody. Their bodies were cremated and buried in a remote corner of the Stalag Luft III grounds to hide the truth.
What is significant about all this is that Canadians were at the centre of the escape - hardly getting any billing in Hollywood! The reality was they were there: Flight Lieutenant Ogilvy, Flight Lieutenant James Crystal from Greenwood, Nova Scotia, Flight Officer Gordon Kidder, and others. Then there was the famous Flying Officer Wally Floody, the engineer who designed all the tunnels to escape, and who eventually received the OBE in the United Kingdom.
Here is what is profound about this, namely that as Barris points out, all of those who tried to escape knew they were risking their lives. They knew that if they had remained where they were they might have been able to see out the war, but they knew that by trying to escape they could face persecution and even death. Why did they do it? They did it to give hope to all those who continued to be incarcerated that freedom was possible. They believed that there could be redemption, and risked everything for the sake of holding out the hope for others. Our faith is built on that hope. Our own convictions about the Cross of Jesus Christ are predicated on the profound belief that it is through sacrifice that we receive redemption, that it is through self-giving that we receive hope, that it is through dying that we have life. Like the psalmist, they hope in the Word of the Lord. Those Canadians held out a hope for others, and some of them paid the price.
There is also this profound sense of waiting that you find within this Psalm. The psalmist writes, “I wait for the Lord more than those who are the watchmen waiting for the morning. I am waiting for the Lord, my soul doth wait.” John of the Cross said that all Christians are really like expectant mothers: we are all waiting for something new to be born, something new to arrive. There is a sense in which from all of those that have gone before there is a need for us also to wait on the Lord. But waiting is not passive; waiting is not just sitting back. It is the expectation that there can and will be a better world. The story of remembering those who have cried from out of the depth causes us to understand the nature of the sacrifice that brought us to this point. The very virtues that we have in our country and in our nation – the freedom to change governments easily to the ability to live in peace with our neighbor wherever they are from – have all been borne from the cost to others, but still we wait for a better world and we hope. We see the conflict and the demise of others, we see those who flee from tyranny and from oppression, and we pray like the psalmist again. Out of our depths we cry, “O Lord, hear our voice.” A prayer of faith.
One of the greatest poets of all time, John Milton, loved Psalm 130, and when he was becoming blind, wrote a poem about his struggle with darkness. It is his cry, but a cry of hope and of faith. Milton wrote these immortal words:
When I consider how my life is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker and present
My true account, lest He returning chide
“Does God exact day labour light denied?”
I fondly ask. But patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replied “God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts. Who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly, Thousands at his bidding speed,
In post o’er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait.
We wait for a better day, but we wait knowing that those who have gone before us have paved the way. For that we should remember them. “Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice. Let thine ears be attentive to my prayers.” Amen.