160th (Wearside) Brigade

We have come here today to dedicate a memorial Standard in honour of those who served King and Country in the 160^th (Wearside) Brigade. It is a new Standard, and it bears the motto of the Royal Field Artillery, which translates from the Latin UBIQUE QUO FAS ET GLORIA DUCUNT as ‘Everywhere sacred duty and glory lead’. But in your order of service you will also find a coat of arms drawn up and adopted by those men themselves. On the shield we read the Morse code for the letters ‘I’ and ‘D’ which stand for ‘the Idle and Dissolute’. Above the shield there is a very large bottle of port. The shield’s supporters are a horse, symbol of the gambler; and a woman wearing only stockings and a diaphanous negligee, standing on a money bag, and holding a glass and a tiny captive man in her hands. Between the stallion and the prostitute we read the Greek motto KLEPTO – ‘I steal’.

Which representation is true? By which ought we to remember those Wearside men? By which would we want to be remembered ourselves?

The truth is to be found not in one or the other symbol, nor even somewhere in between, but in holding these two images in tension.

According to Saint John, the first sign by which Jesus reveals his glory is providing the equivalent of 800 bottles of wine, give or take, to keep a village-wide wedding celebration going. This, a sign of heaven breaking into earth. As his ministry unfolds, we see Jesus call fishermen and tax collectors alike from their employment, to join him at so many tables that he was widely accused of being a glutton and a drunkard. Jesus and his disciples are the original Idle and Dissolute brigade. He surrounds himself with the company of publicans – a term that refers to those who had bought into the privatisation of the tax system in hope of making a profit, the ultimate gamblers of their time – and prostitutes. Indeed, he is so at home in the company of disreputable women that even women of good reputation were wrongly accused: on no evidence in the Gospels whatsoever, no less a figure than a Pope would later proclaim that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. And while stealing is generally frowned upon in the Bible, Jesus describes himself as having tied up a strong man in order to steal from him: referring to stealing back from the devil what this shadowy figure had stolen from men, women, and children, including health and hope and a future.

Jesus, I think, would have been happy to operate under the coat of arms of the 160^th (Wearside) Brigade. And yet he is clear that he went wherever the Father sent him, doing only what he saw the Father doing, with the result that people glorified God. In other words, Jesus holds UBIQUE QUO FAS ET GLORIA DUCUNT and KLEPTO in dynamic tension, and it is within that tension that heaven invades earth and claims it back for us.

We see this, too, in our servicemen and women at their best, giving of themselves in order to steal back a stolen future for the most desperate women, children, and men, whose lives have been oppressed by self-proclaimed ‘strong men’ today. And, for all that was disastrous and tragic about the First World War, we see it in the service rendered by those we honour today.

We have come here today because in one way or another we are the heirs of the 160^th (Wearside) Brigade. And while we come to dedicate a memorial Standard, we also come to dedicate ourselves before God, to live within the tension: to respond to the call of sacred duty and glory, to live a life that is both Idle and Dissolute. May you know the truth that is only found in that place, and may the truth set you free. Amen.