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1 Chronicles 11:10-47 · David’s Mighty Men
As We Remember - Memorial Day
1 Chronicles 11:10-25
Sermon
by T. A. Kantonen
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Memorial Day is primarily a national holiday on which we remember and honor the men and women who have given their lives for our country. In the words of Abraham Lincoln, "it is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this." It is fitting and proper for us to observe Memorial Day not only as Americans but also as Christians. There should be no conflict between our loyalty to our God and our loyalty to our country. These loyalties reinforce each other. For God has not set us to live our lives in isolation or privacy but within the frameworks of living which he has appointed. The life which he gave us has an inescapable membership-character. By divine appointment we are members of a home, of a community, and of a nation, just as to be a Christian is to be a member of the church of Christ. To live as God intended us to live we must fulfill our obligations in each of these spheres.

But what is the spirit in which we are to observe Memorial Day? The touching little story from the Old Testament, transcribed above, illustrates the right spirit.

King David, weary and spent after a hard battle with his enemies the Philistines, takes refuge in a cave near his native town of Bethlehem. Spurred by memories of his boyhood but knowing that the town is occupied by the enemy and that he is therefore longing for the impossible, the king exclaims, "O that some one would give me water to drink from the well of Bethlehem which is by the gate" But hardly have these words fallen from David’s parched lips, when three of his heroic soldiers break through the enemy lines, draw water from the well of Bethlehem, and bring the precious drink to their king. David receives the vessel from the hands of the heroes but "would not drink of it; he poured it out to the Lord, and said, ‘Far be it from me before my God that I should do this. Shall I drink the lifeblood of these men? For at the risk of their lives they brought it.’ " Bought at the price of a willingness to make so great a sacrifice, it was too costly a drink to be enjoyed selfishly. The only use worthy of it was to pour it out as a thank-offering to the Lord.

This sensitivity to sacrifices made for us and this sense of obligation to make consecrated use of the results of the sacrifices constitute the right spirit for celebrating Memorial Day.

No one has expressed this spirit so concisely and yet so eloquently as Lincoln did at Gettysburg. Three thoughts from his address deserve to be underscored today.

First is the appreciation of a great heritage. "Our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." The land which the fathers of our nation have beqeathed to us is the land of liberty and equality. The flag which they lifted over it is a flag which stands for freedom of thought, of speech, of conscience, of worship. And it represents the right of every citizen to enjoy these freedoms and equal opportunity to make the most of his God-given capacities. The fathers accepted this liberty and equality as sacred trust from the hand of God and taught us to "praise the Power that has made and preserved us a nation."

Are we worthy heirs of such riches? Do we prize them so highly that we constantly thank God for them? Do we appreciate the high privilege of American citizenship and do we make responsible and constructive use of it? We Americans of the twentieth century, who tend to take our freedom for granted, need to recover the reverent appreciation of it which the fathers had and which Lincoln had. In this spirit, when Finland achieved its independence, the poet Koskenniemi wrote a stirring ode "To the Freedom of Finland." These lines are much better in the original poetry but even in prose their message comes through. "You are the highest, the most longed-for, under heaven! In the midst of long centuries, in the stillness of the night, we have waited for you. And now, you long-expected, you bride of our dreams, are here to wipe away the disgrace of slavery. We cannot weave you a garland of flowers, we cannot make it out of roses or laurels. But we lift up to your brow the crown of our people’s suffering. And standing at your altar we vow as a nation: only over our bodies does the oppressor come near you, only when the last arm has stiffened, still grasping the hilt, only when the last drop of blood has been spilled before you." It was this spirit which girded the Finnish patriots when two decades later they stood up bravely in defense of their freedom against an overwhelming oppressor. Today we honor the Americans who have defended our freedom in the same spirit.

The second thought from Lincoln is the acknowledgment of the price paid for our heritage. We remember those who "gave the last full measure of devotion," who "gave their lives that that nation might live." Memorial Day calls us to pay respect to the brave men, living and dead, who have fought to preserve the nation. But in doing so we are compelled to count the cost of our heritage in terms of the lives of fathers and sons, in terms of widows and orphans. On the long run, we appreciate most the things for which we have paid the most. Our American way of life has been purchased at a high price. We say "thank you" today to all the men and women who, like the men of David, have placed their lives in jeopardy for us. We honor those who are now serving in the armed forces of our country and we remember gratefully the veterans of the wars of yesterday who responsed to their country’s call in the hour of danger. If we have caught the vision of Memorial Day, we see not only the parades of today but also an otherwise invisible parade of heroes marching from Valley Forge and Gettysburg as well as the battlefields of the present century, soldiers whose blood has nourished the soil from which our freedom grows.

