Singing Their Songs

How do we remember the fallen men and women of our military with the honor they deserve? With parades? With wreaths laid reverently in cemeteries? With the playing of Taps and 21 gun salutes? Yes, of course, with all of these things; but if we try to live the way that they did, we honor them even more! This sermon will explain what I am talking about.

One of my favorite songs was recorded by the bluegrass group Balsam Range. It is sung by someone who has very few possessions to leave behind when he dies; but who hopes that his songs live after him. With just a little imagination, we can imagine this song being sung by an American soldier who anticipates going into battle, and who knows that he – or she – might not make it home. The chorus goes like this:

At the end of this life that I've been given,

After the prayers and the bells have rung,

I ain't afraid of where I'm going;

But what will become of the songs I've sung?

What'll become of the songs I've sung?

“What will become of the songs I’ve sung?”

That’s an obvious enough question for a country singer to ask as he faces death; but what songs would a soldier, a sailor, or a pilot be talking about? Military personnel have always sung songs that were popular in their own times – “Yankee Doodle,” “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” “Over There,” and “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition” – but I don’t think that they care about those popular songs. The songs that are on the minds and hearts of our soldier are the songs that they sang with their very lives; the songs they sang by the actions that they took white they were in uniform.

For example, they sang songs of commitment. Soldiers are famous for their commitment to their comrades. The creed of the Army Rangers says, “I shall never leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy”; and members of the Marine Corps promise, “We will leave no man behind.” When you are in a life-or-death situation, somebody needs to have your back; and you need to do the same for the others with whom you fight. But that commitment to comrades is just a glimmer of the commitment that military personnel feel for the cause for which they fight! Our soldiers, sailors, and pilots serve because they believe in the values that we hold dear, such as equality and justice for men and women of every race and culture. They are committed not only to their comrades, but to all the people they serve and protect. Their song of commitment is one that they want to live on after they are gone.

They sing a song of courage, too. Commitment isn’t easy. It takes courage to stand by someone through thick and through thin, especially when that commitment puts your own life on the line. We who live comfortably at home have no idea what our military men and women face every day, especially when they serve in hostile territory. Throughout our nation’s history, those men and women have faced bayonets, cannon balls, mustard gas, Kamikaze suicide planes, and IEDs; and they have faced all of those dangers with courage because they are committed both to the well-being of each other and to the values in which they believe. Their courage is a song that is worthy of being sung for generations to come.

But the song that we remember with most gratitude on this weekend is their song of self-sacrifice. A total of over 1 million American troops have been killed in uniform during the course of our country’s nearly 250-year history. One million troops! That’s a lot of sacrifice! The list of the places where they died is like the tolling of a funeral bell.

·         Bunker Hill

·         Lexington and Concord

·         Antietam

·         Gettysburg

·         The Argonne Forest

·         Omaha Beach

·         Iwo Jima

·         Hamburger Hill

·         Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan

We will never forget the song of sacrifice that they sang; nor should we. Their commitment and courage even to death is what inspires us today.

And since their tongues are now silent, I ask you on their behalf: What will become of the songs they’ve sung? What will become of courage, commitment, and self-sacrifice when the men and women that embodied those values are gone? I don’t know what your answer is; but here’s mine. Those values of courage, commitment, and self-sacrifice are the same values that we hold as followers of Jesus Christ; and we need to keep singing those songs so that those values remain alive even when the ones who sang them are alive only in our memories. When the fire of prejudice flares up in our society and threatens to engulf us in its flames of hatred, we are called as Christians to have the courage to take a stand against it, whether it appears in the form of derogatory jokes, a system that discriminates against people of color, or an organized rally by a hate group. When we are tempted to neglect the commitment that we make to one another as Christians, and begin to care only about our own well-being, we are called to remember the admonishment of Jesus himself that we love God only by loving others. And when we are tempted to take the easy way out, afraid to take a risk on behalf of another that might affect our reputation, our social standing, or our job security, we are called to remember that on the last night of his life, Jesus said, “No one has greater love than the one who lays down his life for another.”

What will become of the songs they’ve sung? With God’s grace, we will sing those songs with our own lives: songs of commitment, courage, and self-sacrifice. Their songs will be sung for as long as we remember the men and women who willingly put their lives at risk for all of us. And that will be forever; because we will never forget.

Why Bother with Church?

If, on Sunday mornings, you wonder, "Why am I bothering to get up and go to church?" -- or if, on Sunday mornings, you wonder, "Why do other people bother to go to church when a second cup of coffee and the Sunday paper are much more appealing?" -- here is the answer! At least, it's my answer.

The attitude of our society has changed where church attendance is concerned; and that’s no news to anybody! In the 1960s, when I was growing up, churches were filled to overflowing with worshipers on Sunday mornings. Many congregations even built additional rooms for Sunday school use, because the existing facilities weren’t adequate to house all the children. No church needed marketing strategies to get people through the doors!

