Sunday, May 26, 2019

Memorial Day 2019

Message: “Memorial Day "

I intend this to be an interactive sermon so please join in. Feel free to sprinkle a few amens or Hallelujah, raise your hands during the hymns, or however the spirit moves you.

For most people, Memorial Day is just another flag waving holiday

like the 4th of July, Flag Day, and  Labor Day.

It marks the beginning of summer. Can i get a hallelujah?


It's the weekend of the Indy 500.


School's out. Many have mixed emotions about that, Right?


The pools open. Even if the weather is cold enough to turn your lips blue, we have to at least dip our toes in the pool.


It provides the first real chance for picnics, grilling, and of course an outing to Cutty’s. How about another hallelujah?

Memorial day hasn’t always been that way though.

Memorial Day grew out of the human need to remember where we have been. The needed to remember is why we save photos, letters, trophies, odd bits of ribbon, and a million other things.

What things are in your treasure collection?

We save the past to help us gain a better view of the where we've been. Only then can we figure out where we are going.

The cherished memories of a nation, a town, a church, a family, or an individual provide the values and dream that one generation passes on to the next.

Forgetting to share with the next generation means dropping the torch, as does failing tho learn from the party generations. We as a nation have often forgotten the lessons of the past and repeated the same mistakes once again. Amen?

One of the lessons we have failed to learn is the human cost of war. It is estimated that 1,255,500 US military personnel have died on active duty, including the 620,000 during the civil war..

This is Memorial Day weekend the time set aside to remember those who died during active military service.

Memorial Day unofficially  begun during the Civil War when some concerned women decided to decorate the graves of those who had bravely given their lives in that destructive civil conflict between the states.

I’m sure similar thoughts were on the mind of President Abraham Lincoln on November 19, 1863 as he made his way to a Pennsylvania battlefield.

He feared that he might well be the very last President of the UNITED States of America.

He had good reason for that fear. The country teetered on the brink of self-destruction. It could easily have become un-united and only a confederation of allied but separate countries.

The ceremony that afternoon was to dedicate the site of a cemetery for the over 3,500 union soldiers killed at Gettysburg in the three-day battle the previous July. However the toll was much higher when the loss of Confederate soldiers is added in. Over forty thousand American soldiers died in or because of wounds suffered in that battle.

Though it is short, his speech that day is well remembered. He said,”

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.

We are met on a great battle-field of that war.

We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live.

It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not 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 here 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—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—

that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Lincoln's remarks provided the seedbed for what would become Memorial Day.

           Memorial day was set up to honor, as Lincoln said, those brave men who struggled and gave their last full measure of devotion t li. Over the years, many memorials have been erected to honor a person or persons who have died.

I have visited the memorials and cemeteries in and around Washington D.C. The row upon row of white crosses standing in military precision at the Arlington National Cemetery was an overwhelming sight.

At the Vietnam Memorial, as I was standing and reading the names of those killed, I suddenly noticed my reflection in the polished black marble. I have no words to discribe the flood of emotions that came over me. Though I was never in combat, I did serve in the army during that war.

What memorials have you visited? What was your reaction?

This is a worship service so let us think for a moment of the memorials to Jesus the Christ.

           What memorials to Jesus Christ do we have? In a way, every cross and church building is a memorial to him. But the memorial that comes most readily to my mind is the communion meal where we are commanded to “Do this in remembrance of me.”

“Do this in remembrance of me.”

Remember the miracles that he did. What miracles do you remember?


Remember His lessons on how to live. What life lessons have you learned?


Remember His Descriptions of Heaven. Tell me what heaven is like


Remember His Promises. What promises have you claimed? “Where I am you will be also. I’ll be with you until the end of the age.  I’ll send a helper, the Holy Spirit


Remember His betrayal by the religious authorities. Do you remember the illegal night time “trial” with false witnesses?


Remember the betrayal by his closest friends. Who betrayed him? Judas, our course, but all of them betrayed him by abandoning him. And to keep us from becoming smug, we see reminded that "all people have sinned, they have fallen short of God's glory." (Romans 3:23)


Remember the humiliation of his beatings, the path through the streets with the weight of the cross, the mocking crown of thorns, the nails that pierced His flesh.


Remember the agonizing effort it took for him to speak His few words from the cross. Because of the cruel nature of the crucifixion most prisoners died of asphyxiation (couldn’t breathe). And yet, Christ pushed with his nail pierced feet and pulled with his nail pierced hands to raise himself enough to breathe out some important words, “


Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do


Today you will be with me in paradise

Behold your son: behold your mother


My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?


I thirst


It is finished


Father, into your hands I commit my spirit


Remember His triumph over the grave.


Remember His final words … the last commandment to His followers after the resurrection and just before he ascended into heaven.  “So wherever you go in the world, tell everyone the Good News

And always remember that He did all of it for YOU and me!

Let us now remember through Holy Communion by receiving the Bread and the Cup. Join me in the prayer of confession.

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