SERMON: UNKNOWN SOLDIER? UNKNOWN GOD? You may be wondering what our readings today have to do with our observance of Memorial Day. One commonality I see is the idea of the unknown --- the passage in Acts takes place at an altar to an unknown God in Athens. One of the icons of Memorial Day is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. We will get into the context of both of those, but first a confession. I confess to you, Pilgrim Church, that I am ignorant when it comes to the military. I grew up in a huge extended family and somehow we have not a soldier in the lot (except for my paternal grandfather, but like many of his era, he never spoke a word about his time in combat). The closest I came to any sort of military education or values was in high school. I really admired my older cousin Kevin. He was so funny and strong, and he took Junior ROTC when he himself was in high school. Because I idolized him, I followed in his footsteps and did Navy JROTC myself for about two years. Hard to imagine right? This meant that I took classes on basic military history as well as color guard and PT. I had to wear my uniform every Tuesday to school, and it had to look neat, with my belt shiny and my shirt tucked. I got teased by a lot of my friends for this. What can I say? We were teenagers. As many of you who are getting to know me might expect, me and ROTC were not a great match. At that time, I liked to wear my hair down and wear my jeans with holes in them. I laughed a lot, and though I 1
respected authority, I did not like having to keep silent while a senior on a power high yelled in my face to straighten up. So I did not stick it out. I was a quitter, and I do not feel like I learned much about the real military. I have remained ignorant until recent years. It is unknown to me. Of course, in college as I progressed in my faith journey, I began to get interested in justice and peace issues and questions the many international conflicts we find ourselves a part of. I would question the wars themselves, but never gave much thought to the people in them one way or the other. In recent years, as a minister, I have learned to look beyond issues and learn the stories of the real people involved. Who are soldiers? What are their day to day lives like? What about for their families? What is it like to raise children on a military base? What is it like to be deployed multiple times? How is it to return to normal life afterwards? Of course it is not as if now I have all the answers. If anything, my curiosity and exploration of who some of these soldiers are has opened my eyes to just how much I do not know. When I look at the stories of military men and women, the picture is often not pretty. They are all so courageous, but they carry such a heavy weight, especially those who have been in combat. They have to do things we would never dream of doing. They have to see things we cannot imagine and that they can never un-see. In addition to remembering those who have died serving 2
their country today, we must remember those who served whose lives have been changed forever. We are only now beginning to speak of a new cost of war to human beings: the cost of what Rev. Rita Nakashima Brock calls moral injury. This is a relatively new term, and is not yet officially endorsed by the mental health community like Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. One military physician describes it well saying things happen in war that are irreconcilable with the idea of goodness and benevolence, creating real cognitive dissonance--- I m a good person, and yet I ve done bad things. A study from the New England Journal of Medicine of over 3,500 paratroopers and Marines after their return from combat in Iraq found these results about troops exposure to morally damaging events. Killed an enemy combatant: 48 65% Responsible for the death of a non-combatant: 14-28% Handled or uncovered human remains: 50-57% Saw ill or injured children whom you were unable to help 69-83% Had a buddy shot or hit who was nearby them 22-26% Saved the life of a soldier or civilian 21-19% Consider the fact that the people exposed to these horrific things are often also so very young; as young as high school seniors. You can imagine how hard it would be for these people to return home to the joy and well-meaning thanks for service and questions about how it was over there. The culture shock must be enormous! 3