But times have changed; and going to church isn’t as popular as it used to be. People used to say that participating Sunday morning worship was as necessary as steak and potatoes. Now, attending Sunday worship seems to be more like taking cod liver oil. When people are asked whether they attend church, many now respond, “Oh, I’m spiritual, but I’m not religious.” That usually means that they feel a connection with something bigger than they are, but they don’t want to bother with an organized church. It’s a very good thing to be spiritual and to feel a connection with the divine! But here’s the problem with “spiritual but not religious.” If you don’t know how to behave in response to that spiritual connection, it’s just a warm, fuzzy feeling that doesn’t do any good either to you or to the world!

The Christian church offers a way to live out that connection. It helps you to understand that the connection you feel is to God through Jesus Christ. He not only gives you an identity as a child of God; he shows you how to behave because you are. Understanding that connection with Christ is really important; and it’s easy to lose it if you just rely on warm, fuzzy spiritual feelings! You heard a text this morning from the gospel of John in which Jesus tells his followers that they need to stick with him as tightly as a branch sticks to the vine to which it is attached (John 15:1-5). We all know that if you cut a branch off from its source, it withers and dies. That same thing happens when we are separated from Jesus. Oh, we may not wither and die physically, but our souls lose the nourishment that they get from the One who created us, who rescues us from sin, and who promises to guide our path as we go through our lives. If we’re cut off from Jesus, we’re like a flower that has been picked from the garden. It may last a few days in a vase, but it ultimately dies for lack of nutrition. In the same way, we need strength and courage and wisdom from Jesus, who grounds the spirituality that we feel. The church helps us to understand all that.

Then there are other people in our society who understand what it means to be grounded in Christ. They’ve been baptized and confirmed and probably spent a lot of time in Sunday school when they were kids. No one sees them in worship, though, because they insist that they can be Christians without bothering with church. Now, throughout history, some people have been able to pull that off. Holy hermits, both men and women, have lived solitary lives of meditation and prayer; and some of them have even been sainted! But most of us don’t fit that description. Let’s be real, it’s very easy to fall away from what Jesus expects of us if we don’t bother with church!

Christians down through the ages have realized that the best way to maintain our connection with Jesus is to be in a faith community that helps us to do that. The second scripture reading today was from the book of Acts (2:42-47). It takes place right after Pentecost, that day when the Holy Spirit swooped down and filled all the believers with power. After that event, the believers all united as a community. They learned from the apostles’ teaching, and they helped folks who were in need. They ate meals together, and they celebrated what God did in their lives. In other words, they became a church; and that church became one of the central elements of their lives!

Why was meeting as a congregation so important to the first Christians? Why did they put such an emphasis on gathering for worship and fellowship? The simple answer is that they needed one another to be able to do what Jesus asked of them! It was very difficult to be a Christian in those early days. The Roman government didn’t much like Christians, because they refused to worship the gods of the empire and to live by the values of the society around them. They renounced greed, violence, and thirst for power, living instead by the values that Jesus taught: humility, generosity, charity, and peacemaking. They didn’t have a chance of doing those things if they weren’t surrounded by a faith community that celebrated with them when they were doing well, encouraged them when they were discouraged, and supported them when they were weak!

Well, not much has changed since then. Oh, we don’t wear togas nowadays; and we give our political allegiance not to Rome but to the United States; and we are no longer thrown into the arena for daring to confess our faith in Jesus Christ. We Christians, though, are still at odds with the values of society. We still renounce greed, violence, and thirst for power. We still try to live by the Christian values of humility, generosity, charity, and peacemaking. And if we want to stick to Christ as closely as a branch sticks to the vine, we need a faith community that will help us to do that! Our faith communities help us through the difficult times of our lives, offer us love and support when we’re struggling, and helps us to live the Christian values that are so different from those of the society around us. The reality is that if we try to be Christians all by ourselves, we usually don’t do very well.

Here’s the bottom line. Church is important! It not only gives us a foundation for the spirituality that is born into every one of us, it helps us to live as the people that we want to be. So if anyone asks you why you bother with church – why you don’t just sleep in on Sunday mornings or read the Sunday paper over a second cup of coffee – here’s what to tell them. Tell them that you need the challenge and the comfort of the gospel of Jesus Christ in your life. Tell them that following Jesus is hard, and that you just can’t do it all by yourself. Tell them that without the love, encouragement, and support of your fellow church members, your life would be a lot harder than it already is. And I am so happy that each and every one of you is here this morning; because I need all of you to help me as I struggle to hold on to my own spiritual grounding in Jesus. Let’s stay connected to Jesus and follow him together! After all, that’s what this thing called “church” is all about.

