Sermon by Harry C. Cole
Damascus United Methodist Church
Isaiah 49:8-16a; Psalm 124; Ephesians 1:15-23; John 15:9-13
Ascension Sunday - May 24, 2009
Those of you who are liturgically sensitive may have noticed that that I have gently altered the lectionary readings for this day. We should have read from the Book of Acts. Instead, because Memorial Day is so much on my mind, I selected the passage from the Gospel of John which talks about the “greater love” involved in “laying down one’s life for one’s friends.” On this weekend before Memorial Day, reading those words seemed the right thing to do.
One of the great joys of the past few years has been getting to know some of the remarkable people in the Frederick area. Dean and Maria Calcagni, much involved in autism issues, are included in that for me. When I first met Dean, he informed me that he is an anesthesiologist. “Wonderful!” I said. “We’re in the same business. I’m a preacher!” (I’ll let you work on that!) Dean’s second comment was more important. When I said I would be preaching on Memorial Day weekend, Dean said simply, “Memorial Day is important to me.”
Well, Memorial Day is an important day for many of us. All veterans, living or dead are remembered on Veteran’s Day in November, but on Memorial Day our thoughts turn to those who are no longer with us. Especially on this day, we remember those who did not come home. As I say those words, I suspect there is hardly a person here did not think of someone special—a family member, a colleague, or perhaps a childhood friend whose life was ended all too soon by war. For me, that will always be my cousin, Neil Collier. For reasons I do not fully understand I would like to tell you a little about Neil today.
Neil was the oldest of three sons born to my Uncle Rex and Aunt Pauline. After Pearl Harbor, Uncle Rex, an editorial writer for the Evening Star newspaper in Washington, was called back to service in the navy. Rex and Pauline’s youngest child Jack was too young to serve, but their two oldest sons, Neil and Bill, enlisted. Bill, the middle son, flew a Hellcat off the carrier Belleau Wood in the Pacific. Bill survived the war, but he never forgot it. When Alzheimer’s prevented Bill from knowing who I was, or even what he had for breakfast, Bill remembered in detail the Hellcat he flew and his July 28, 1945, attack on the battleship Ise in Kure Harbor, Japan. Twenty year-old kids do not forget such things, ever.
Bill’s older brother Neil joined the Army Air Force. A portrait of Neil on the library wall of his home was enough to show his promise: handsome, capable, outgoing, with a hint of a smile, and eyes looking full ahead. That portrait and my mother’s comments about his potential were the only ways I ever knew my cousin Neil. Neil was assigned to fly the Burma Hump in a C-47, airlifting supplies from India across Burma and into China. That route across the Himalayas has been called, justifiably, the most dangerous air route of any war. It surely was for Neil.
One fateful day, Neil and six other crewmen took off one day in bad weather—the weather was almost always bad—and Neil’s plane went down in the Burma jungle. The search team which located the wreckage found six shallow graves. One of the crew had survived the crash. One of the crew had survived, buried his comrades, and wandered off into the jungle, seeking a rescue and a homecoming. Aunt Pauline was confident it would be Neil. If anyone could make it, it would be Neil. Dear God, let it be Neil. Again and again, let it be Neil. And day after day, month after month, Pauline waited, hoping for a phone call, a knock on the door, a homecoming.
Aunt Pauline’s waiting ended one clear spring morning at Arlington as a flag draped coffin was carried to its final resting place. Following a twenty-one gun salute, the flag was precisely and gently folded and presented to my aunt. Perhaps it was when she was given that flag, I don’t know; but somewhere in the midst of it all, Aunt Pauline knew what Uncle Rex, Bill, Jack and the rest of us had known for so long: Neil, her first-born child, was never coming home. In his letter to Mrs. Bixby, Abraham Lincoln would speak, of “the solemn pride that must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice on the altar of Freedom.” Aunt Pauline must have known that pride, also, but the pain of that loss, in many ways, never left her.
I share this story this morning at least partially because both that story and Memorial Day itself are reminders that war is costly, often bringing heartbreak and loss almost too great to bear. On all sides of any conflict, promising lives are cut short. On all sides, there are mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters who wait for a homecoming they will never know. Shakespeare was right about conflict, “All are punishéd.” That awareness has enabled Americans, Japanese, and Germans to work together today. At some point we understood that all had lost terribly.
I mention the personal cost of war because at the start of the Iraq conflict we were told by so many that “shock and awe” would end it all, very likely before it even began. Planners there were who did not expect losses in that war. Surely we in the church who are students of scripture and history and life knew better, but we said next to nothing. We must not make that mistake again. Go to war if we must, but we must never underestimate the suffering on all sides of the conflict. This Memorial Day reminds us that those who anticipate that any war will be a swift and easy matter do so at the peril of everyone involved.
My second thought for this day is less historical than it is theological: I am confident we can trust those we love to the God who loves. Let me repeat that: We can trust those we love to the God who loves. For me that includes my cousin Neil Collier. Friends, I know very little about my cousin Neil. I suspect he was baptized (aren’t most of us?), but I don’t know if he attended church. I don’t know if he had responded to an altar call, or had given his life to Christ, or done any of those things preachers often tell us are a part of “being saved.” I don’t know where Neil was with any of that. Certainly at his young age, like so many who die in every war, Neil did not have the opportunities for spiritual formation most of us have enjoyed. But regardless of how holy we are or are not, regardless of what things we have done or not done, said or not said, we serve a God whose name is love and a shepherd of all the sheep who is not willing that even one will be lost. Friends, we can trust those we love and remember this day—and even our enemies whom we are commanded to love—to the God who loves them even more than do we.
The Christ who has been my constant companion for over sixty years bears witness to this, but so does our Old Testament text for this day. Did you hear those words? I hope Aunt Pauline did. “For the Lord has comforted his people and will have compassion on his suffering ones. ‘I will not forget you,’ says the Lord. ‘See, I have inscribed you in the palm of my hand.’”
Imagine my surprise as I began to prepare this sermon! There I was, wondering if the lectionary for this day had any relevance for this day of remembrance, when I read the wonderful words of this text. Here is a God of compassion who comforts all those who have suffered loss. Nay, even more, the God of this text is a God who loves beyond a mother’s capacity to love her child and who has written the names of those she loves, including that of my cousin Neil, on the palm of his hand.
One last story: Many years after Neil’s death, my Uncle Rex died after a brief illness. Rex knew he was dying, and so did Pauline, but Rex’s death shortly after Christmas one year was, nevertheless, another terrible loss for her. But life goes on somehow, and so the following Christmas, as was her habit, Aunt Pauline found herself once again, polishing her antique brass items in her house. It was a routine she knew well, but this time, as Aunt Pauline opened the antique bed-warmer hanging by the fireplace, a note fell out onto the floor. She knew the handwriting. Nearly a year before, knowing that Pauline would be polishing the brass before Christmas, my Uncle Rex had placed a note in the bed-warmer for Pauline to find in her hour of need. I don’t know exactly what was in that note. It was never shared with me, nor should it have been. But I know it was a message of love and comfort, and I was told that Uncle Rex spoke of their times together and of his undying love for her.
I thought of that note as I read the scriptures for today. Our lesson from Isaiah for this Memorial Day Sunday is a note left by God for us to find in our hour of need. It, too, is a letter of love and comfort, reminding us that God’s love for us will never end and that the names of those we remember this day are inscribed in the very palm of God’s hand.