When the train bearing the body of Abraham Lincoln to its final resting place stopped at the railroad station in Albany, and crowds gathered to get a last glimpse of the martyr president, a poor black woman lifted up her little boy above the crowd and said, "Son, take a long look, he died for you." Just so, we today try to take a long look and view with reverent respect all those whose lives are the price of our heritage.

The third thought from Lincoln is consecration to the task of preserving our heritage. The great president asks us, the living, to be dedicated to the unfinished work which the heroes so nobly advanced. He pleads that "from the honored dead we take increased devotion" to the cause of responsible freedom, that we "highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, so that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom."

Today, at the conclusion of a disastrous war in Vietnam, we are haunted by the feeling that 56,000 American soldiers have indeed died in vain. But if this tragedy will serve to awaken us to dedicate ourselves to the unfinished work before us, to set our house in order, to strive intelligently and responsibly to prevent the recurrence of such a tragedy, then the sacrifice will not have been in vain. Then we shall have a "new birth of freedom" and the vision which Lincoln presents in another famous address will be realized: "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in: to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan - to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

A word must be spoken, finally, about another aspect of Memorial Day. It has become a day when we remember not only our soldiers but also all our loved ones who are no longer with us. To many it is "Decoration Day" when pilgrimages are made to cemeteries to place flowers on the graves of the departed. Thus it leads us to think about death and about our relation to the dead.

Ordinarily we are reluctant to face the fact of death. Unlike the Middle Ages, when writings on the "art of dying" were best sellers, this subject is either carefully avoided or artfully camouflaged. Through a conspiracy of silence, impending death is concealed as long as possible from the one whom it most directly concerns. And when the inevitable event takes place, the evasion continues. People no longer "die," they "pass away." Funerals have become "memorial services" and cemeteries "memorial gardens." Often the substance of the funeral sermonette is that the departed one is not really dead at all, for he has only "gone before" to the beautiful isle of somewhere which lies beyond the sunset. Friends console the bereaved by observing how "natural" their loved one looks as he lies peacefully in the corrosion-defying bronze coffin amid the flowers.

The Christian view of death has none of this evasion. It is in accord with the scientific fact that when we die we are really dead. Our hopes and desires cannot change this fact. Man does not differ from the rest of creation by having a soul that cannot die. The difference lies in his having been created to have his existence in relationship to God, and the tragedy of life is that he no longer exists in that relationship. He is a sinner and he must die, for "the wages of sin is death." Death is God’s judgment on man’s godlessness, and from that judgment there is no appeal.

It is awareness of a personal responsibility to God against the background of a broken personal fellowship with God that makes death more terrifying to man than to other creatures. The terror of death, however, is overcome by the recovery of an indestructible God-relationship. The basic question is not, "Am I a man and therefore capable of withstanding death?" but "Am I a new man in Christ and therefore assured that not even death can separate me from him?" In every case of death, life, as we now know it, comes to an end. If this were not so, resurrection, the creation of new life by the power of God, would have no meaning, for only the dead can be resurrected. The foundation of the Christian hope is the resurrection of Christ. It is the risen Lord who assures us, "Because I live, you will live also."

As we remember our dead we wonder: where are they now and what is their condition? The answer must be: the blessed dead are with God and they are closer to him than before. If heaven means nearness to God, and that is what it means to a Christian, then they are in heaven. "To depart and be with Christ," says Paul, is "far better" than life on earth. Death is real, but the believer relies on the word of his Lord, "If a man has faith in me, even though he die, he shall come to life" (John 11:25, New English Bible). The life to which he comes is to be with Christ and to be "changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another" (2 Corinthians 3:18). But heaven in its eternal fullness, the God-relationship in its perfection, awaits the final triumph of Christ and the resurrection of all the dead. Then God’s purpose for his whole creation will be completely fulfilled.

As we remember our country’s heroes and our own loved ones, like David of old we offer our thanks to God and say:

"For those we love within the veil
Who once were comrades of our way,
We thank thee, Lord, for they have won
To cloudless day.

There are no tears within their eyes;
With love they keep perpetual tryst;
And praise and work and rest are one,
With thee, O Christ."

CSS Publishing Co., Inc., Good News For All Seasons, by T. A. Kantonen