Sermon - Looking Love in the Face

Ernest Edward Spears, Frank Wotton Eastlake & Richard Henry Vaughan Thompson

A sermon given during services on Remembrance Sunday 10th November 2024 at St Giles-in-the-Fields based on the text of John 15.9-17 and the stories of some of the men listed on the WW1 memorial at the back of the church. The photographs of Ernest Spears, Frank Eastlake and Richard Thompson were printed in the pew sheet.

 

Hours before he died on the cross, Jesus told his disciples that in its greatest form, love looks like someone laying down their life for their friends. 

Today especially, we look that love in the face. 



This is the face of Ernest Edward Spears. He had just turned nineteen when he died. He was too young to sign up when the First World War broke out one hundred and ten years ago. Since the age of fourteen he had been employed as an Assistant at Holborn Public Library. He lived with his parents at 12 St Giles Buildings, an apartment block on Shorts Gardens. Ernest would have witnessed casualties being brought to the Endell Street Military Hospital nearby – the only such hospital run and staffed entirely by women and which by 1916 was one of the busiest in London, admitting the most seriously injured men, often by cover of darkness. Ernest joined the 12th London Regiment in July 1916. This photograph of him in his uniform and kit must have been taken around that time as he was quickly despatched to the trenches at the upper reaches of the Somme River. I wonder if this picture was sent to Ernest’s parents? What did they see as his face looked out at them? Ernest survived twelve weeks in the trenches before he was killed in action. 



 

This is the face of Frank Wotton Eastlake, who worked with Ernest at the Holborn Public Library, which was located alongside the Town Hall just down the road on High Holborn. A south London boy, he was born and grew up in Camberwell where his father worked for the Post Office. Although you wouldn’t tell from the photographs, Frank was six years older than Ernest. He was one of the three quarters of a million men who had joined the army within eight weeks of war being declared. In this early stage of the war, men like Frank received more training than those like Ernest who signed up later.

Over the next five months, while waiting for equipment and uniforms to be prepared, Frank learned how to fight with a rifle and bayonet. He was sent to France in February 1915 and spent the next eighteen months in the trenches there before he was killed in action at Vimy Ridge on 23rd May 1916.

Perhaps news of Frank’s death was on Ernest’s mind when he signed up six weeks later? In a telegram to Frank’s parents, his Commanding Officer wrote that he was “a lad who knew no fear and whose death was a great loss to the battalion.” Frank was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal. The citation gives us more of an insight into his character, explaining the award of the medal was "for conspicuous gallantry, when he remained in an exposed position on the parapet of a captured enemy trench and threw bombs for upwards of six hours….prevent[ing] a counter-attack."

This is the face of Richard Henry Vaughan Thompson, who was was born in East Sheen and educated at Winchester College and Oxford University where he read law. His uncle was a well-known city solicitor and Richard went to work in his firm – Beachcroft, Thomson & Co. which had offices in Theobalds Road. It was through that local connection that Richard was later elected to Holborn Borough Council. 

Richard married into a wealthy Scottish family. His wife, The Honourable Isabel Shaw was the youngest daughter of a former Member of Parliament who became a Lord of Appeal.

 

The Aberdeen Weekly Journal reported that the young couple married in February 1915 at South Kensington Presbyterian Church at a service with beautiful choral music and a violin concerto played during the signing of the register. 

Five months later, Richard was surrounded by the sound of open warfare on on the frontline. He spent some time in a Red Cross Hospital in Rouen in 1916 with a broken nose but returned to his troops after two weeks. On 1st October a telegram was sent to the couple’s London home informing Isabel of the death of her husband at Thiepval during one of the costliest battles of the Somme. Richard was 32 when he died. Isabel was at her father’s estate in Scotland at the time and didn’t receive the telegram until a week later. 

 

The Holborn & Finsbury Guardian printed an obituary, which explained that Captain Thompson was in command of D Company when he was killed. The Major of his Battalion wrote that he died “while most gallantly leading his company against one of the strongest positions, and I feel I have lost not only, most probably, the finest officer of my battalion, but also a true friend.”

 

The faces of three of the fourteen men named on the Borough of Holborn War Memorial which now hangs at the back of this church - and declares in bold, capital letters that they “died so that Britain might live”.

 

Sons, brothers and husbands. Two librarians and a solicitor cum Borough Councillor. Jobs we don’t necessarily associate with a killer instinct. Men who all worked in the same building and responded to a call to serve their country and who died in France within the space of five months - casualties of The Big Push of 1916 - the most bloody year of the conflict. 

How do you feel when you look into the faces of Ernest, Frank and Richard? 

Sad at the loss of such young lives but also joy that we honour their memory, that their lives have meaning? Respect for their and bravery but also embarrassment that we might not have the courage to do the same? What if these men had died fighting on the losing side? Would you feel any different?

 

The mix of emotions is powerful and complex and transcends any and all moral positions on war and conflict. When we try to explain how we feel, words fail us.

I wonder if the disciples felt the same way when they looked into the face of Jesus as he gave his beautiful sermon on love on the night before he died. The text we heard today. In which he explains what love looks like.

 
That it is bigger than any of us. That it comes from beyond us - a gift from God that binds us to Him and to each other, so powerful that nothing can separate us from it - not even death. It’s there abiding in us all - right now - friends and enemies alike - whether we allow ourselves to feel it or not. That Jesus is that love in human form - and our lives will be filled with unbridled joy if we live the life of love that he lived. Jesus calls his disciples his friends and then says that in its greatest expression, love looks like someone laying down their life for their friends.

 

This Remembrance Sunday as we look at the faces of men like Ernest, Frank and Richard, we remember the sacrifice they made when they took up arms to defend this country.

And we are disarmed as we come face to face with the amazing, transforming, uncomfortable, power of love in its greatest expression.

A love that we so often fail to express, even in the smallest way!

A love that challenges us.
A love that sees us.
A love that forgives us - even at our worst.

A love that picks up our broken pieces and re-members us to it.

The body of Christ.

And sends us out again to love one another as he loves us.