I’d like to begin this sermon by
taking a moment to recognize our veterans—would those of you please stand, or
at least raise a hand?
Thank you.
Tomorrow is Memorial Day. Why do we have Memorial Day? What purpose does it serve?
Memorial Day began during the Civil
War, when women’s groups gathered to decorate the graves of those who had
perished in that awful war. As the years
went by, the time to honor the dead grew more formal until 1868, when the first
Memorial Day was officially proclaimed and flowers were placed on graves at
Arlington National Cemetery. The
observance of this day continued to grow through the years.
There is also curious etiquette for
how to fly our nation’s flag on Memorial Day.
We might think that it would be flown at half-staff all day out of
respect for the memory of those who died.
But to do so would be to forget the reason they died—they died fighting
to end a way, whichever one it was, in the hopes that there would no longer
need to be war. They gave their lives in
the hope that what they were fighting for was something that would bring peace
and security to the world. And so the
flag only flies at half-staff until noon, when it is raised to full-staff to
honor the continuing struggle for peace and liberty and to express the hope
that one day there will no longer be a need for individuals to lay down their
lives for their country. We give thanks
for those who are still willing to do so, and we honor their willingness to
serve, yet we do so with the hope that they will be home, safe and sound, and
they can lay down their weapons and need not pick them up. This is our hope as individuals and as a
nation. We remember the sacrifice for a
reason—that it may teach us a lesson and help us strive for peace, that their
sacrifice not be in vain.
Memorial Day stands in an
in-between time—we look back in gratitude, and we look forward in hope.
Doesn’t sound all that different
than Christianity, does it?
The first passage I read today is
one of the stranger Biblical sections.
In it, the prophet Ezekiel is whisked away to a valley that is filled
with dried up bones. It sounds like the
beginning to a really terrible low-budget Halloween movie. But God doesn’t do this just for the fright—while
there, after giving Ezekiel a tour of the entire valley, in case he wanted to
make sure that all that was present was bones, God asks Ezekiel if it’s
possible for these bones to live. Ezekiel’s
answer, “O Lord God, you know,” is a basic admittance that he doesn’t
know. He has no idea if these bones can
live—but he trusts that God knows.
Next thing you know, God has
Ezekiel prophesying to the bones, and soon enough God has put flesh to these
bones and brought them back to life.
But, just to make the Halloween scene a little scarier, they’re not
living. They’re just bodies now. God then uses Ezekiel’s words to bring the
bodies back to life.
This whole scene is meant to be
symbolic. The dead bones are meant to
symbolize the faith of the nation of Israel.
Their faith is dead and their lives give no evidence of God’s presence,
and it would appear as if there is no hope.
Only God’s power can bring the people back, and only the work of the
Holy Spirit can reinvigorate the faith of these people. The stories of all that God has done for them
have faded away to the pages of history, never to be remembered, and in their
times of trial they asked God where he has been lately, and in their impatience
they worshipped what was easy, what was close, rather than God, who is always
faithful. They forgot God, and their
faith died. The prophet Ezekiel is meant
to remind the people of God’s faithfulness so that they might allow God to
re-awaken their faith.
Their memories are also meant to
change how they see the future. Isaiah
is the prophet who points us forward—he paints a scene of what the future will
look like. It will be a time of rejoicing,
of worship, of peace.
Friends, our faith works the same
way that Memorial Day does. We are
called to remember—we are called to remember what God has done, to remember who
God is, to remember God’s faithfulness.
Our faith is rooted in stories that are centuries old, stories of how
God has acted dramatically in the past to show his love to the world. We see this love in creation, in the
redemption of Israel out of slavery, in the life, death and resurrection of
Jesus Christ.
We need to remember these stories—for
these stories teach us about God. They
teach us about the kind of God we worship.
They teach us that God is always faithful—and if God has always been
faithful in the past, then we can look to the future with hope, because God
will continue to be faithful. Our
memories of the past transform the way we see the present, the way we see the
future—our memories allow us to see how today resembles days in the past, and
because God was present in the past, God will be present today, and tomorrow,
too. The God who has always watched over
his people and freely offered his grace will continue to offer his grace to
us. If you are in a desperate situation,
the best thing to do is to open up the Bible and read about other desperate
situations. In the Bible, there is a
story of three men who were literally thrown into a blazing hot furnace because
of their faith, and God was there. This
story isn’t just to entertain us—it’s to give us hope, to allow us to look
forward to the future that Isaiah paints for us and realize that we can hope
for that, too. It’s not just for perfect
people—it’s for the people of God.
And we can look forward
because our
faith is not a work of our own. All of
those bones in the valley, they didn’t put flesh on themselves. They
didn’t bring life to themselves. Only the Holy Spirit can do that.
In the same way, our faith is gift
from God—we cannot earn it or secure it for ourselves. We can only be grateful for it, and allow the
Holy Spirit to do a work in us.
So this day, and every day, let us
look backwards and see all the ways God has worked in the past. Not just in the Bible. Let’s talk about the history of this
church. Let’s talk about the history of
the people in this church. Want to know
a great way to learn something about the way God works in the world? Go find someone who has been a Christian for
over fifty years, and ask them what God has done in their life. I guarantee you that you will pick up a
lesson that will be useful to you—it may change the way you look at a situation
in your own life, or perhaps will allow you to see a future trouble with
hope. To you who have been sitting in
church pews for a long time and wonder what your mission may be—share your
stories. In your stories of how God has
been at work in your life, there is hope for someone else. You can assure the younger generation that
God has always been faithful, and in that assurance, they can take hope that
God will continue to be faithful.
Friends, we are a people with a
long past, and the faithfulness of God that supports that past will support the
future as well. We go forward into God’s
future, one in which God will be the judge, in which nations will not learn war
anymore, and we do so with hope, trusting in God to provide, to protect, to
uphold.
Let us pray
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