Yesterday morning, I drove to Gilroy to do a presentation on conflict management and the Center for Reconciliation that will soon be a reality at St. Mark’s. As I headed through the maze of road construction and holiday weekend traffic, I listened to NPR. At the end of one show, the host, Scott Simon, bid us all to have a good Memorial Day weekend. Then he startled me by saying: Remember that Memorial Day means more than mattress sales. Remember that it’s the day we honor those men and women who have died in the service of our country.
Three years ago, I visited Pearl Harbor, to see the Arizona Memorial. There’s generally a long wait for the visit, and people who come to see the memorial usually roam in the museum at the shore while waiting for their turn. As I wandered around the museum, 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.
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 yesterday, 4295 of our military have died during the war in Iraq and 1152 in Afghanistan. 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. And, for many of us, the honor we give on Memorial Day to their memories and their sacrifice tends to get swallowed up in a brief outburst of patriotic fervor. But for those of us whose lives have been touched by the war-time death of a loved one or fellow soldier—for those who know the faces and voices of those who have died—Memorial Day cannot begin to contain the memory of their sacrifice or speak the honor due to them.
Our words and our actions on this day cannot begin to give full honor to those who have died in the service of our country, but we try. Five years ago, we posted a list of those who had died in the war. Bonnie Glass, who was our administrator at that time, 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 each select a little piece of paper and hold those people and their families in prayer.
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. Two years after I held Stuart’s name in my hand, I received an email from his mother, Pam Moore, whose online search for any new bits of information about her son turned up my sermon 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.”
Yesterday I went to the website where we found Stuart Moore’s name and picture five years ago. It has continued to grow. 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, but I needed to bring some of them to be with us today. I printed two pages at random, giving us eleven names and six pictures from the “B” portion of the alphabet. I will put them on the altar in token of all those whom we remember today.
We remember:
Sgt. Andrew L. Bossert, age 24, 2nd Infantry Division, March 7, 2005
Sgt. Kenneth E. Bostic, 21, 204th Military Police Division, 1st Combat Support Brigade,
October 30, 2006
Pfc. Rachel K. Bosveld, 19, 527th Military Police Company, V Corps, October 26, 2003
Spc. Samuel E. Boswell, 20, 243rd Engineer Company, Maryland Army National Guard,
October 14, 2005
Pfc. Brian A. Botello, 19, 2nd Infantry Division, April 29, 2007
Sgt. Nathan K. Bouchard, 24, 3rd Infantry Division, August 19, 2005
Cpl. Jeremy P. Bouffard, 21, 25th Infantry Division, August 22, 2007
Spc. Mathew G. Boule, 22, 3rd Infantry Division, April 2, 2003
Staff Sgt. Elvis Bourdon, 36, 1st Cavalry Division, September 6, 2004
Pvt. Michael E. Bouthot, 19, 4th Infantry Division, April 22, 2006
Lance Cpl. Jeremy D. Bow, 20, 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force, October 30, 2004
As you come to the altar this morning to receive communion, I ask you to remember those whom you have lost to war—to remember Stuart and his family—to hold as best you can these eleven people and their families and 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 people of Afghanistan—the tens of thousands who have died and who mourn. I ask that you pray for the people of Palestine and Israel. I ask that you pray for the people of every country where armed conflict brings an end to hopes and dreams. I ask that you pray for an end to all 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.
Thanks be to God.