Sermon at Guilsborough ( also delivered  earlier in different form at Hollowell) on 6 .November 2005 and again in Cottesbrooke on  Bible Sunday 23 October 2011
Help us O Lord to become masters of ourselves that we may become the servants of others. Take my lips and speak through them, take our minds and think through them, take our hearts and set them on fire.  Amen
Bible Sunday.  The three basic books.  Kng James, Book of Common Prayer and The Homilies. 
At 1 o’clock in the morning on this day two hundred  and 6 years ago Lieutenant Lapenotiere, a Cornishman with a French sounding name, arrived at the Admiralty in London after a 37 hour journey by coach from Falmouth, with twenty one changes of horses along the way.  He carried a despatch  with him describing  a  Battle off Cape Trafalgar and the death of Nelson in the hour of victory.   
Later that morning he met George III  - access to the monarch was obviously easier in those days -  and he laid out the order of battle on the royal  breakfast  table using a silver muffinier to represent HMS Victory – an object that acts as a sugar caster.  They sell them on ebay I’ve discovered. It’s now in the museum at Liskard in Cornwall,  given by the Lapenotiere  family. 
Against that background, .I hope it won’t be considered irregular  if, rather than looking at the important text in our reading this morning which is so fundamental to our faith,   I draw rather on a passage from the Apocrypha for my text.  
“ Let us now praise famous men and our fathers that begat us….
Leaders of the people by their counsels, and by their knowledge of learning meet for the people.  All these were honoured in their generations and were the glory of their times. “ 
“He’s my hero”.  These days when the cult of celebrity is so much with us, we hear that kind of comment very regularly, or see heroes blazing like media inspired comets across headlines.  It’s become an overused word describing a wide range of achievement, including the sporting prowess of Andrew Strauss and Wayne Rooney. Inevitably some devaluation has set in. We have now moved on to  Superheroes.
Yet for those of us brought up on the Nursery History of England or Our Island Story heroes and  heroines are the warp and woof of our history.  Alfred burning the cakes and then defeating the Danes.  Henry V beating the odds at Agincourt – “Gentlemen in England now abed shall think themselves accursed they were not here.”;   
Queen Elizabeth I  at Tilbury  “ I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman yet I have the heart and stomach of a king “ .  
“Never in the field of human conflict” and, in our thoughts  on last Friday’s anniversary,  “England expects that every man will do his duty”, perhaps the best known battle cry of all.  
Whether its David of David and Goliath or David of Real Madrid, people look for role models in achievement.  In each of us, even if we disclaim it, somewhere inside there lurks that spark of ambition to “do something”. 
Yet these famous men and women, often shrouded in myth, were only human and had their evident frailties.  Alfred forgot the cakes; Henry V had a misspent youth; Winston Churchhill drank and smoked far more than would, I feel sure,  be recommended by the Guilsborough surgery.  
Horatio Nelson  was vain, vindictive and self-promoting.  The idea that  to-day a man with one eye, one arm, a history of disobeying orders, not to mention  a turbulent love life should be put in charge of the destiny of this nation is, of course,   most unlikely. Nelson might have made it, thanks to Disability Legislation, as a messenger at the Admiralty.
Paradoxically, those frailties of human nature often make heroes more real to us.  We want to identify with our role models, to feel that whilst achieving great things, they were or are in some respects like us, making mistakes as we do and subject to the same emotions.   To that extent we understand them and can then admire their deeds. 
But the common factors in all of those whom I have mentioned was first their ability to win and second their ability to make themselves understood and respected  by those whom they led.   Not living in ivory towers, their feet were firmly planted on the ground.  
Nelson won the battle largely because he made sure by personal contact with his officers, and even more important, with his men, that everyone knew what they had to do that day.  So even before he hoisted his signal, they were all aware of what was expected.   Nelson surely also knew that, once begun, battles are won by fighting men not admirals. 
However, what we can’t get away from about most of our heroes is the fact that their actions and achievements are usually the result of aggression or, as in the case of Elizabeth Fry, William Wilkberforce or General William Booth of the Salvation Army, for example, of trying to do something about man’s inhumanity to man.   They made their names being involved with events that we as Christians should be trying to avoid.  
We Christians should  only have one real hero: Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace who taught us that  “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God”.  
The emphasis in our Christian religion is, then, on attributes that do not sit easily with heroes: meekness, humility, poverty,  peacemaking. - the very opposite to those of most of the heroes of our history books, The triumph of our Lord was of a completely different order, over death itself.  
Which brings me to the second part of that passage from the writer of Ecclesiasticus “and some there be which have no memorial; who are perished as though they had never been………………… their bodies are buried in peace but their name liveth for evermore.  Who now remembers the names of the 450 or so British sailors who died along with Nelson at Trafalgar?   We know about Nelson, Collingwood, Hardy and Lapenotiere of the silver muffineer.  But when push came to shove as they say, the men who made it happen are perished as though they had never been.  But collectively their deeds live on.  
Most of us - sorry about that - are not going to end up buried in St. Paul’s or do anything that might be remotely regarded as heroic in the classical sense of that word. We won’t get the chance to be in the right place at the right time for our country.  But then life would be intolerable if we were all competing wanting t perform heroic deeds.   Think of the clashing egos! 
We are playing in a different ball game; we are playing get into the Kingdom of Heaven.   We know what the rules are.  Through his teaching in his parables, through his death and resurrection, Our Lord demonstrated to us what we have do.  Each of us, by leading a Christian life, can make an impact on the society in which we live:  who sweeps a room, as for thy laws or even embroiders a kneeler for the church,  makes that and the action fine. “  We can all aim to leave this world a better place, whilst preparing for the next.   For each of us is unique in the sight of God who has given us talents.
An d our New Testament reading today gives us the two fundamental planks on which to base our lives: to have God in our minds and our neighbours. 
By all means let’s look to the deeds of heroes to inspire us: we can communicate with others and try to inspire like Nelson, cultivate the caring attitude of a Florence Nightingale, be as compassionate as Elizabeth Fry, as firm in the face of adversity as Winston Churchill.   
And  yet when the time comes to draw our last breath and our parts  as players are over,  I pray that all us of will be able to say as confidently as Horatio Nelson, “Thank God I have done my duty.” 
 
