Introduction
Throughout most of
the month of October, a small group of people – Susan Noyes, Rick Webber, Ted
Wesley and Don Fyfe – joined our sexton, David Grusendorf, and me once a week
for an experiment. Some of you may know
that David once served our country as a Marine and we had been talking on and
off about the significance of PTSD – Post Traumatic Stress Disorder – for our
home-coming veterans. In time, we
wondered aloud whether the Spirit of the Lord might be saying something to us
at First Church about this reality:
· You see, there will be over 400,000 returning
vets from just our two current wars who will in one way or another experience
PTSD – and this is not something that takes place in isolation.
· Their trauma touches the core of their families,
our churches and our communities. It has
an impact upon our health care system, our understanding of peace-making in the
21st century and how we embody compassion for those who are almost
always invisible to most of us.
· What’s more, a World War I veteran from this
congregation, Lt. Col. Charles Wittlesey, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for
his bravery on the fields of France in 1918, committed suicide in 1921 while
suffering from the consequences of PTSD upon his return to civilian life.
For these reasons –
and many more – David and I wondered if there might be an interest and a need
for us to go deeper as a faith community committed to the ways of peace. So we called together this very select group
of people as an experiment to see whether a broad, cross-section of the
congregation with very different backgrounds might discover both a new
appreciation for the reality of our returning veterans as well as common
ground. We studied and talked – we wept
and laughed – we prayed and listened and asked one another a lot of hard
questions. And at the end of our time,
we began to discern that at the very least we needed to mark this day – and
subsequent Veteran’s Days – with more integrity and intentionality.
Insights
You see, most
contemporary Americans not only fail to recognize the enormous sacrifice our
women and men in the Armed Services make on behalf of you and me, most of us
don’t even know why we celebrate Veteran’s Day.
For most, it is just another three-day weekend. But back in 1918, Armistice Day was designated to
commemorate the end of hostilities in World War I, the so-called “war to end
all wars.” On the 11th day of
the 11th month at the 11th hour, all hostilities in
Europe came to an end. Then in 1954, the name of this holiday – or holy day –
was changed to Veterans Day to recognize the great sacrifices of veterans and
their families and to help us all rededicate our national efforts to the cause
of world peace.”
· It is an appropriate time to consider the
continuing destruction caused by war and our failure to live in peace with one
another and the Lord.
· It is an essential time to lament the sacrifices of
war veterans and their communities.
· And it is a moment set in time that invites us to
consider what then shall we do as those committed to the way of Jesus the
Prince of Peace?
The vision of the
prophet Isaiah offers us this challenge:
All the boots of the tramping warriors and
all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire. For unto
us a child has been born, a son has been given; authority rests upon his
shoulders; and he has been named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting
Father, Prince of Peace. And at the very same time, the world weary preacher of
Ecclesiastes tells us that in spite of the promise and vision of God’s shalom,
there has always been a time for war and always will be:
For everything there is a season, and a time for every
matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and
a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time
to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a
time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to throw away stones, and a time to
gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from
embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to
throw away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a
time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time
for peace.
We take this paradox seriously – as profoundly as you do
– and wonder what it means for our ministries of justice, peace and
compassion. So what we’re going to share
with you this morning are our all too modest thoughts and reflections born of
study, prayer, experience and a deep wrestling with God’s word and our human
experience.
· Each of us will
share one key thought – Sue will speak about gratitude, Don will talk about
support and I’ll tell you a few insights that have come to me about
understanding the complexity of our veterans’ lives – and after each summary
the others will offer a brief comment or two.
· Nobody thinks this
will be comprehensive and we don’t pretend to have become experts in 21st
century veteran’s affairs because we met, studied and prayed together for a
month. We don’t have a lot of solutions
to suggest or wise words to leave you with.
Rather, we simply come today as women and men whose hearts and minds have been opened in a new way about peace-making with those willing to make the ultimate sacrifice. So we pray that together God will lead us forward, ok?
· So, Sue what do you
want us to know about sharing gratitude with our vets?
· And Don what are you
thinking about the importance of supporting our veterans?
Let me offer
this thought about understanding something of our veteran’s reality: most of our
military women and men are invisible to us.
We don’t see them go to war – we have been carefully kept from seeing
them return from active duty – and our lives rarely intersect with theirs. Because, you see, with a volunteer Army those
who have been asked to do things for our freedom and safety that we would NEVER
do have become faceless to us.
· We don’t think about
our soldiers and sailors, we rarely know any of them personally and their
experiences are so different from our own that they never speak about it except
with other vets.
· In so many ways,
they have become not us – they have become other – people we don’t want to know
about, doing things that terrifying and sicken us, and yet who are absolutely
essential to our well-being.
· There’s something
ugly and morally wrong about this, beloved; something perverted and unhealthy
for us all – veterans as well as civilians – for it is like living with a dirty
little secret that gets bigger and more destructive the more we ignore it.
That’s why I’ve come to think that if we’re seriously
committed to peace-making, we have to break out of this cycle of secrecy. We have to befriend our veterans – support
and love them – and keep ourselves connected to what their lives are all
about.
Back in the 1980s I had an epiphany that led me to the realization that for me peace-making had to be personal. Other people could and should do other things, but for me I had to be in relationship with real, live people. This led me to be a part of four different peace journeys to the former Soviet Union: I took my Michigan church youth group and their parents, I led pastors and lay people from Ohio and we met and prayed and spoke with real people in a grassroots, people-to-people effort. We did much the same thing in Istanbul, Turkey many years later.
And that's why I believe that there's some people-to-people peace-making we might need to explore with our veterans now that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are drawing down. I have a few thoughts about what
that might look like, too but now is not the time for that type of sharing. Let me just ask you to take that into your
hearts and wrestle with it for a while.
Let the carefully crafted invisibility of those we have called to lay
down their lives for us haunt your conscience for a time – and see what God’s
Holy Spirit says to you, ok?
Conclusion
In the presence of the Lord, we’ve shared with you from
our hearts. There is more to say – and
more to do – but unto all things there is a season, yes? By way of closing this portion of worship on
Veteran’s Day, I’m going to ask you to sing one of great old religious war
songs, “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” I
hope you will sing it with verve and passion.
And after the singing is done, I’ll read to you one
soldier’s poem, one of his reflections on how he has been changed forever by
serving God and country. And then we’ll
quietly offer God our prayers of lament, gratitude and peace.
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