Advocate

Robert E. Hall
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

May 29, 2011

Text: John 14

MEMORIAL DAY

On Memorial Day we commemorate US soldiers who died while in the military service. It was first enacted to honor Union and Confederate soldiers following the Civil War. After WWII it was expanded to honor Americans who have died in all wars.

A friend told me once that our grief’s are layered, stacked on top of each other, so that a fresh grief sinks through to other losses. On this weekend, we may not only be remembering the death of one particular person who died in one of our wars, but maybe for someone we know who lost a loved one in armed conflict.

For example, I think of my sister’s friend, Tony Anguiano, 19 years old, who was killed in action in Vietnam---whose name I found and took a picture of at the DC memorial.

And my maternal granddad, Eddie Earl Elliston, who survived WWI but who never recovered from being gassed and wounded and died in a Veterans Hospital in Chicago in 1946 at age 51. I found a letter my granddad sent to his brother in 1938, lamenting the fact that the peace he helped win was coming apart and we seemed headed toward another great war.

Or my Dad, who survived after being critically wounded on the island of Luzon in the Philippines---on Victory in Europe Day. Shrapnel or fragments of bullets were still surfacing in his back until he died at age 65. For years after returning from the war he would awaken in the night screaming.

After the war, my Dad returned and was inducted into the local American Legion unit. They gave him a cap with a Red Arrow insignia on it. He went a few times to their meetings and then stopped. “The men wanted to talk about combat and the glory of it,” he said. “Many of them were not in combat.” His combat experience was so traumatic for him that he did not want to relive it, and certainly not glorify it.

I think it was Douglas McArthur was said that soldiers of all people pray for peace. I believe this is so. No matter the patriotism which motivates and gives courage to those who have fought our wars----and the justice of some wars----- war for those in harm’s way really is hell.

Even in the midst of the hellishness of war, we have been told that there were signs of human kindness and solidarity. William Sloane Coffin Jr. prayed, “Gratefully, we remember the generosity that prompted them to share the last of their rations, the last pair of dry socks, to share in the course of one hour in the foxhole more than most of us care to share with one another in a lifetime. And we recall the courage that made more than one of them to fall on the grenade there was no time to throw back.” (From Old South Church News: Memorial Day Prayers, Copyright 2008, www.oldsouth.org/news-2008-0523)

We are prone to glorify war now, maybe because so few of us have to fight in them, and we are not being asked as civilians to sacrifice much to win them. We play at war on a scale and with a realism that is vastly different from the child’s play of post-war America.

I happened to pick up the May 27 edition of USA Today. I saw there one chilling example of our preoccupation with combat, or imaginary combat. The title of an article is “Answering the Call of Duty on an Epic Scale: Activision hopes 3rd Game Follows in billion dollar franchises’ boot steps.” On “Modern Warfare Three, Delta Forces fight on land, sea and sky…trade fire in an aerial dance among the skyscrapers.”  “Each of the franchises last two entries---Call of Duty: Black Ops and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, have sold (for) more than I billion dollars….”

But war is not a game is it? In the movies, the actors get up when they are “killed” and go off to dinner. In video games, the little digits go back to their places in the disc and rest until they are next activated. Not so in actual combat. Many soldiers do not get up and come home.

So many movies are not much except special effects wherein thousand are “killed.” When Harry Belafonte was asked what he thought of these kind of movies he replied: “It bothers me that, in many of today’s movies, so many are killed and no one cries.” (Source Unknown)

I have seen documentaries in which soldiers who had fought in Normandy beaches have returned to the place and wept real tears for all who were killed in that bloody invasion. These men and women and heir families know that Memorial Day is not just a day for special sales. It is a day of remembrance, and it is day for prayer that these who died in service to their nation will not have died in vain, that liberty justice and freedom will flourish---and that we would do well not to sell or buy cheap glory in the form of movies and videos.

We pause to remember those who went to war did not come back to resume life as usual. And many of those who did come back were forever traumatized by witnessing so many of their comrades and even their enemies, dying in battle.

And we commit ourselves to the hard work of finding peaceful means of defending our nation and advancing the cause of peace and justice in the world.

William Sloane Coffin, Jr. prayed for God “to forgive us that so many died so young because we were too unimaginative, too indifferent or just too late to think of better ways than warfare to conduct the business of the world.” (Source cited above)

JOHN 14: GRIEF

It is a coincidence that Memorial Day weekend comes on the 6th Sunday of Easter, and when John 14 is read.

Jesus disciples were grieving in anticipation of the loss of their brave leader, someone they had seen take on the powers of darkness and not stand down.  They loved him, and he loved them. They were going to have to live without the physical presence of Jesus. They anticipated that sense of being orphaned, abandoned, “left on their own, left out or left to fend for themselves.”

Jesus’ death and departure was like a branch being cut off the vine. How would they stay alive spiritually?

Jesus’ answer to them was that in his Jesus’ absence, there will be  given a  “Paraclete”--a Greek word variously translated as  advocate, all-around helper, comforter, companion, encourager,   What Jesus was to his disciples would be given to them in the Spirit. They would be sustained and guided---- buoyed up by the same love which Jesus had shown them.  And it would a mutual love.

The disciples were commanded to keep his commandments---which boils down to one:

“Love one another as I have loved you.”

Commissioned is a better word than commanded. To be commissioned is to be sent as a person empowered to do the job, to love one another with Jesus-type love.

Love may entail feelings but can’t be dependent on them. Our feelings are fickle.  To love as Jesus did is “to be there for another, to act for their good…..” We are commissioned to obey orders-- to love (John 3:16) even if it costs us dearly, as Jesus’ love did.

This is hard work. Anyone who tells you it isn’t is lying! Loving is labor intensive. “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.” Loving means patience, forgiveness, forbearance and wisdom. Yet the practice of love fuels growth of loving.

This is who we are. The disciples were afraid that would not know who they were without Jesus with them. Jesus taught them, and the Advocate teaches us, that it is our love for each other which shows who we are. Not pride-fullness and not condemnation, but agape, unconditional love—love in action.

Marcus Borg wrote: “Being Christian is breathtakingly simple….It is about loving God and loving what God loves.” (Found in “There Lives the Dearest Freshness Deep Down Things,” 2010 Annual Report: Texas Methodist Foundation, 11709 Boulder Lane, Suite 100, Austin, Texas 78726-1808)

What we want to convey is this:  “No matter what you have done in the past, you have a new future with Jesus Christ.”

OTHERS

The Advocate helps us, personally and corporately; keep our courage when we feel abandoned. We “faith” (trust, believe, have confidence) that the presence of Jesus through the spirit is blowing over us and through us; we live in him and he in us.  This deep faith gives us courage to be. This is the faith by which we live

The disciples remembered Jesus and the price he paid to save the world.  Jesus said to his disciples, “Greater love has no one than to give his life for his friend.” (John 15:13)

So we can receive the Spirit as gift and live as those who embody the grace of love.

And loving those close to us overflows to others. The more love is given away, the more there is---the deeper and the broader-----to love our sisters and brothers, our neighbors (near and far) and even our enemies.

We Christians have been taught to be thankful for One who has given his life for our sake. Let us do so with thanksgiving on this Memorial Day weekend, and remember tour fellow citizens who gave their lives for the sake of the high ideals of this nation. And let us dedicate ourselves to stay true to who we are as disciples of Christ, those who passionately long for and work for peace for ourselves and all peoples.