Sermons for the Month

To Sacrifice and to Serve
DATE: November 11, 2001
TEXT: Luke 20:45-21:4
“To all of you Saints here this morning, grace and peace to you from God our Father, from His Son, Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit. AMEN

At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, 83 years ago today, the guns were silent in Western Europe. That moment marked the ending of what people came to call "the Great War," "great" not with a sense of pride or accomplishment but as a description of its immense scope and of the unprecedented destruction it had wrought. What began as a regional conflict grew to include nation after nation, in a web of alliances and a tangle of past grudges; and with great ingenuity and inventiveness, human civilization produced armaments, explosives, and chemical weapons that could maim, terrorize, and kill with a particularly effective combination of brutality and efficiency. Young men from the factories and farms of Ohio and West Virginia, Michigan and Pennsylvania, New York and Nebraska and California found themselves far away from home, fighting alongside their counterparts from the coal mines of Wales, the fields of England, the highland pastures of Scotland, the sunny vineyards of France, fighting and dying in places with strange-sounding names like Ypres and Armentiere, like the Argonne Forest and Flanders field. Many called it "the war to end all wars," hoping and fervently praying that the end of the fighting would be the beginning of a great era of peace, believing that surely now that the world had witnessed the horrors of modern warfare, no nation would ever again turn to war as an instrument of foreign policy.
Eight years later, the Congress of the United States declared November 11 "should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations." In the 20th anniversary year of the 1918 Armistice, Congress made "Armistice Day" a legal holiday, "to be dedicated to the cause of world peace." Only a few years later, young men and women of many nations were back on the battlefields of Europe, of northern Africa, and on the seas and the islands of the South Pacific; and within another decade, on the hills of Korea. In 1954, the Congress changed the name "Armistice Day" to "Veteran's Day," in recognition of the continuing sacrifice and service of the men and women of our nation and of the other free nations of the world,
and in that year President Eisenhower called on the American people to "solemnly remember the sacrifices of all those who fought so valiantly to preserve our heritage of freedom," and to "reconsecrate ourselves to the task of promoting an enduring peace so that their efforts shall not have been in vain."
The Lutheran understanding of the Christian faith, unlike some of the more pacifist churches of the Reformation, has never prohibited the use of military force in providing for the defense of a nation. Nations, and national governments, are regarded as God's good gifts, for the purpose of establishing peace and good order in our common life. "Good government" is one of those things Luther says we pray for when we ask God for our "daily bread," for without it, we would live in a world in which the weak would forever be at the mercy of the strong, and in which very few would ever realize the wonderful vision of the prophet Micah in which the Lord promises that "they shall sit every man under his own vine and under his own fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid."
As we l ive within the reality of a fallen world in which Evil continues to seek its own will, Lutheran Christians have always recognized the sad necessity of remaining prepared for war even as we spare no effort to work for peace. And so today we remember those who have served our nation in the armed forces, and we honor them for their sacrifice, the sacrifice of their time, their youth, their own pursuits and dreams; sacrifice of their homes, of comfort; sacrifice of health, sometimes over a lifetime; and sacrifice of life itself for the sake of protecting and preserving the peace, dignity, and freedom for which God created humanity.
When I was planning worship for today, I came upon that little story in Luke's Gospel about a poor widow and her offering to the Temple treasury. It takes place during the final days of Jesus' life, as he was spending those last precious days with his disciples in Jerusalem, trying to pack in all the things he yet wanted to teach them. Jesus raises a skeptical eyebrow at many of those who strode importantly past them, oh-so-conscious of their place within the religious and social establishment, dropping their coins into the offering box with a resounding thunk, and with just the right touch of conspicuous modesty. And then suddenly he spots this nameless woman, who appears just for an instant in Holy Scripture, walks up to the collection box, slips in two tiny lightweight coins that make barely a ping, and then disappears into anonymity again. Jesus straightens up, nods in her direction, and says to his disciples, "Did you see that? That woman just gave more than anybody else here today. She put in everything she had."
You see, there were many there that day who could "talk the talk," who were teachers and experts in the ins-and-outs of the technical theological and practical implications of loving the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength, and loving your neighbor as yourself, they were happy to discuss and debate and present, and even to put on a demonstration. This woman heard the talk, and she "walked the walk," giving her ALL purely out of love for God and neighbor even when there was no one watching, or so she thought; even when her gift seemed so easily overwhelmed by the abundance of others.
Christians often retell this story at this time of the year; in fact, I'm sure that some preacher somewhere even as we speak is using it as part of an annual stewardship emphasis, and appropriately so. But on this Veteran's Day, it serves to remind us that stewardship is more than our coins, more than our folding money, even more than our checks and our authorized automatic deposits into the church treasury. If it were that simple, God would just send us the bill now and again, like every one else does.
Stewardship, and discipleship, is what we do with the whole of our lives and of our very selves, body, mind, heart, and soul, and the question that confronts us, not just once a year or once a week or now and again in life when there are really big decisions to be made, but every moment of every day of our lives is, who and what are you living for? Are you living for yourself and that which you regard as "yours", with an inward focus that says, "what more do I need, and how can I get it?" Or are we letting the Lord turn us inside out and widen the angle of our attention until more and more often we find ourselves saying, "what more do you need, and what can I do to contribute?"
Today we honor the veterans of the military service of our nation because each of them asked the question, "what can I give to my country and to its people, what can I do that will make this world a better place, a safer place for all who wish to live in peace and in freedom?" And then they did it, not for their own glory, but for our sake. They gave it their ALL, in spite of the fact that truly, as General Sherman said more than a hundred years ago, "War is all hell," and as millions of vets can testify, peacetime military service is no walk in the park, either. Each one of them, serving in wartime or in an interlude of peace was willing to commit himself or herself if necessary to make the ultimate sacrifice, to lay down one's life for the sake of friends, of strangers, of generations yet to come, for the sake of evil which must be overcome, and of ideals which must flourish.
Someday, in God's own time, the guns will be silent again, the planes will be on the ground, the ships back in port, the husbands and wives and sons and daughters will be home again. Someday, by God's promise, guns and bombs will be silent FOREVER, and no one will have cause to be afraid, ever again.
Until then, we recognize and honor those who have put themselves in harm's way for us; and perhaps we honor them best by following their example of sacrifice and serve, offering ourselves each day to God for the sake of the good He wishes to do, and the peace He wishes to make, through us. When we do that, we truly are in good company, with vets and non-vets alike, all of us following Jesus, who said, "greater love has no one than this, than that he lay down his life for his friends" -- and then he did. Jesus talked the talk and walked the walk. God grant us the courage to do the same.
AMEN