"BORN TO BE..."  

Rev. Jim Petersen

MAY 25, 2008

    First Congregational UCC?Great Falls, MT        

Text: Galatians 5:1, 13-25   I Peter 3:8-12

Thank you, Jim.  That was lovely.  I think most of us agree that   ("Amer­ica the Beautiful") should be our national anthem

143 years ago this coming Friday, May 30, 1865,   six weeks following the assassination of Abraham Lin­coln, a group of black school children in Columbus, S.C.­, placed flowers on the graves of Union soldiers.    The act received national attention at a time when this nation was groping and grieving for a sign of hope.

This act by the black school children in S.C., is said to be the first symbolic act of reconciliation between the north and south following the Civil War, a war, I remind you, in which 622,50­0 Americans were killed, more than all the Americans killed in WWI, WWII, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War combined.

  A war in which, I remind you as well, not a single "enemy" was killed.  As the Civil War expression goes: "A cannon ball don't pay no mind if you are gentle and kind."

A year later, April 25, 1866, following a worship service in a small town in Mississippi, a group of women was placing flowers on the graves of Confederate soldiers killed in the battle of     Shiloh, when they noticed the grav­es of union soldiers killed in the same battle laying bare in the same cemetery.

They changed the scene in that cemetery as they chose to lay flowers upon the blue graves as well as the gray graves, no longer distinguishing between their fallen sons by the color of their tombstone.

Francis Miles Finch, a professor at the Congregationally found­ed college, ­Yale University, learned of this act and called attention to it in a poem, which millions of Americans, north and south, learned by heart and by the grace of God took to heart. 

 It read:

     "From the silence of sorrowful hours

       the deso­late mourners go.

      Lovingly laden with flowers,

       alike for friend and foe.

        Under the sod and dew, waiting for judgment day,

       under the one the blue, under the other the gray.

  So with equal splendour,

   The morning sun rays fall,

  With a touch impartially tender,

   On the blossoms blooming for all.

  No more shall the war-cry sever,

       Or the winding rivers be red.

  They banish our anger forever,

   When they laurel the grave of the dead.

  Under the sod and the dew, waiting for judgment day.

     Love and tears for the blue, tears and love for the gray­."

And so it was two years late on May 5, 1868, General John A. Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic,   in his General Order. No. 11, declared:   "The 30^th of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorat­ing the graves   of comrades who died in defense of their country..."

Our Memorial Day Holiday was created,   though for the first 80 years we called it Remembrance Day, as some of you will remember.

The causes of the Civil War were many, but few Americans,   north or south, east or west, would disagree with Lincoln's famous words at Gettysburg:    "...that we highly resolve that these dead shall not have    died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that the government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from this earth."

 On Memorial Day we remember those Americans who gave their lives that we might live in freedom, as one nation, under God. Memorial Day is a day of remembrance. 

 I remind you it was born out of the absolute sorriest chapter in the history of our nation. 

So remember to say a prayer of thanksgiving tomorrow for "comrades who died in defense of our country," and memoriali­ze them by not only decorating their graves, but by dedicati­ng yourself to the causes of peace, justice and freedom f­or which they died.

Freedom.  Freedom is one of those inherent values for which people live and die.  Although difficult to define, we all know fr­om about the age of two when we have it and when we don'­t.

You will recall, that when the French philosopher, Rousseau, was being hunt­ed and hound­ed for his outrageous opinions, the philosopher Voltaire invited him to come and live at his home. Voltaire greeted Rousseau with an em­brace and his famous comment, "I do not agree with a word you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it."  And these were Frenchmen no less.

Freedom.  As the Apostle Paul declared to the Galatians,

   "Freedom is what we have - Christ has set us free!   Stand, then, as free people, and do not submit yourself  to the yoke of slavery again."(5:1)

 Freedom, it seems, is God-given to us as human beings.

But what is the gift?  Freedom for what?

 Freedom to do our own thing?

 Freedom to go out and get all that we can get?

 Freedom to tell others what to do?

 Freedom to own slaves?

 Freedom for Americans to be 5% of the earth's population while    consum­ing 35% of the earth's energy?   

Freedom to build our walls higher so others may not get what we've got? 

Freedom, as Paul puts it to the Galatians, to be "self-indulgent," and to practice the "desires of the flesh" like "fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these." 

Even if you do not know what all these words mean, I think you get an idea of what Paul means.

To which Paul concludes, sounding like a Baptist preacher, "I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God."

So what are we supposed to do with our freedom?  Putting it in the positive, as Paul does as well to the Galatians,   "As for you, my brothers, you were called to be free.  But do not let this freedom become an excuse for letting your physical desires control you.  Instead, let love make you serve one another.  For the whole Law is summ­ed up in one commandment: ?Love your neighbor as you love your­self.'"(5:13ff)

So here it is: we are free to love others and to serve others.  Wouldn't you know?  Christianity taking all the fun out of it.  We are not free to satisfy ourselves.  We are free to be obedient to the commandments of Christ, free to care for others and to be good stewards in God's world.

