We are privileged to share with you the address delivered at this year's Remembrance Service by Chaplain Ed Barker (Hon.).

The most radical part of the reading we just heard refers to how God presented Christ, his only son, as a sacrifice of atonement for all of us, through the shedding of his blood. It is difficult to imagine a more fitting verse for this season of Remembrance. It is explicitly about sacrifice. Christ sacrificed his life on the cross, once, for all, for us. The Bible elsewhere tells us that greater love has no man, than to lay down his life for his friends. To shed his blood, to die, so that others might live. Sacrifice ought to be at the forefront of our minds on Remembrance Sunday, the act of giving up something that is precious to us for a higher purpose.

WWI, the reason why we instituted Remembrance, is now over 100 years ago, but still feels very much with us. In this chapel we are surrounded by its consequences. It is no exaggeration to say that the Loretto community was devasted by the war. Inscribed on the wall at the other end of this chapel are the names of 148 Lorettonians who sacrificed themselves during the conflict. This is a terrible number, made all the more appalling by the knowledge that the school at that time only numbered around 130 boys. More than the entire population of the school, the flower of a generation, were wiped out, in the mud of Northern France, in the dust at Gallipoli and in the icy waters of the Atlantic. They range in age from 17 to 68, including runners, farmers, civil servants, theatre critics, musicians, doctors, and a staggering eight heads of school. As the memorial says, all they had, they gave.

But this service the Lorettonian I am going to talk about is one of many who embodies the idea of sacrifice, and he was a teacher.

F.G. Lemmey had been on the staff at Loretto for twenty years as a science teacher. He was a fifth form tutor, and taught Chemistry and Physics to the sixth form. He lived in the buildings next to Newfield, in what is now the Musselburgh Nature Kindergarten. As one might expect from a teacher with such long service to the school, he had developed a relationship of great affection with his students, who loved him for his eccentricities; from his devotion to his fox terrier dogs, to his long and patient practising of the cello, to his never ending battle with the weeds on his lawn at the back of Newfield. His students said of him that in whatever he took up, he never flagged. No discouragements could prevent him from doing his work sincerely and honestly. A kind man, and one of integrity. As his obituary in the Lorettonian said, Mr Lemmey seemed to be a crucial part of the place, part of the fabric of Loretto.

As you might expect, for someone who had sat weekly for twenty years in this very chapel, when war broke out in 1914 Mr Lemmey, at 44, was well past military conscription age. He also suffered from Rheumatism. He could have sat out the war honourably and peacefully, in his comfortable life here at the school. But in addition to kindness and integrity, Mr Lemmey lived the Loretto values of tenacity and loyalty. Despite having no military background, he first signed up as an officer in the school’s CCF and by ‘untiring industry, became thoroughly efficient in a few weeks.’

The CCF was not playing games at this point; the young cadets being trained on the playing fields would soon all find themselves fighting the war, and the Lorettonian stated that ‘there are officers at the front who remember with gratitude the excellent grounding in squad and company drill and tactical schemes that they got from Mr Lemmey in this one term.’

But as he trained cohorts of young men, as he came to master the elements of drill and infantry training, he felt it was his duty to go to the front himself. With great difficulty, he obtained a commission with the Royal Scots, sacrificed his happy, comfortable, familiar life here, and went to be with the young people he had trained. The Lorettonian said his value was soon recognised, that no young officer had a better knowledge of his work, and all had the greatest respect for his thoroughness, his unselfishness and courage. This is a man who lived the Lorettonian values, and lived them right up until the end, sacrificing his life for others on 14th July 1916 in Northern France.

This willingness to sacrifice yourself so that others might live is not an abstract virtue, or something that belongs in the history books, but a living reminder that in the darkest of places, where man’s inhumanity to man is at its height, love, the greatest love of self sacrifice, can shine through.

Mr Lemmey’s story reminded me of someone I knew, a man called Cpl Matthew Stenton. I joined the Army when I was 23 years old, I went through Sandhurst and then I joined my regiment, The Royal Dragoon Guards. It was a tank regiment, and part of my training was six months on how to be a commander of a troop of vehicles. We young officers did that course with the more experienced Cpls, and Matthew Stenton was on my course.

One of the things we had to do regularly was set up our radios in the tank. This involved a lot of numbers and a lot of code, and those that know me know that maths isn’t my strong point. My abiding memory of Cpl Stenton was his frequent kindness to me, setting up my radio when the staff weren’t looking, so that I wouldn’t look bad. At the end of training interviews he emerged beaming into the corridor – he had come top of the course. I shook his hand and wished him well. We were both being shipped out to Afghanistan, and he was going a week before me. I’ll see you out there, I said. But I never did.

On the evening of 21st July 2010, Cpl Stenton was in command of a vehicle in the Lashkar Gah region of Helmand province. Some soldiers in the Scots Guards had been ambushed by the Taliban, were pinned down in the open, and had taken casualties. In order for the casualties to be extracted, Cpl Stenton manoeuvred his vehicle in front of the injured and engaged the enemy. In doing so, he himself was shot and killed. He was 24 years old - only 6 years older than the sixth form here. He sacrificed himself, so that others may live.

So what are we to do with the stories of these men, and the sacrifice of hundred, thousands, even millions like them through the conflicts of the world? Well, the first thing to do is to remember them. Remember them.

The second is to remember that we as humans have this capacity to sacrifice because we have confidence in something higher than ourselves. We, as I have been telling the school this term, are called to live by a set of values. Without confidence in our values, without an assurance that what we live for is worth dying for, we have no reason to sacrifice.

Cpl Stenton lived and breathed his regiment, his friends, his family and his country, the things that he felt were worth sacrificing for. But there is a higher set of values. The sacrifices we remember today point to the ultimate sacrifice, one that we can have complete and utter, 100% confidence in, the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. That when we were still far off, in trouble, pinned down by the darkness of this world, God came to us, and through the shedding of his blood, sacrificed himself for us.

That is a sacrifice in which I had confidence in Afghanistan when I led my troops into battle, and it is one that I have confidence in now as your chaplain. I will leave you with the inscription that is on the grave of Mr Lemmey, far away from the warm glow of Loretto’s yellow buildings, far away from the wind coming in on Newfield from the North Sea, far away from the skirl of the pipes echoing across the Ash court. Like all Loretto teachers, he was a scholar, so it is in Latin:

SCIO RESURRECTURUM IN RESURRECTIONE ULTIMO ILLO DIE

I know, that he will rise again in the resurrection on that final day.

To understand sacrifice, we must remember this, and remember them.