An Idle Tale

In our congregation, we celebrate Gifts of Women Sunday on Mother's Day. This year, I preached on women whose voices are not heard because they are discounted as being "idle tales." Maybe you have seen this happen, or experienced it for yourself. Take heart! Some of us are listening to you!

What would you do if you had the most important information in the world, but no one would listen to you when you tried to talk about it? How would you feel if what you had to say would revolutionize our lives and change them for the better, but everything that you said was ignored? I think that we would agree that you would find it frustrating at best and infuriating at worst! But that was the experience of the women who met the risen Christ on that first Easter morning (Luke 24:1-11). They had seen him with their own eyes and heard him with their own ears, but when they went back to tell the others, the men dismissed what they had to say as “an idle tale.” They thought that it was nonsense, a story not worth anyone’s attention. In fact, the women probably got the look that we sometimes get when we come home with a story that Harriet told Maude who told Peggy who told everyone at the beauty parlor! We know that look. It’s a mixture of “You’ve got to be kidding!” “You can’t really believe that stuff?” and “Give me a break!”

The truth is that many things that women say are treated as “fake news.” And sometimes, that’s exactly what they are. But all too often all the things that women say get lumped into the “fake news” category, to be listened to but not really heard, to be tolerated but not taken seriously. Maybe that’s the reason that women’s voices fall silent in church history after the gospels were written. An image painted in a fresco was found in the catacomb of Priscilla in Rome. In the center of the painting is a woman in a pose that suggests that she is leading worship, possibly even preaching or officiating at Holy Communion. But you’d never know that women were leaders in the early church from looking at the historical records! Men’s voices are heard loudly throughout church history, while women’s voices are virtually silent.

The fact is, though, that women’s voices have been vital to the proclamation of the good news of God’s work through Jesus Christ down through the ages! It began with Mary, Jesus’ mother, and her powerful song The Magnificat that we can read in the gospel of Luke. “God’s mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation,” she sang. “He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts; he has lifted up the humble and filled the hungry with good things.” (Luke 1:50-53) That sure sounds like the Good News to me! And women were the first ones to proclaim the resurrection. All three of the gospels (Matthew, Luke, and John) that record stories of Jesus’ resurrection appearances say that the women were not only the first to meet the risen Christ; they were the first to proclaim it! A meme recently circulated on Facebook that said, “In the interest of historical accuracy, all Easter sermons this year will be preached by women.”

Today, women all over the world still preach the gospel, standing up for what they believe is right as followers of Jesus Christ or protesting what they believe is wrong. In a world where women’s voices are often considered to be worthless, they must let their actions speak for them. In 1995, for example, hundreds of Russian mothers were horrified by the Russian invasion of Chechnya. Their pleas for peace fell on deaf ears, so they descended on the war-torn city of Grozny to find their sons and persuade them to desert the army! Since their voices were not heard, they took action. This is a portion of a report from a January, 1995 issue of USA Today reporting on their actions. “The mothers, wearing black combat boots and carrying small Russian icons of Jesus for protection, are stopping at nothing to find their sons. They have locked arms and stopped a column of Russian tanks that was leaving the militia base at nearby Mosdak until Russian commanders let them in. They have entered Grozny’s war-torn presidential palace to gather the names of Russian soldiers being held as prisoners there. They have walked along Grozny’s sniper-ridden streets hoping to identify dead Russian soldiers. Sympathetic military commanders are allowing the soldiers to leave if their mothers come after them. ‘It’s a mother’s duty to be here!’ yelled one of them. ‘We won’t let our government sacrifice our boys! This is stupid!’” When their voices protesting war were ignored as “idle tales,” these mothers followed Jesus at the risk of their lives. And during the war that lasted two years, 3,500 soldiers were brought home by their mothers.

Women not only call for peace; they also call for tolerance and unity, calls that are dismissed as unrealistic. Since their voices are ignored, they join together and take action. The story is told of how a group of women gathered in a cemetery in Tuzla in the former Yugoslavia and decorated it with symbols of doves, crosses, and crescents – symbols of their differing religions in a country that has been torn apart by religious and ethnic hatred. They told the journalists who witnessed the event that they were working together for the future of their country.

There are millions of other women around the world who are crying to be heard as they proclaim the good news of the gospel: the possibility of peace, love, justice, and unity. And those in power dismiss them as dreamers. The reality of life, they are told, is the struggle for power, competition, and a dog-eat-dog world that spares no one! Why, Christ is not risen! Who in their right mind would believe such an idle tale? It is past time that we join the women in telling some “idle tales” of our own, and protest the world’s insistence on hate and violence! Christ is risen! Love will one day be triumphant! We can all work together for peace! War will one day be a thing of the past! These are all stories that women have told at one time or another. I invite you not only to listen to those stories, but to raise your own voice in telling them, helping to convince the world that they are not, after all, just idle tales.