Some veterans turn to drinking, drugs and other destructive behaviors simply to cope. Some are even discharged because of their behavior rather than treated. And the drugs or therapies that have been developed to treat PTSD do not always get at the root of this moral injury because their main focus is on extinguishing fear. Often the events they work with are things that happened to the soldier, as opposed to things they might have done (or failed to do) themselves, knowingly, but with much shame or guilt afterwards. When the codes of honor and duty are so strong for these men and women, they are especially vulnerable to violations of their moral code, and sometimes need more help with selfcompassion and self-forgiveness. These are invisible wounds, but with far-reaching consequences. In the past year, the U.S. lost a member of the military to suicide approximately every 18 hours --- nearly one of out every five suicides is a veteran. Also, one report found that mental complaints, not physical injury, were the leading cause of medical evacuations from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan between 2001 and 2012. I often come up here and share a lot of information with you that is really tremendously sad like this. But I do not share this with you to say that war is wrong. It s just not that simple. This is a different conversation. That is not what Memorial Day is about. It is about the people. It is about pulling the wool out from 4
over our eyes and hearing what it is really like for people who make the ultimate sacrifice. It s about making the unknown KNOWN! The care with which the military guards and protects the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is staggering. I had no idea. This tomb and its surrounds holds the remains of bodies from the major world wars who returned home unidentified. On the stone it reads: HERE RESTS IN HONORED GLORY, AN AMERICAN SOLDIER, KNOWN BUT TO GOD. It is a truly sacred place, and that is why it is considered one of the highest military honors to serve as a Sentinel at that Tomb. Fewer than 20% of those who apply are accepted to train for the position. In order to be allowed this duty, the guard must memorize sixteen pages of information about Arlington National Cemetery. Each day they are on guard it takes them six hours to prepare their uniform and they are on watch no matter what the weather, even during terrorist alerts! They do not know who they are serving, but the unknown soldier seems to represent all those who have lived in harm s way for the greater good. Another thing I did not know about this Memorial Day is that many scholars now believe that the first observance was actually in Charleston, South Carolina in 1865 at a horse track that had been a prison during the war, and in which hundreds of Union soldiers had died from exposure and disease and were buried without names. The people who gathered to pay their respects there were largely African- American. They processed to this place that had been fenced in and set apart and 5
they laid crosses and flowers there on the ground for those Union soldiers who had died and paid the cost for freedom. This story has become suppressed or distorted over the years because at the time many white Southerners told different stories about Memorial Day. It was a crude occasion celebrating an assault on their way of life. Later decades found Union and Confederate Veterans celebrating Memorial Day together, but ironically excluding blacks from those events. And so with the remembering came also the forgetting. The selective forgetting. What we remember matters! How we tell our stories matter for the future. Do we tell the truth in our remembering? Do we remember all the parts of the story, not just the heroic or triumphant parts, but also those parts which are painful and controversial? How can we learn the lessons of history unless we learn from our failings and our struggles? How can we make the unknown known? It is the same thing with our story of God. In the passage from Acts we just read, Paul is waiting in Athens to meet Timothy and Silas. He did not intend to preach a sermon, but when he goes up to Mars Hill and sees all the various altars to various idols, he cannot help himself. There were gods for the greedy, gods of nationalism, gods with all the answers, gods of healing---gods we can find in our own marketplaces and maybe even in our houses of worship if we look closely. Paul finds he must speak when he sees an altar to the unknown god. And what does Paul say in response to this? 6
He challenges them! You say you don t know this god???, he asks, but this God has made Himself known to you. This is the God who created everything around us, the God who gives us life, in whom we live and move and have our being. He commends their devotion in practice, but they do not see the truth hiding right before their eyes. The God of everything is right there, trying to get their attention. Couldn t we say the same about us? How is God trying to get our attention-- -you and me, right here in this day and age? How does God make the unknown known to us, in this day of social media and constant distraction? Paul would say we do not have to look hard to find God among us because God has already been seeking us all along. We have proof of that in Jesus. Jesus did not have to come, but He is living, breathing proof of how far God will go to connect with humanity. The story of God may connect differently with each one of our stories, but be sure of this: God is reaching out to connect! This faith is about making the unknown known. It is about seeing with new eyes and seeing a God who is not trapped in a piece of stone or up on an altar or caged in a creed. We are here remembering the work of a God who is HERE and NOW. AMEN 7