Memorial Day 2021

I have always found days like this difficult as a pastor, caught between the civil attitude of celebration and the spiritual posture of observance.

I am having a cookout with friends today. And honestly, that has been my only thought toward today for weeks. What will I cook? Can we accommodate my sister-in-law with anything other than an invitation to cut our lawn with her teeth? Will my mother-in-law show up uninvited?

Not until I sat down to write this message did I ever give any thought to what this day means. And that is really sad because I come from a family with a proud military history. My grandfather served in the Army and fought in the Korean War. His son, my uncle, was one of the fortunate few Marines to return from Viet Nam, and spent the rest of his military career are a Drill Instructor, ending with the rank of Sergeant Major. Boy, when I told him that I wanted to join the Army he gave me hell. “You don’t want to be in the Army. You want to be a Marine!!!”

Do you find yourself in the tension between celebration and observance today?

My hunch is that it depends on whether or not you served in the armed forces or if your family has lost someone to military service.

Whether you have that tension or not, many of us will go about our day, today, will a celebratory attitude. Most of us won’t even realize that’s a problem. And make no mistake: from a biblical point of view, feeling celebratory on a day such as this is a problem. Why? It comes down to the difference between celebration and observance.

Celebration vs Observance

One the one hand, we celebrate our heroes. We LOVE heroes! Just think about how we tell stories. There’s almost always a problem and a hero to overcome it. And there’s literally an entire entertainment genre exclusively dedicated to this: Comics.

We’ve got Superman, Spiderman, Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel, Captain America, Black Panther, and literally hundreds, if not thousands, more iterations on the “hero.”

Even outside of that genre, we pit heroes against villains, good against evil, right against wrong. And there’s nothing wrong with that in and of itself. Our entire religious worldview as Christians is built upon the belief that good WILL triumph over evil, our Hero WILL win out over our Villain, and that right and wrong ultimately matter in the cosmic order.

Even Jesus seemed to celebrate the hero idea, though I don’t think he would have called it that. He certainly gave us the seed that grew into one o our main tenets of sacrifice though:

John 15:13 LEB

No one has greater love than this: that someone lay down his life for his friends.

Part of the reason I think we get caught up in the celebration mentality on a day like Memorial Day is that we have such a need for heroes in this often terrible existence that we can’t help but feel overwhelmed when we consider the “ultimate sacrifice:” laying down one’s life in service to others.

One the other hand, we observe the losses we experience because of the conflict that requires heroes in the first place. We observe on a day like to day because we need to stop and embrace our pain. We have a need to stop and remember that heroes become heroes not because things are great but because something is terribly wrong.

I think part of our conflict between celebration and observation on Memorial Day occurs because we, as Americans, have an extremely hard time stopping. We have a hard time just slowing down and experiencing what is going on in the moment. And on a day like today, what is going on is the stark remembrance that war and military conflict cost a whole lot more than money. And we don’t want to stop to really remember that because it hurts.

And it hurts so much because, in part, living in a world where laying down one’s life for a friend is so counter to God’s desire for creation. Whatever you believe about how the world started, all Christians believe that God is working to bring about a peaceful and harmonious resolution to the chaotic mess we’ve made of things.

Peace. God desires peace.

Biblical peace is far ore than merely the absence of warfare, though I think we might take that these days. The peace that Jesus offers where ever he ministered encompassed the Jewish idea of peace, shalom, which was much, much more than just a lack of violence. Shalom literally mean well-being and involves health, prosperity, security, friendship, and salvation.

The Hebrew Bible Prophets made peace their central eschatological expectation. They believed that the Messiah would end warfare, proclaim peace thoughout the land. Just one example comes in Isaiah, but this sentiment is littered all over the prophetic witness:

Is 2:4

He shall judge between the nations and he shall arbitrate for many peoples. They shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks. A nation shall not lift up a sword against a nation, and they shall not learn war again.

Christians have long viewed Jesus as the ones the prophets spoke about. And, indeed, he gave a foretaste of that eschatological shalom by offering acceptance and community to outsiders, caring and healing, easing suffering for the afflicted. Jesus also gave a foretaste of this eternal shalom by giving the gift of salvation through his ultimate sacrifice.

It was just a foretaste of what is to come because instead of bringing unity, Jesus divided families. Instead of destroying Israels enemies, he preached non-violence and rejected the revolutionaries that wanted to overthrow the Roman rule. Instead of firmly establishing the kingdom of God, one where diversity, unity, and peace are automatic, Jesus started the work that God him violently murdered at the hands of people that he told his followers to love and forgive...people he loved and forgave himself....even with his dying breaths.

Jesus offered this peace to his followers even after his resurrection. In John 20, "Peace be with you" isn't just a greeting. It is a a call for his followers to have security and tranquility in the knowledge that Jesus answered his promise to overcome death. It was a called to his followers to calm their anxieties and fears with the knowledge that his ultimate sacrifice served an even greater end, that though they lived in a cruel, violent, and war-filled world, there is something better coming.

Jesus did not call us to celebrate his death or even his resurrection (though honestly how could we not??). He called us to observe his sacrifice, acknowledge the loss of senseless death, and work toward a future where such sacrifices are no longer needed and memorials to the fallen are a thing of the past.

As you go about your Memorial Day activities, I want you to take some time to observe.

Consider the cost of our cultural love of war and power. Consider the cost of the freedoms we enjoy. Consider whether or not it is a price God wants us to pay. Remember those that have fallen in the pursuit of a better world for us.Do not celebrate their sacrifice. Observe the world they have left behind and consider what you can do to make their sacrifice worth it.

We must observe Memorial Day. We must not celebrate it.

We never celebrate death and the violence that causes it. We observe not because we celebrate war and the sacrifices of life that our loved ones and forbears offered. We observe because we mourn and lament a broken world that has needed, and continues to demand, those sacrifices to begin with. We yearn for the time when weapons of war are turned into tools of creation because we are tired of soaking the earth with the blood of those made in God’s image.

I thank every fallen military hero from the bottom of my heart today because the pain of observance would have be do no less. I also apologize to them and their families because I have not done enough in my life to prevent another memorialization.

Imagine if we never had to memorialize other fallen soldier. Imagine if we could celebrate the fullness of shalom instead.