Charles Kingsley spoke of this when he said,  "There are two freedoms:  the false, where a person is free to do as he likes;  and the true, where a person is free to do what he ought­."

And what ought we ought?  We ought love one another.  The same preachy conclusion we always come to.   You can listen to it on Memorial Weekend, you can hear it on Labor Day, always the same thin­g, the same broken record grating against the track record of humani­ty, love one an­other.

You ask, isn't there anything new in the Gospels?  The answer is, no, no there is not.  When we get this book down, God will write a new one.

Still, it's helpful to elaborate a little.  Paul does.  Adding to his "love your neighbor as yourself theme,"  he says the fruits of our freedom should be "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control."  I say, pick any six of these nine fruits, and the tree of life will blossom­ within you.  For it is for this we are made and meant to bear fruit.

You see, it was like this: God was lonely.  God was lonely!  And God said, "I think I'll make me a human being."    And God created man and woman.  In God's image, God created man and woman.   And then God gave them free­dom. 

 Freedom that they might live in relationship to God.   For what is a relationship if the other has no choice but to relate.  So freedom of choice God gave the human.

  Freedom to walk with God and talk with God, or freedom to walk away from God and ignore God.  Freedom to love God, or freedom to reject God.  Freedom to do God's will on earth,     or freedom to do our own will on earth.  (pick an apple and eat it)

 God saw the human being that God created, and God said,    "This is good."  But what God was really thinking was,  "Man, making man is risky business!"  But God had faith.  And God kept the faith.  God continues to give us freedo­m, that we might, as Paul writes, bear the fruits of God's Spirit,  "love, joy, peace, patience, kindnes­s...Or not.

Or to go from Paul to Peter, Peter addresses this in his first letter.   He is writing at a horrible time, at least for Christians.   He is writing to the church in Asia minor, which is under    heavy persecution.  Actually, it is under heavy execution.  For to be a Christian, as declared be Caesar Domitia­n, was to be subject to death.

 Peter writes to his subjects, "do not repay evil for evil or abuse   for abuse, but, on the contrary, repay with a blessing.  It is for    this," writes Peter, "that you were called."  So there you     have it, even in the worst of times.  We are born free, for what?  Retaliation?  Vengeance?  To get even?  No, we, Christian brothers and sisters, followers of Christ, are born to be a blessing.

To go outside the Christian box a bit, the Chinese philosopher, Mencius said, a bit before Jesus' time,    "All people have a capacity for compassion...If people see a child about to fall in a well, they will without exception experience a feeling of alarm and distress.  This is not because they know the child's parents, nor out of a desire for praise by neighbors and friends, nor out of dislike for the bad reputation that would ensue if they did not go to the rescue.  From this we may conclude that without compassion one would not be a human being."

 I don't know if I quite catch the philosopher Mencius' leap   to his conclusion, ­but I agree with his conclusion,  "without compassion one is not a human being."  Without com­passion we are not human beings blessing God's planet.

Which reminds me of a scene I've never been able to forget from a movie quite a few years backed now called,  The Elephant Man.  Remember?   The true story of an Englishman born with a terribly deforming disease sometime in the 19^th century.

And how he was abandoned as a young boy, sold to a circus as a freak, and later escaped and made his way to London, where he was sheltered by a doctor, who compassionately related to the person within the hideous deformity.

In the scene I cannot forget, the "Elephant Man" is walking through the streets of London, a hood over his face to hide his unsightliness and the taunting his appearance  inevitably incited, when a youth comes by and pulls his hood off.  Sure enough, upon seeing the freak, a gang of kids start chasing the Elephant Man as if he were an animal to be captured and caged, and sent back to the circus.

They finally corner him in a subway lavatory, where the Elepha­nt Man cries out, "I am a human being."

There is something in each of us, no matter how imperfectly   sculpted or wretchedly wrapped our exterior, that cries out,    "I am a human being."  God calls us to recognize this in one another, and moreover to recognize God's image in one another.  And then wi­th our freedom to respond to one another and to God with love and compassion.   Which is to be a blessing.

Mother Teresa was touring one of her Calcutta homes for the incurable­s.  A male nurse was attending to a man half-consumed  with leprosy.  The nurse was overcome by the patient's stench and turned away to retch.  Mother Teresa took over the dressing the patient's wounds herself.

 The pitiful patient protested, "How can you bear to touch me?"    "It is nothing," replied the nun, "compared to the pain you must feel."  Mother Teresa, bearing the fruit of compassion and love born of our freedom.  And what a blessing!

143 years ago this Friday some freed black children in Columbus,  S.C., boldly placed flowers on the graves of Union soldiers.    One year later in a small town in Mississippi some liberated         women bravely placed flowers on the graves of Union as well as Confederate soldiers.  These outrageous acts were the first healing balms for our nation following the Civil War, and the beginning of our Memorial Day Holiday.

 We choose to remember, and to do likewise as we are able...   to be a blessing in G's world.  Good luck.   

 AMEN.