If you live in America, like me, chances are that you are spending your day today home from work, cooking out with your family in celebration of the unofficial start of the summer season. Today is Memorial Day in America, and while most of us don’t give a passing thought to what this day is actually about or why it’s a holiday in the first place, if you come from a military family or your served yourself, this day holds special significance for you. Memorial Day, or Decoration Day, as it used to be called is a day set aside to honor the memories of all the men and women in uniform who gave their lives in military service.
Originally Memorial Day was celebrated on May 30th each year. This tradition lasted from 1868 to 1970. After 1970, the date was changed to the last Monday of May. Some veterans groups argue that the change muddied the waters of what the day was really about. For citizens not connected to the military in any way, it became a three-day weekend for grilling out and enjoying parades and friends. For military families, members of the military, and those who have lost loved ones in battle, this day means so much more. How should we view this day as Christians?
Well, we don’t want to confuse allegiance to our country with allegiance to God. There are great things about our country. It was founded on Christian principles, and it upholds things like freedom and human rights. Blind allegiance to our country is not the answer, but allegiance to godly principles no matter which nation espouses them is always a good thing. When we think about the cause of freedom that our military members fight to uphold, we can be proud of each and every one of them. That doesn’t mean we support every military campaign waged by our government, but it does mean that we can be proud of the individual soldier who felt the call to defend freedom on our behalf.
It isn’t incompatible with Christianity to be a soldier. In fact, the Bible uses metaphors of military life to explain what God wants from us. We are called soldiers in the army of God. We are told to put on the full armor and to use our weapons in warfare against the enemy. If we serve as soldiers in the military of our nation, we should serve as unto God. We should make sure that we uphold the highest standards of integrity and honor. We can honor those who serve in our place if the military life is not our calling. Matthew 25:40 reminds us that: “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” Those who serve on my behalf due me a great honor. They allow me to pursue life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness without having to serve in a military capacity if I don’t want to. They fight so that I can have the freedoms I currently enjoy, including the freedom to worship God where, when, and how I choose. I have always found it honorable that the military does not encourage blind obedience, but allows the soldier to answer to a higher law when faced with orders that they cannot in good conscience carry out.
Many people will serve in our military and retire, but some give the last full measure of devotion. They die on our behalf, fighting in defense of the ideals that this nation stands for. On Memorial Day, we remember their sacrifice. It’s a sacrifice very similar to the one that Jesus made on our behalf. John 15:13 says: “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Each and every member of our military recognizes that they may be asked to lay their life down for their fellow Americans, and they are willing to do so because they believe the ideals our nation upholds. We don’t get it right all the time. We’re far from perfect, but those ideals are worth living up to and holding on to, even when our government is off course.
We know Christ’s love for us because He willingly died on our behalf, and not because we deserved it or we were good people or even because we were citizens of the same nation. Christ died on our behalf when we were still his enemy. Romans 5:7-8 reminds us: “Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” While we were sinners….while we were enemies of God, Christ died for us. It’s a far higher price than the one we ask of our military, and yet it’s the price required for our salvation and reconciliation with God. Through Jesus’ sacrifice we gain dual citizenship. We are citizens of whatever nation we are born into on earth, and we are citizens of the Kingdom of God. When we hold to the values of the Kingdom of God and defend them here on earth, we help to do our part to raise the standards and values of every nation until they match up to God’s standards.
1 John 3:16 says: “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.” So this Memorial Day, while we’re spending time with family and cooking out on the grill, let us take a moment to remember all those men and women of the military who died on our behalf, defending our ideals and our freedoms against any enemy foreign and domestic. When we honor their memories, their sacrifice, and the ideals our nation stands for, we are thinking on honorable things like Philippians 4:8 tells us to do: “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”
I’m going to end with a quote from Oliver Wendell Homes, Jr. that he delivered in a speech on Memorial Day in 1884:
“Our dead brothers still live for us, and bid us think of life, not death — of life to which in their youth they lent the passion and joy of the spring. As I listen, the great chorus of life and joy begins again, and amid the awful orchestra of seen and unseen powers and destinies of good and evil our trumpets sound once more a note of daring, hope, and will.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Let us honor those who died fighting for us, but less us also think of life. Let us think of life inside a nation built on the ideals of the Kingdom of God. Let us do what we can to honor those brave men and women who fight to defend those ideals, and let us raise the bar of our nation so that one day our ideals will match those of the Kingdom of God.
A Beautiful Mess 