VE Day is a strange kind of celebration, isn’t it? We use the word ‘victory’, and yet there should be nothing triumphalist about today. It’s a quiet, resolute kind of victory. Not the stuff of fireworks and ticker tape, but of poppies and silence. It’s the victory of people who did what had to be done—often at unimaginable cost—so that something worse would not prevail.
We remember today the ordinary men and women of Havant who rose to extraordinary courage. The ones who left these streets and fields to defend freedoms most of us hadn’t realised were quite so fragile until they were under threat. We remember the crew of HMS Havant, who helped rescue nearly 3,000 troops at Dunkirk before she was bombed and sunk just offshore. They were mostly young—many barely out of school—but they died as saviours. And we are still in their debt.
Now, when a preacher starts talking about war, there’s always a risk of sounding either sentimental or smug. I’ll try to avoid both. The Second World War wasn’t a simple story of good guys and bad guys, though the Nazi regime *was* unambiguously evil. It trafficked in hatred, racism, the machinery of genocide—and it needed to be stopped. But that doesn’t make war holy. War is always a sign of human failure. Necessary, sometimes. Noble, even. But holy? No. War is a consequence of sin, not a cure for it.
So how does a preacher speak about God on a day like this?
Well, I’ll tell you. I don’t believe that God is the sort who chooses sides in battles, like some celestial football referee. But I do believe in a God who is stubbornly committed to bringing good out of evil. A God who never wastes suffering. A God who, even in the darkest trenches of human cruelty, plants seeds of hope and redemption. And some of those seeds did bloom.
After the War, something remarkable happened. Europe—bloodied and burned—chose not revenge, but reconciliation. Germans and Frenchmen, who had slaughtered each other twice in thirty years, decided to build something together instead. The European Coal and Steel Community—yes, it sounds like the most boring dinner party ever—became a foundation for peace. Christian Democrats, many of them devout Catholics, saw the moral need not just to avoid another war, but to live as neighbours. It was politics, yes, but it was also grace.
Here in Britain, too, there was a sense of moral reckoning. We had been through the fire together—rationing, bombings, evacuees, grief in every street—and somehow, the country came out of it with a bigger sense of “we.” Not just a nation of individuals, but a common life. From that, we saw the birth of the NHS, the expansion of welfare, the commitment to housing and education. Not perfect, but a real attempt to say: if we can fight and die together, perhaps we can live together a bit better, too.
Now, I’m a preacher, not a politician, so I won’t offer partisan applause. But I will say this: the Kingdom of God, as Jesus described it, is always found in the direction of healing, dignity, justice, and peace. And any time a society takes even a half-step that way—towards inclusion, towards compassion, towards fairness—we’re getting warmer. We’re aligning ourselves with God’s dreams for the world.
And even on the world stage, there were glimmers of light. Britain didn’t cling to empire with guns and garrisons. We saw the tide of history coming in and chose to wade out with some grace. India, Burma, Ceylon—independent not by war, but by negotiation. It’s not often history offers us a choice between conflict and dialogue. But when it does, blessed are the peacemakers.
So what shall we say in anxious times such as ours? When once again, populism is rising, and history seems to be stammering instead of singing? We say this: the world *has* changed. Not enough, not yet—but the seeds planted in the ashes of war are still growing. There *has* been real peace. There *has* been progress. And that is not naïve to say—it is faithful.
We honour the dead best not by polishing their medals but by living their legacy. We don’t worship their sacrifice—we *receive* it. As gift, as responsibility, as a summons to be better stewards of the world they helped to save.
So today, as we sing our hymns and lay our wreaths, let us also pledge ourselves anew to the things that make for peace. Let us renounce hatred, in all its forms—whether it wears a swastika or hides behind polite nationalism. Let us build again, not bunkers, but bonds. Let us trust, not in swords, but in the better angels of our nature, and in the God who calls us—still—to love our enemies, to welcome the stranger, and to beat our swords into ploughshares.
For the war is over. But the work is not.
Amen.
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