St. Luke’s United Methodist Church
“Memorial Day Remembering”
Hebrews 11:39 – 12:2
May 29, 2005
Janet L. Forbes

Blessings to you on this Memorial Sunday. On this first weekend of summer, families celebrate with their first camping trip, or their first BBQ, or that big backyard project.

The holiday is a day of remembrance for the men and women who gave their lives in wartime.

While there are many wars that will be remembered this weekend, I grow up in northern Virginia near the site of the Battle of Bull Run, so the Civil War shapes my understanding of Memorial Day. Perhaps this is the appropriate place to begin a memorial sermon, because it is in the Civil War that Memorial Day has its roots. John Logan, a former Federal general, calls for the first formal day of remembrance on May 30, 1868. School children are asked to spread flower pedals upon the graves of the war dead. Since that time, the day has been changed to the last Monday in May. The concept has been expanded to include a remembrance of America’s war dead sustained in all her conflicts.

In the movie, Saving Private Ryan, James Ryan, a World War II veteran, remembers his company of brothers as they occupy Omaha Beach on the coast of Normandy, France. In this scene, Ryan is making his first pilgrimage back to the site of that fierce battle. His wife, son, and grandchildren share the moment with him. He is visiting the American Cemetery, situated on a cliff overlooking Omaha Beach and the English Channel in Colleville-sur-Mer, France.

Remembering is bittersweet. My Dad, like many of your fathers and grandfathers, never talked about his experiences in the war. It was too tender. Yet, my Dad lived with a sense of humble gratitude for surviving when so many of his fellows died.

On those Memorial Days when my family is not visiting relatives in the Carolinas, we spend the holiday in the District of Columbia, usually at the Smithsonian Museum. I love the inaugural gowns of the First Ladies; my brother seeks out the airplanes, especially Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis.

Before traveling home, we stand spellbound before the Tomb of the Unknown, captured by the precision of the guard. We enjoy a picnic supper on the front lawn of the Lee mansion, overlooking the Arlington National Cemetery, its myriad stone slabs surrounded by row upon row of manicured lawn. Tiny American flags flutter in front of each monument.

On one particular Memorial Day, my seven-year-old brother slips away from my mother’s attention. When we catch sight of him again, he is moving down the slope to the rows of white monuments. He steps from gravestone to gravestone, rendering a salute of honor to each.

Why do we celebrate memorial days? Why do we subject ourselves to the ache of remembering?

Perhaps one reason why we risk remembering is because we have the hope in Christ of seeing our loved ones again. The apostle Paul whispers the hope, “Lo, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.”

Without this hope based on the resurrection of Christ, Paul tells us that our faith is futile. We risk remembering because of hope.

For me, this hope is not illusive or delusional. It is rooted in who I understand God to be. It is glimpsed every time our prayer is answered, “Thy kingdom come!”

Hope is rooted in the power of a God who ceaselessly opens up new possibilities. What is it that we seek when we search for the meaning of life? The ultimate that I seek – call it paradise, or heaven, or eternal life - is not the peace and quiet of a retirement center. It is the final ecstasy of life. The symbol of the resurrection teaches us to hope for an ecstasy of life beyond the stasis of death. The final Christian hope is to be reconciled to God with all things and thus to share in life, forever. Nothing can separate us from God. And so, we remember…and hope!

I know that the pain of remembering is real. But I believe that it is necessary to let the feelings be felt. During a long period in the 1970s, the nation indulges in a remarkable exercise of denial and amnesia about the Vietnam War. Americans do not want to hear about it or to think about it. That denial is part of the special ordeal of Vietnam veterans, an ordeal that begins when they arrive back in the United States to find that even family members are not interested in talking about what they have been through, or are embarrassed about it.

Perhaps that is why the Vietnam War Veterans Memorial in Washington has meant so much to veterans who have not been able to remember. The two black granite triangles with the names of all 58,022 Americans who gave their lives has become a sort of sanctum, beautiful and terrible. A broadcaster last night calls it “the wall that heals”.

“The actual act of being at the memorial is healing for the man or woman who went to Vietnam. It has to do with the felt presence of comrades”. (John Wheeler, Chairperson of the Vietnam War Memorial Committee)

Is this not one reason why we dare to remember? We want to feel the presence of ones that we have loved. We desire to draw close in memory to those who have been precious to us.

Several years ago, Bob and I spend time with my father over Memorial weekend. He has purchased long stem red silk roses for my mother’s grave. We stop to pick up my uncle so that he, too, can visit his wife, who is buried next to my mother.

