"’Earn This:’ Authority, Memory, and Gratitude"

Preached by John DeBevoise
At Palma Ceia Presbyterian Church
 On May 26,  2002

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

Matthew 28: 16-20    

My own pilgrimage with Memorial Day weekend and Sunday has been a fairly long one. I will have been ordained for twenty years next year, and when I first started out in ordained ministry, it didn’t seem to me, just in the work of my own ordering and my own brain, it didn’t seem to me that there was a connection between Sabbath worship and Memorial Day. Indeed, it looked to me like Memorial Day was a civil holiday, a holiday of the State, and it just happened to be regularly following a weekend, particularly a Monday, when the church also gathers for worship. I really didn’t do anything in worship planning or design to bring the two themes together. In fact, I may actually have avoided it.

But over time, I think I have learned a little bit, anyhow. One of the things that has been a great teacher for me has been the stories that members of the congregation have shared with me. I have come to realize that in any community of people, particularly a congregation as large as this one, has within it people whose personal stories contain deep connections and associations with some who have either lost their lives in the service of the country, or have in some way made a personal sacrifice for the benefit of the nation.

I’m thinking of a woman who is about thirty-three years of age, who came up to Kathy and me last year after the service and shared with us, with some tears, that the service meant a great deal to her because her father had been killed in action as a pilot in Vietnam, when she was just six months old. That the church stopped and remembered that at this time of the year, that the community stopped and reflected on it meant a great deal to her because it was the one time during the year when it seemed that the community recognized her father, and helped her to renew that memory and that association which she had never fully known.

I am thinking of the man in the congregation who came up and shared with me that there was a certain morning on a certain December earlier in this century, when in Hawaii, in Pearl Harbor, he got up from his tent one day and there were seven people in the tent with him; when he came back to the tent that night, he was the only one who was still alive.

I am thinking of the people who have shared with me that they have spouses, or brothers, or parents, or aunts, or uncles, whom they have lost some way in conflict or through public service. I have come to realize that the weekend is full, although they may be private griefs that we do not mention or that we do not trot out very easily, that the weekend is full of deep and personal connections for people, which are invariably a part of their spiritual journey.

P.T. Forsythe, an English theologian writing in the middle of the Second World War in England, said, “It is always a spiritual thing when someone loses their heart and half their love to a foreign country." He was speaking of all those people in England who had lost children and spouses and friends in that conflict, and he said, “That can never happen without in some way of being a deeply spiritual experience."

So my own pilgrimage has been that Sunday morning on this weekend, increasingly, should be the one place, perhaps, during the weekend, where we stop and lift up with gratitude to God our thanksgiving for what has been given us, and we acknowledge the deep feelings that people have around this occasion. It may be the feelings of people near you, if it is not you yourself. And we give thanks to God for what we have been given through their sacrifice.

It seems to me the holiday, the day itself, Memorial Day, and the Sunday preceding it, is an opportunity to take an intentional act of memory (Memorial), to intentionally go to the memory and recall it as a way of honoring, certainly, the sacrifice made by some, but also to go to memory intentionally as a way of eliciting from ourselves gratitude, and as a way of directing a certain kind of response from us.

In an essay written for a periodical called “The Journal for Preachers" about fifteen years ago, Dr. John Kuykendall wrote an article that has been very influential to me as a part of starting my own turn towards shaping worship on this Sunday this way. He lifted up the fact that when we sing this hymn that we sang with the children (indeed, it is a hymn), that we sing this line, “remembering those who more than self their country loved, and who loved mercy more than life…." Kuykendall explores the theme of personal sacrifice for a high ideal, or for the community good. He points out in this essay how, whenever someone makes this kind of a sacrifice, Christians are going to find their own thoughts drawn to Jesus Christ, who is the epitome in the Christian tradition of one who gave his life, who sacrificed, for the good of many. For the good of his friends, for the good of the community. Indeed Jesus, speaking to his friends and seeking to teach them about what he was going to do, said to them, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."

Now I don’t see this as a glorification of death, which Jesus in his resurrection sought to triumph over and to destroy. Rather, I see it as a statement that there are some things that are so valuable that they are worth spending your life on. Not only giving your life in the cause of, but spending your life on. Spending your vocation on. Spending your time on. Spending your resources on. Spending your stewardship on.

We remember those who more than self their country loved, and those who loved mercy more than life. In that memory we are drawn toward gratitude and a reshaping of the way we live because of their sacrifice.

In dialogue with Kathy, and under Kathy’s coaching really, we have moved to expand this service to also include and recalling public service on this Sunday, firefighters and police officers and those who have served in public office, and all of those who in some way have given of their lives, who have loved mercy even more than the hours or minutes of their lives, to serve others. This year following September 11, of course that has particular deep meaning as we recall all of those in public service who died in that catastrophe.

The title for the sermon, “Earn this", is taken from the last line of the movie, “Private Ryan" (at least as I recall it). It is an allusion to the line that the character played by Tom Hanks says as he is dying, and they finally have found Private Ryan, the soldier they were searching for so that they can send him back home to be with his family after the death of his own siblings. The line, at least as I heard it, as Hank’s character says it, is “Earn this."

It’s a different kind of line for somebody raised in the Protestant tradition to hear, because I am so used to hearing that the faith is given to us as an act of God’s grace, as a free and unmerited act, and that there is nothing we could ever do to earn it. But that line helps me to remember that in the real sense, while faith is given to us as a gift, while salvation is given to us as a gift from God, we have the responsibility to live out of gratitude. To live in response.

While we enjoy Christian freedom, we have the responsibility of carrying out the great commission from the Supreme Commander. We live by grace, but we respond in gratitude with service.

Here in Matthew, Jesus says, “All authority has been given to me." It’s a very inclusive phrase:  All authority. So that there is no area of our lives that Jesus does not have authority over. And there is no area of our life that should have greater authority over our actions than Jesus’ authority. That includes our vocations and our relationships, our stewardships, our pleasures. “Obey everything that I have commanded you," says Jesus. “Everything, Lord? It’s such a tall order. Couldn’t we obey just a few things? Couldn’t we pick out like the top five that we want to obey?"

But Jesus says, “All authority has been given to me." And this weekend has caused me to reflect on what it is in my own life that I may be holding back, keeping from the authority of Jesus. Part of being a disciple, like being a soldier, is to recognize that you are one under authority. And if you are unwilling to place yourself under authority, you cannot serve. Memorial Day is an opportunity to remember, for a particular reason. To remember toward a particular end, that we may reorient ourselves, again, to those things that should have authority, those things that add value to our living, those things which should give direction to our living.

Christians find in this holiday the opportunity to remember and acknowledge that we serve a Supreme Commander, Jesus Christ.

In his famous speech, “The Gettysburg Address", Abraham Lincoln also looks at these same themes. In what is arguably the greatest piece of oratory in American history, Lincoln mentions and makes reference to the fact that they are gathered there on that day in Gettysburg to dedicate a cemetery. He acknowledges that while that is their responsibility, in a real sense they cannot dedicate or make hallowed or sacred something that those who have sacrificed so have already dedicated and made sacred through their sacrifice, through their giving, through their gift. But he goes on to lift up what it is that they are able to do on that occasion. I quote from his speech:

In a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here; but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us.

I think those are appropriate guides for Christians on Memorial Day weekend, also. That we remember the great task which those who have sacrificed were dedicated to, and that in that memory we pick that task up. We rededicate ourselves to it. We hear, again, the words of our Supreme Commander and we reorient our lives to follow his direction.

©  John T. DeBevoise, 2002