80 years is a lifetime. 5 years of - when would it end occupation - will have felt like a lifetime and was indeed the end of a life for some. Today, we come together to remember, to reflect, to celebrate, and to re-commit.
I take it as one of the greatest privileges of my ministry to serve you as Bishop for the Channel Islands and to be asked to preach on this very particular 80th Liberation Day. Whilst the United Kingdom marks victory in Europe at this time with street parties and longer pub opening hours, the emotions here and in the other islands of the Bailiwick are much more complex, and of a wholly different magnitude and significance. Victory is one word with power, Liberation is a word of a wholly different order. Only you will ever really know what it meant and felt like to live defiantly under enemy occupation, and even as history reveals complex realities, only Guernsey will ever know what it felt like to be Guernsey under wartime occupation. You hold a memory and a dignity unique among the people of the British Isles.
And for this reason, it is liberating to welcome Your Royal Highness on this important day. Thank you, Ma’am.
The reading from Luke Chapter 4 is Jesus speaking about liberation. He is in his hometown of Nazareth, which is the equivalent of his ‘town church.’ Everybody knows him, just as you all know each other as an island community. ‘This is the carpenter's son’. ‘Who does he think he is’? The people of Nazareth are living under occupation, and they have become used to it. Resistance was there but it had to be subtle so that command and control did not become coercion and crucifixion. They learnt to live with it. They did not go native, but they had to preserve what they could about themselves and manage their time under foreign rule. I suspect this sounds familiar.
It is in this context, that Jesus speaks. He proclaimed liberation. He proclaimed good news to the poor, release for captives, sight for the blind, freedom for the oppressed and a year of the Lord’s favour.
He was not promising freedom from Roman rule, that was not his to give, but the word made flesh was proclaiming liberation from the challenges and occupations of the human condition. This is called the Nazarene manifesto, and it is the vision and hope that placing our trust of God brings. It is counter-cultural, it is non-political and yet it cuts into the very fabric of any society. It is the rebellious hope of which the King has recently spoken. It is the radical stand up to power with love that Pope Francis embodied. It is what we can, if we choose, it is what we can be like.
What are the forces that occupy us today? What are those exercises of power that are motivated by desire or greed, those decisions made by influence over others or decisions dressed up as policy that impact negatively on your common life. In this community, where is the liberation needed, and where are the forces to be resisted?
This beautiful place, this island of special status and opportunity, as you know, also has its challenges so often not seen by the casual tourist. You know where the injustices are that need liberation. If a people once occupied cannot place freedom for all who live here as your first priority, then any society will remain occupied with itself rather than become what it can be. Eighty years on, this day is the chance to look forward as well as back, and to seek a new liberation, a lasting freedom, and to place community first so that all might be free from the tyranny of self. You have the power and the place to model this to a world which, at this moment in political history, is far from home.
Eighty years is a lifetime. How will you occupy your island future? Where is true liberation to be found? Let us make the most of being free, for everyone in Guernsey. This unique story, which dominates your landscape and your narrative, can shape the liberation of lives today. Today, this can be fulfilled in your hearing.
May God bless Guernsey. May God bless this Liberation Day. May God bless the freedom we can enjoy today, and we can share every day.
The Rt Revd Stephen Lake, Bishop of Salisbury and Bishop for the Channel Islands