Memorial Day is not a liturgical holiday. Earlier this month many of my clergy colleagues posted their copious opinions about their preferred separation of liturgical and cultural observances particularly when it came to Mother’s Day. For me, Memorial Day has always fallen into that kind of category. And more recently, as it becomes more and more of a “catch-all” observance for those who have served in the military, it’s become more discomforting for me. Sometimes Memorial Day is celebrated as the necessary and tacit approval of violence and war—viewed as recognition shared participation in the brave and violent service to our nation’s military.
I’m not always sure what the Church is called to celebrate in worship on this weekend when many inside and outside of Church seek to honor military service and those who have died in it. For me, the gospels offer the backdrop of Jesus’ clear injunctions to “love your enemies and do good to those who hate you.” In particular, I don’t know what this means in our world where “military service” can now come in the form of un-occupied drones operated from Anwhere, U.S.A. to bomb “enemies” half-a-world away with the reprisals being the release of videos of captured journalists and others being beheaded.
For many people, Memorial Day is still synonymous with “Decoration Day”—originally a day set aside to decorate the graves of those who died in military service, with roots in the 1880’s where “decoration” referenced the placing of flower on the graves of soldiers who had been killed in the Civil War. Such observance of the death toll of violence and war strikes me NOT as a day for espousing the necessity and bravery of those who would give up their lives, and “remembering those who serve,” but as an honest response meant to count the “cost” readily apparent in the lives rubbed out, still lying in freshly used graves. Memorials not of heroism in service, but the terribly, bloody, ultimate cost.
I have a hard time on Memorial Day Weekend because I believe the Church has a response that is worthy of our observance, but it’s mostly perceived to be uniformly unpopular by many. I believe that violence is the wage of sin; and the a response to sinfulness is confession. Yet culturally, civically, we almost always prefer looking at our war dead as heroes and not as the cost of our sin. This, too, is discomforting because I don’t readily have a good answer for what we are called to do when persons are called into harm’s way as a part of military service; or are called to do harm to others in that service. I don’t want to give in to terrorists, or thugs, or allow violence to be used to harm or hurt, or to take advantage of others any more than the next person. I believe fervently that God seeks us not to resort to violent means in order to resolve our differences. And too often, we resort to violent means in either fear or the blind hope of something to gain by it.
Yet I believe the Church has some important roles this coming Memorial Day weekend.
Maybe the Church, when other institutions won’t, or can’t see their way clear to, can offer a brave witness of confession and lament in worship. We can be clear that our lament is not a denigration or repudiation of those who participate and endure violence on our behalf. The issue isn’t military service but our penchant as human beings to trust the use of force and violence more, and as a means of protection rather than trusting God.
As Christ-followers and believers we’re called to give witness to Jesus Christ who asks us to “love our enemies and to do good to those who hate us.” This means recognizing and owning that violence and violent means are the wages of human sin; that while we struggle with their seeming necessity in the world of which we are a part, we openly admit they have no place in the kingdom of God. As Christ-followers we can confess our willingness and complicity to go along with violence, and ask God to reveal new paths of righteousness.
And maybe the Church is called to be present for and is called to participate with other community institutions and our communities at large, giving witness to those who lost their lives in military service by remaining resolute that these sacrifices will not be forgotten, or allowed to be bereft of meaning. We can participate in sharing remorse and loss, acknowledging the inherent hurt for our communities and the world. This would be a more public role of intentionally gathering as representatives of communities of faith being present in courthouse squares, VFW posts, cemeteries, and other places where Memorial Day observances are held, asking God to be present with us as we remember and seek relief from the wages of violence. It is also for us as believers to offer Jesus’ words of grace and hope that all is not lost, but that we are recalled toward God’s vision again and again of a world made safe in God’s image.
Memorial Day might not be a liturgical holiday; but it’s one of the observances when I hope the Church is helping to carry a kind of liturgy out into the world. So that we give witness to the value of communities of Christ-followers and non-believers being united in the common acts of remembering sacrifice and hoping for a different way—and being encouraged together to see a different way.
There’s plenty of that work to go around.
© Rev. David Stipp-Bethune; Teaching Elder
and Pastor, The Presbyterian Church of Llanerch, Havertown, Pennsylvania
