Sermon:
May 28, 2006
Morning Services

Scripture:
John 4:1-42 (selected verses)

This is Memorial Day weekend, and it is our hope and our responsibility as a congregation to take time to remember those from our church family whose lives have been lost or forever changed by their faithfulness in times of war.   

Memorial Day began officially in 1868, but its real beginnings can be traced to informal remembrances in a number of cities and towns immediately following the Civil War. One of the earliest was in Columbus, Mississippi, where southern mothers went out to decorate the graves of their sons after the war that claimed more than 526,000 American lives, still the largest number in our country’s history, followed closely by World War II, where 405,000 died.[i]  

Let us pray: God, who sees more than we do, open our eyes during our time together this morning. Help us to see clearly into one another’s hearts as we tell the stories of our congregation. And even more, as we hear these stories, Lord, soften our hearts to hear whatever Word you may whisper to us in these moments. Amen. 

* * * * * 

From the eighth floor of William Beaumont Hospital, it is possible to see the Renaissance center downtown. To the north, you can see several church steeples buried in a carpet of green treetops.  It’s amazing what you can see from that hospital, if you can find it in your heart to look. 

From a graveside at Arlington Cemetery, or in St. Lo, France, or even at Acacia, it’s possible to see a long way across the grassy graves. Sometimes we are able to look into the past or see into the future while standing next to a grave. But sometimes that’s mighty hard to do.   

From Jacob’s Well in Samaria, it was possible for Jesus to see only the well and only the Samaritan woman before him, but Jesus chose to see more, so much more.  

From the lookout post in the lead Humvee of a convoy in Iraq, charged with the responsibility to avoid explosive devices, it’s possible and necessary to see everything around you; to memorize every detail of the roads you travel. Jonathan Barratt has learned to examine every vehicle, every pothole, and even the color of the sand beside the road, as a slight change in coloration might be all the warning you will get about an IED (improvised explosive device) that threatens not only your own life, but the lives of everyone in the convoy you are leading. 

From a Liberty Ship anchored a quarter mile from the Normandy Shore, it was impossible not to see an awesome sky filled with B-17s as thick as a swarm of angry hornets, winging their way toward St. Lo, the French town that had to be won back from the Germans if the Allies were to save Paris.   

But it was not possible for Bill Bratton, on board that ship, to see or know that a young man named Ken would be accidentally killed by those very bombers that were being sent to save him, due to an unexpected shift in the winds. Nor was it possible for Bill to see the young college student in Pennsylvania who was his own future wife and, ironically, Ken’s sister. Ken had hoped to become a musician, or perhaps a minister. 

Also near St. Lo was another future minister, Rev. Sam Stout, retired United Methodist clergy, who worships with us. As Sam traveled down the road from St. Lo on the way to Paris, he saw incoming mortar shells and was forced down to the ground. From eye-level with the dirt, Sam was forced to see at close hand the remains of a young red-haired soldier, killed by mortar fire that also exploded his personal belongings from his backpack onto the ground.   

In a moment that Sam describes as both sacred and profane, Sam kneeled by the man’s body and began to gather his belongings. It was then that he found an unmailed letter and noticed a couple of sentences that would return to him in the midnight hours for years to come, as a red-haired father-to-be spoke of his hope for a red-haired son.  

During World War II, it was the custom for our church newsletter to print snippets of letters and brief updates about our soldiers from time to time. From these newsletters, from a book published by the Birmingham Senior Men’s Club, and from personal conversations with some of you, I have been able to learn a few stories about the lives and deaths of people from this congregation who served in the military during World War II, the Korean War, the Viet Nam War, and the current war in Iraq. 

I learned about Glen Watson, who served in the Coast Guard patrolling near Cuba and the Bahamas when his boat was sunk in the night and he was forced to spend six hours in shark-infested waters with only his life belt to keep him afloat. 

I learned about Cy Duffy, who arrived at Utah Beach only three weeks after D-Day and protected field artillery as the Allies pushed east. 

I learned about Cliff Armstrong, who worked on the Manhattan Project and who could have lost his life inspecting a reactor when his breathing apparatus failed. 

I learned about Norris Lee, whose orders were changed at the last minute and so he was not aboard an aircraft carrier in Air Group Five that was destroyed. Norris wrote:

My head filled with memories of those men who would never return: those in Air Group Five, my high school buddies from the football team who were drafted… I cannot forget it, nor do I want to.[ii] 

I learned about William Mintling, whom the newsletter records as having written to tell his family about being stationed in the South Pacific, with coconuts and bananas to eat there, and who later died in the service. 

I saw a picture of Lt. John D. Maynard, Carrol Falberg’s brother, who was a pilot in World War II. John was baptized in this church, in the old building, and his memorial service was held there as well.  

I learned about Roger Chambliss, brother of Page Gorman and half-brother of Sue Ives, who was a regular guy and a Lahser football player who enlisted for duty in Viet Nam and who died when his helicopter was shot down in October 1972, in the closing days of that war.

So for 150 years, people have paused on Memorial Day to remember those who have died in battle, defending what they believed in. I asked Phyllis Martz, our church archivist, to gather for me the names of those from our congregation who died in service. 

There are only five names that we know of for sure. Four of them died in World War II, and one of them died in Viet Nam. I have already mentioned some of them, but  I believe that it is fitting and proper for us to honors those soldiers who died, for they have laid down their lives for us, their friends. Therefore, I would like to invite all of you who are able to stand in respect as I read the names of those who have died: 

• John D. Maynard

• Robert Mack

• William Mintling

• George Lyle, Jr.

