May 25, 2014

“They hate us more than they love life.”

I don’t get to read him as often as I like, or as often as I should, but I have long been a fan of New York Times writer Thomas Friedman.  Friedman reports on news and issues impacting life in the Mid-East and his columns in the early days after 9-11 were incredibly profound to my mind.   In one of those timely columns, Friedman, in seeking to explain the terrorist’s mindset, wrote the line that has stayed with me ever since I first read it, almost thirteen years ago.  “They hate us more than they love life.”

This is the weekend set aside in our national calendars to remember those who, in the service of our nation, gave their all that we might know the wonderful life we glory in each day in this, the freest nation in all of human history. 

Freedom is the very human quality and right which has been used and gloried in as well as misused, abused and misunderstood throughout time.   In the creation stories from Genesis which we look to for our clues to life’s meaning and direction, we remember God blessing Adam and Eve with freedom and all they needed in life, all but one thing, the fruits of that one large apple tree in the middle of creation.  We know what happens next, the first act of self-worship, an experience of the human condition that continues on until even today for all of us.

This being Memorial Day weekend in our nation, and given our many levels of freedom, there are a few things we can count on happening each Memorial Day weekend.   Friday morning’s Today Show will include a story on the price of gasoline and how that will impact people’s travel plans this weekend.  The six o’clock news will have a reporter talking about how crowded the beaches are at Hammonasset Park along the shoreline.  And a good number of faithful people will not be in church today.

You see, while we all agree that sacrifice is a good and noble quality, and while we’re grateful for the sacrifices of others, there are so many other things to do than take time to reflect on what all that means for us today.  In our desire to glory in the good weather and the good life, and to enjoy wonderful times of hospitality and reunion with family and friends, we will drink deeply from the well of freedom and glory in its wonder. 

In their own special ways, our two sacred readings today, one written in 1863 and the other proclaimed two thousand years ago, speak to us with incredible eloquence of the importance of sacrifice.  Both make mention of those who have sacrificed, or in Jesus’ case, soon will sacrifice, that others may know the wonder and promise of living.

We live each day because of the sacrifice of others.  Whether it be the noble, last full measure of sacrifice that Lincoln speaks to in the Gettysburg Address and which we remember on every Good Friday, or the smaller sacrifices that others, parents, teachers, friends and others make so that we can know life as we do.

In our Communion liturgy, we remember the sacrifice and commands of Jesus—Do this in remembrance of me.  And on Memorial Day weekend, we are called to remember a similar sacrifice and to live lives that honor that remembrance and our grateful hearts.

I made mention of this a few weeks ago, but it deserves repeating today.  I knew back in 1998 that given Steven Spielberg’s masterful gift in cinema, that “Saving Private Ryan,” was going to be a watershed film in American film history.  And so on a warm summer day, I was at the first screening of the film.  The film opens with an American flag waving in the sky, and then we watch an older gentleman, with his wife, children and grandchildren behind him, walking into the American cemetery in Normandy France.  He walks ahead of them, increasing his pace and leaving them behind, weaving his way through the acres of crosses and grave markers, seeking the one grave amid the thousands there he longs to see and honor.  Falling to his knees, the tears flow.  The camera focuses on his eyes and we are transported back to all the horror of the D-Day invasion on June 6, 1944.  

It is a film that I suspect most all of us are familiar with and a film I am unable to turn away from.   And toward the end, as the soldiers have struggled and suffered to fulfill the mission of getting Private James Ryan home safely, their leader, Captain Miller is shot.   As he labors and as death is soon to come, he grabs Private Ryan, looks him in the eye, and says, “James, earn this…….earn it.” 

Those words, “Earn this…..earn it” both haunt and inspire James Ryan throughout his life, as they should do to us this day. 

Far too many in the world today have swallowed and claimed as their own, the myth of the self-made man or woman.  Far too many among us, and likely including some of us, live with the illusion that all we have created, achieved, or acquired is the result exclusively of our hard work and individual effort.  We can so easily forget the sacrifices and efforts of so many in our lives who often quietly and kindly helped us grow. 

But then Captain Miller’s words to Private Ryan, President Lincoln’s inspired reminder, and the cross which is at the very center of our sacred space, serve to remind us of the sacrifices made for us and the call to us to “do this in remembrance of me.”

We honor the memory of those who have gone before us, who have made sacrifices, big and small, when we live lives that inspire others to consider the importance of sacrifice in the well lived life.  Lincoln says it so memorably, “It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” 

Indeed, how we live our lives as a consequence of war is the final judgment on the sacrifices made there.  The story is told of two young men, best friends since they played shortstop and 2nd base on the same Little League team.   They were inseparable, whether it be Little League baseball, camping with the Boy Scouts, or being in the church youth group together.  War came to their nation’s borders and together, they enlisted, hopeful and determined to serve side by side in their nation’s service.  Tragically, only one young man came home alive.

The parents of the dead soldier grieved hard and long, struggling for a way to remember their beloved son.  At last, they came up with a solution, a very visible solution to remember and honor their son’s life and sacrifice.  They paid for a stained glass window in their church in their son’s memory, a window which included today’s Gospel verse, “Greater love than this has no one, to lay down their life for another.”

The day came when the window was installed and a special service was held to remember the soldier and his sacrifice and dedicate the window to his memory.  At the end of a long and emotional day, the parents of the young man still alive arrived home, spent from the emotion of the day.  Over dinner that night, the wife asked her husband, “What should we give?”  Confused, the husband responded, “they gave the window in memory of their son.”   “I know,” she says.  “They gave the window in memory of their son who is now dead.  What should we be giving in thanksgiving for our son who is alive?”  (Copenhaver, To Begin at the Beginning,)

On a day and weekend set apart in our nation, and at a time when we are ever aware and vigilant regarding those “who hate us more than they love life,” let us find the ways to live our lives so that we, to quote the late William Sloane Coffin, “honor the warriors without celebrating war.”  Let us find the ways to live lives that honor, value and witness to others the importance of making sacrifices in the course of our daily living so that our ever grateful hearts will be eager to find ways to honor the blessings of God we know.  And let us find the ways to blend both the call of Jesus Christ to follow in faith and our moral obligation to be those who are, as President Lincoln calls us to be, “dedicated to the unfinished work those who have fought have so far nobly advanced.”  Amen.