The grass is growing on my Mother’s grave now, after five years. The flat brass headstone looks beautiful in the sea of green. As I kneel down and begin to lift the brass vase from its container, I hear my Mother say, “Janet, please do not lay me down in this ghastly sea of silk flowers.” I say, “Mom, I warned you that this would happen if you went first.” My mother hates perpetual care cemeteries, the rolling green fields with urn after urn after urn of artificial flowers faded by the southern sun and rain.

As I situate the Styrofoam in the brass container, I laugh, “Get over it, Mom. This is sacred ground to me, even if it is tacky! Your grave is less than a mile from where Pop was born. And you and Aunt Harriet are just the first stop in our cemetery visits. My grandfather is next; then my great-grandmother, Mammy Otie, and her father who fought for the Confederate States of America. Uncle Charlie will tell his stories and I will be reminded of who I am! I just hope he doesn’t tell Bob about Margaret Mae, the cousin who ran the brothel in Raleigh.”

I hear my mother laugh! That sound re-establishes our connection across all barriers.

The apostle Paul puts the fundamental question of remembering to us, “O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?” We’re well acquainted with the sting of death. We see evidence of death every day in one form or another, whether through the media or personal circumstance or the simple biological clock inside all mortals which keeps on ticking. The tick-tock-tick tells us what the time is periodically with the first gray hairs, or knee injuries, or backaches, or the passing of loved ones. Yes, we know the sting.

But, listen to the good news. Our hearts are make glad by the hope to which we are called, the riches of a glorious inheritance. Christ has conquered death itself by his resurrection. The risen One takes the lasting sting away.

Why should we risk remembering? Because we are children of the covenant who are, with the communion of the saints, on a journey together. We all belong to God.

One of the reasons we celebrate Memorial Sunday is that we want our children and all those who are new to Christ’s body to know who their ancestors are, and to understand that being a saint means first and foremost belonging to God.

Whatever grade you give yourself on that count, you cannot take it back. By your baptism, you belong to God and all that remains to be seen is what you will do about it.

“Just remember that you do not have to be famous, or perfect, or dead. You just have to be you – the one-of-a-kind, never–to-be-repeated human being whom God created you to be – to love as you are loved, to throw your arms around the world, to shine like the sun.” (God’s Handkerchiefs, Barbara Brown Taylor)

You do not have to do it alone, either. In the letter to the Hebrews, the writer suggests that only as we are connected to the cloud of witnesses are we made complete. Our faith is not whole without the embrace of those who go before us.

On our mission trip to Guatemala, I visit the cathedrals. In Guatemala, the Christian faith is a strange mixture of veneration of saints and ancestor worship. In the street processions, the incense, the singing, the cannon fire creates a visceral connection to those who have passed into glory.

In the foyer of the cathedral, people are lighting candles for their dearly departed. Since my Dad has been gone barely one month, I want to light a candle in his memory. I go to the woman who is selling the candles. The sign beside the basket of candles says, “One quetzal.” I put a quetzal in the basket and take one candle. The woman says to me, “Senora, dos, por favor. “No, gracious,” I reply. “Una.” She repeats herself with some urgency. “Dos.” I, too, repeat, “No gracious. Una.” She shakes her head, giving up on this obstinate gringa.

I kneel beside the slab of burning candles. Then I notice that everyone lights two candles, drips a bit of wax on the slab, and stands both of the candles together, side by side. Quickly, I light my one candle, which I notice has a very difficult time standing alone. I say a prayer, and hurry out of the church, before I am thrown out for breaking the “Always light two candles” rule.

Later, I ask one of the Methodist pastors, “Why do people burn two candles, side by side.” He opens his Bible to Hebrews 11. “Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us be made perfect.”

These faithful people know that we are connected to our cloud of witnesses. The pastor explains, “When you remember your father, you light two candles and set them side by side. One candle is for your father; the other candle is for you.”

You see, you have all this company – all these saints sitting right here whom you can see for yourself plus those you cannot, all of them egging you on, calling your name, and shouting encouragement. You are part of them, and they are part of you, and all of us are knit together in the communion of saints, like candle light, shining on the world for the love of Christ.

Governor Bill Owens, in the lighting of the Remembrance Candle in the Capital, called our memorial expressions “a debt of remembrance”. As Carrie plays, I invite you to come forward, all of you who will, Moms and Dads, youth and children, to light a candle for one whom you remember on this day.

Let us light candles for men and women who have fallen in battle, for beloved parents or grandparents who have gone before us, for dearly departed friends, for the children whose lives came to their fullness only in our dreams.

This is a reunion day for remembering where we come from and who we belong to.

Blessings to you on this Memorial Sunday.