• Roger Chambliss 

These young men are reported to have been, for the most part, regular guys. But they were also heroes, because they were faithful to their mission, and faithful to their country, and most especially faithful to their family and friends whom they thought about as they fought against enemies they could see and enemies they could not see.  

And the same is true of the men and women in this current war. A United Methodist Chaplain named John Morris, who has been in Iraq and who now works to help National Guard members to re-integrate into their own lives when they return from the Middle East, said on the radio that sometimes we become so hardened by war news that we are in danger of forgetting that the soldiers and civilians in Iraq are real people with husbands, wives, children, parents and grandparents. He reminds us that our military there are volunteers, and that they are heroes by virtue of the choice they make every day to go out and do their best once again.[iii] 

There are at least fifteen men and women currently serving in the military who are closely connected with our church family, and many more who are friends, and friends of friends. Now, there is for sure some honest disagreement among us about whether this war should have been started, and about what we should do next. But I hope we will never mix up our red state/blue state disagreements with our need to respect and honor the people who are risking their lives on our behalf. 

In our scripture reading for today, Jesus is walking from Judea to Galilee, and he pauses for a rest next to Jacob’s well, in the land of the Samaritans. Now, many of us know that the Samaritans and the Jews had some honest disagreements. There was a huge political and theological divide between the Samaritans and the Jews, or perhaps I could say, the other Hebrews, depending on whose version of history you choose to believe. 

Both the Jews and the Samaritans would agree that in the beginning, the land of the Samaritans was occupied by fellow Jews, the descendents of the two tribes of Joseph: Ephraim and Manasseh. From earliest times, they all followed the scriptures of the first five books of our Old Testament, which we call the Pentateuch.  

However, their versions of history diverge during the time of the Judges and the Kings of Israel. According to Jewish history, as recorded in II Kings 17: 24-34, there came a time when the Assyrians swept into the Samaritan area and removed many of the true Hebrews there and replaced them with pagans from other lands. The Jewish version goes on to say that these pagans adopted some aspects of the Jewish faith, but they also continued to cling to their foreign gods as well.   

Now, the Samaritan version of that same history is quite different. They claim that the people in their region were the ones who clung to the true faith as handed down in the Pentateuch. They said the reason they were rejected by the other Jews was because they refused to acknowledge any king but God, and so they were persecuted and ostracized by the other Jews from before the time of King David.[iv]   

This was a longstanding religious split between the two groups that lived so closely together that it was common to pass through Samaria in order to get from Galilee to Jerusalem. There had been more than 500 years of cold war and hot war because of this split among people who might otherwise have been brothers and sisters. 

Enter Jesus, who was of the house and lineage of King David, you recall. When he stopped at that well in Samaria, I suspect that he knew exactly what he was doing. This was no chance encounter. This was his chance to help the Samaritans, and his own disciples, see their ancient dispute through God’s eyes. Jesus could have seen only the despised Samaritan woman, but he chose to see more. And so Jesus leads the woman into a conversation about Living Water, and worshipping God in Spirit and in truth; not according to the way of the Samaritans, and not exactly according to the way the Jews had come to expect, either.    

A different, better point of view: Jesus offered her a different point of view, and to her credit, she was willing to listen to this Jew and open her eyes to a new possibility, a third way that was not what she expected. She had been wrong about some things and right about some things, but she was open-hearted enough to recognize something better when she saw it. 

Jesus sees what we see. He is present in the Humvee and he was present in the dirt near St. Lo.  But Jesus sees more. Jesus sees possibilities for reconciliation and new possibilities when others can only see red or blue. Jesus urges and invites us to lift up our eyes, to see things from a different point of view, to consider how our own truths and our own opinions may be only partial truths, and that God’s way could be a bit different than what any of us expect.   

Every now and then, we who are so prone to polarize and finger point, take time to open our eyes for a moment and see a better way. And we know it when we see it. Like when Sam Stout steeled himself to gather those fragments of a letter and did his best to send them on to the young wife for whom they were intended, the mother-to-be of a hoped-for red-haired baby. 

Or when a church in Birmingham held an uplifting and supportive memorial service for one of its own, offering genuine comfort to the Chambliss family in spite of the intensely unpopular nature of the Viet Nam War at that time. 

Or when we stand together to honor the sacrifices of those who were faithful and brave enough to offer their lives on our behalf, no matter what our own political views. When we stand to honor these fallen ones, we are also saying that our church is here for all. It is intended to offer a prophetic voice that is shaped by God’s point of view, and it is intended to offer comfort and hope for all who come. 

You know, there is one more piece to the story of the southern Civil War mothers from Mississippi. On that first Memorial Day when they took the flowers into the cemetery, after they finished decorating the graves of their own sons, they did something very remarkable. They looked up, and from their own gravesides, they were able to see the stark, fresh graves of union soldiers – the sons of some other mothers who lived too far away. They saw these other graves, and they saw what they needed to do, as Christian women and as mothers.   

They gathered up more flowers and proceeded to decorate the graves of their enemies, whom they recognized as people like themselves. Perhaps there is no greater love than to lay down your life for your friends, but I wonder….  

what do we call a love that lays down flowers,
that shows mercy,
for the ones who killed your own Son?