Three weeks ago, I was in Hawaii. My first day there, I went to Pearl Harbor, to see the Arizona Memorial. Visiting this memorial is a lengthy process, not a visit to be undertaken lightly. As we got our tickets, we were told that our group would be entering the memorial in two hours. Our tickets had a group number, and I saw later that there is zero tolerance for line jumping. We spent the next two hours wandering around the area, primarily looking at the exhibits in the museum. As I wandered around, threading my way through clumps of tourists from all over the world, I was moved by the pictures, eyewitness accounts and memorabilia gathered in the exhibits. The men who died that day more than 60 years ago were no longer just names and numbers to me. They were people with faces, men who played music and sports, wrote their wives and mothers, and planned what they would do after their tours of duty had ended.
Toward the end of my walk through the museum, I came to the section dedicated to those who served on the Oklahoma. There, in large print on the wall, were words I recognized. As I began to read the eyewitness account of that morning, I could hear John Cole’s voice in my mind. My eye slipped to the name at the end. Yes. John A. Cole. Our John. John has been gone more than a year, and it’s been 18 months since he last told us the story of his experience of Pearl Harbor, but the men he brought to life as he told that story will always be with us.
As I walked away from the exhibit, I thought about all the years since we entered World War II. I thought about how many years it’s been and how many wars we’ve fought and how many people have died, and I thought, “Lord, how long? How long?”
That question stayed in my mind as we boarded the launch that took us out to the memorial itself, a white bridge-like structure over the Arizona’s resting place. As I looked down into the water at the sunken ship where so many men are entombed, I thought again, “Lord, how long? How long before we stop killing each other? How long until we are one? How long until we find the unity we are created to live in?”
Tomorrow is Memorial Day, and today, in pulpits throughout our country, people of faith are speaking of those who have died in service of our country.
As of Friday, 2462 of our military have died during the war in Iraq. Most of them are unknown to us. Some of them have names and faces we recognize from the news: names like Pat Tillman and Casey Sheehan. Most of them are invisible to us. Two years ago, that sense of invisibility led me to search my dresser drawer for the bracelet I wore to keep me mindful of a person who was missing in action during the Viet Nam War. You may remember my telling you about it on Memorial Day two years ago. For several years I wore that bracelet, engraved with that man’s name and the date of his disappearance: Spec 5 Berman Ganoe Jr. March 24, 1970. As I wore the bracelet, I thought of Berman. I wondered about his life. I thought of him often, and, as best I could, I prayed for him, for his family, and for an end to all war.
Two years ago, John Cole suggested that we post the names of those who had died as a result of the war in Iraq. I agreed that was an important thing for us to do and asked Bonnie, our parish administrator, to search the net for the information. We posted a list, but Bonnie also found a list that contained pictures, ages, and the situation in which the person lost his or her life. She cut those little pieces of paper apart – all 909 of them – and we placed them in an offering basin so that we could all select a little piece of paper and hold those people and their families in prayer. The basin is still on the narthex table, and there are still names – perhaps a hundred or so left.
The piece of paper I selected had a picture of PFC Stuart W. Moore. He was a member of the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Artillery Regiment, 1st Armored Division. His hometown was Livingston, Texas. He was 21 when he was killed. An improvised explosive device hit his convoy in Baghdad on December 22, 2003. In these two years, I’ve thought about him and wondered about him and prayed about him. I assumed I would never know anything about him, but I was wrong.
In late March, I received an email from Stuart’s mother, Pam Moore. She wrote that she often visits a web site called "Fallen Heroes" to see if anyone has posted any new messages for their family and to see if there is any more information that they have missed regarding their son, Stuart. One night her search turned up my sermon from May 30, 2004, in which I spoke of Stuart. She wrote: “I assume that since you held in your hand the little piece of paper with Stuart's name on it, you might have kept it for your own instructions or maybe someone else took his name to pray for our family. Let me first thank you for remembering our son and asking your congregation to pray for the families. We would never have come this far if it hadn't been for our friends, our church family and kind Americans praying for us. I can not even imagine how a family of a fallen soldier could ever work through the pain and suffering without faith in our Lord. The thought of spending eternity with our Lord and seeing our son again gives us hope.”
Then she wrote a little more about Stuart, so that I would have a connection with this young man for whom I have prayed. I want to share her writing with you, so that Stuart is more than a name and a number for all of us.
“Stuart's nickname was ‘Nubb’. He lost part of his trigger finger in an accident when supposedly splitting firewood with a hydraulic log splitter while working for his dad. After his death, some of his best buddies came by the house and fessed up because Stuart had made them promise to keep quiet. The real story is that he was trying to see how far he could hydraulically press a large bolt into a piece of firewood! Therefore, he got the nickname "Nubb". He even painted his nickname on the back of his tailgate on his truck. Living in a small community, everyone saw his nickname. He was afraid the US Army would not accept him – but they did and he was beaming with pride when he announced to us that he decided to enlist.
Stuart loved to rock climb and in one of his last letters to us, he mentioned
he wanted to return home after the war and go to work for his dad in our construction
company and open a indoor rock climbing gym. But upon his death, we knew there
would be lots of money wasted on plants and flowers so we set up an account
at our church, First United Methodist Church of Livingston and our bank and
we received enough money to build a 40' Climbing Tower with a 306' zip line
on our church's property so we could share Stuart's love of climbing with others.
As a matter of fact, we are about to have the 2nd Annual Freedom Climb Sunday
on April 23. We do this on the
Sunday closest to Stuart's birthday. We invite the community to come climb and
eat hamburgers and hotdogs for free. Like an old "Country Picnic".
We thought this would be a good way to encourage the unchurched to come and
see that Christian Fellowship can be a lot of fun!”
Yesterday I went to the website where we found Stuart Moore’s name and picture two years ago. It has grown. I scrolled through pages and pages and pages of names and pictures and ages and dates. I realized that printing and cutting all those names would be an impossible task. And I prayed, “O Lord, how long? How long will we go on killing each other? How many more names and pictures will be added to this list?”
I have no pieces of paper to offer you this morning, but as you come to the altar this morning to receive communion, I ask you to remember Stuart and his family – to hold as best you can all the men and women who have died and all the families who mourn them. I ask that you pray for those whose names don’t appear on our websites or in our news – the people of Iraq – the tens of thousands who have died and who mourn. I ask that you pray for an end to this war and for the coming of peace to this world.
As you pray, remember that we do not pray alone. Jesus, whose prayer is the intersection of his love for God and his love for us, still prays that we – all of us – all of us – will be one.