Our readings this week are:2 Thessalonians 2.1–5,13–17 and Luke 20.27–38.

Here is a thing I believe: you are incredible. You are special, unique, and wonderful; and the world is a better place because you are in it. And if you want to stop reading there, that's fine by me, because you're great.

You may wonder, though, what in particular prompted me to say that today.

Perhaps I'm reacting against the growing tide of nationalism that seems to be rearing its ugly head across the world right now; and perhaps I want to champion individuality over tribalism. This weekend is Remembrance Sunday, and I would love it to be liberated from the taint of triumphalism — to be a real opportunity to remember those whose lives have been cut short by the sheer overwhelming weight of human stupidity and violence.

War. War never changes: an endless tide of brands and ashes — a bloody sea that churns and grinds tragedies into statistics, and unique lives into an homogeneous mass.

Yet each and every one of them was an individual. Some were British, others German, French, American, Ghanaian, Nepalese, Israeli, Palestinian, Ukrainian, Russian, or Korean... Gay, straight, male, female... Buddhists, Sikhs, Hindus, Christians, Muslims, atheists... Some had doctorates, others no qualifications at all. We’ll remember engineers, pilots, infantry, medics, and civilians;  Old people, children, and those in their prime.  Rich and poor.  Pick any of these spectra, or any other (some had blonde hair, others black...), and each and every one of those we remember will have been somewhere slightly different on it (fighting fit or living with PTSD). Humanity contains an infinite number of possibilities and combinations — and each and every one of them is the most perfect expression of an extraordinary, unlikely, glorious individuality.

And on Sunday we remember each of them sacrificed on the altars of false idols: shot, stabbed, blown up; starved, tortured, and murdered because our history is one in which those differences have been feared, used to divide, and to push away in order that wealth, resource, and territory might be hoarded in the arms of a minority for the few brief years we walk this earth.

What an utter waste. And what an utter failure to grasp the point.

Because for all that difference, there is one overwhelming similarity: each and every person is a beloved child of God. And their unique personhood is his precious creation. How dare we overwrite that with our petty, transient notions of who's in and who's out, who is important, and who is cannon fodder?

In our Gospel reading this week, Jesus reminds us that when we join those we remember — standing with them before Him in glory — that those things we thought gave us our identity (he’s working with the example of ‘marital status’) are wiped away. We are revealed for what we are: children not of this world, but ‘of the resurrection’. Defined not by the knocks we take from the flotsam and jetsam of time and space, but by the pure, unwavering purpose, love, and attention of the God who creates us from, into, and for eternity.

That eternal manifestation of God’s deliberate, precise, loving artistry is who you are, and that is why you exist. It is your purpose to realise it. As St. Paul writes, "God chose you as the first fruits for salvation… he called you through our proclamation of the good news, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ."

I long for the day when that truth is realised — when every child of God is honoured and treasured for that reason alone; when each is upheld, valued, and adored — accepted and celebrated — as the particular, glorious, and unique expression they are of the creativity of the God of the universe.

So let’s stop playing the games of those who want us to divide.  Let’s stop listening to the lies that tell us that ‘they’ don’t matter, or don’t deserve to be treated like our equals, or even human beings, whoever ‘they’ are and for whatever reason.  Instead let’s start telling the truth – that every human being is created and loved by God, and for that reason alone precious, and worthy of our time, attention, protection, and generosity.  Let’s be united in our distinctiveness; and not divided by ‘their’ difference.

May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and through grace gave us eternal comfort and good hope, comfort our hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word.