May 25, 2003

The Fear Factors 4: The Unfinished Work

Memorial Day has made a bit of a comeback this year, thanks to the war in Iraq. The holiday weekend has taken on a bit more solemn tone, and rightfully so. We thank God that only 150 young American soldiers died in this latest war, but there remain 150 families grieving this weekend and 150 lives crying out to be honored by all those who benefited from their sacrifice.

This year, more than most, Memorial Day is a real opportunity to remember those who were willing to offer the greatest sacrifice, on behalf of their country and on behalf of freedom.

And it’s also a fitting way to wrap up the sermon series on conquering fear that I’ve been doing throughout May.

We’ve talked about fear in this series as an illusion, that most of our fears don’t even exist.

We’ve talked about fear as a barrier that needs to be overcome before we, like Abraham, can claim God’s promises.

We talked about how God removes our sins as far as the East is from the West, so that we need not fear our own past any more.

Today I want to talk about people who stepped up to the plate when it counted, no matter how much they were afraid.

You all know how much I love the movies, and no movie ever captured the need to honor the sacrifice of American heroes better than one that came out several years ago called Saving Private Ryan.

If you saw the movie you know it’s an unforgettable story of a small group of soldiers commanded by a captain played by Tom Hanks who are called on to rescue a young private shortly after the invasion of France.

He needs to be rescued because all his mother’s other sons have been killed in combat, and the top brass has decided that it would be bad for morale if her last son were to die. Hanks’ squad gets their orders: find Private Ryan and save him.

Now in the Gospel of John, very close to the sacrifice of his own life, Jesus tells his friends, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

Those are the Christian’s marching orders: to love, to do love, selflessly. Whatever that takes, that’s what Christ commands.

 I think we lose sight of what it took for Christ himself to lay down his life, because we forget about the Christ who was fully divine yet laid that aside to become a human being, with everything that implies, including fear.

Yet if we don’t understand Christ fully as a human being, we miss out on the rich nurturing for our own lives that come from the example of his very human responses to his mission.

Let me read to you from the Gospel of Luke about Jesus praying on the night before his death: “Then he went off from them about the distance of a stone’s throw and knelt down and prayed. “Father,” he said, “if you will, take this cup of suffering away from me. Not my will, but your will be done.” In great anguish he prayed even more fervently; his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.” There’s no mistaking this picture: Jesus the man was afraid of the horrible death that awaited him, but he conquered his fear for the sake of his friends.

Those who have served in the military know what it’s like to take orders; following orders prevents chaos from breaking out and lives depend on everyone working towards the objective.

But veterans also know that following orders goes against the grain of our nature. As soon as we learn the word “no” as two year olds, we start to chafe at taking instructions from others, and this tendency only gets worse in our teen years until by adulthood we declare, audibly or not, “It’s my life, I’ll do what I want with it and nobody’s going to tell me what to do.”

But the men under Hanks’ command accept their orders, despite considerable complaint, and find themselves swept up in combat while trying to complete their mission. One by one their lives are sacrificed for the sake of this Private Ryan until the climactic battle of the movie.

  And at the end, when it becomes clear that Ryan will survive although none of his rescuers will, Tom Hanks’ character lies exhausted and dying and looks up at Private Ryan and gives him a command of his own: “Earn this.” Reach out to others. Save someone else who is perishing.

I don’t think it is stretching the military analogy too far to say that the Christ who conquered his fear looks down from the cross at you and I, the beneficiaries of his devotion, and says the same thing to us: “Earn this.” We are commanded to save the lives of others, through self-offering, self-sacrificing love. We’ll have to choose whether we follow Jesus’ example, or refuse to do so. We have been chosen, but not drafted against our will. We have unfinished business ahead.

Sometimes in life we conquer our fears spontaneously because we have been thrust into a situation that requires us to do so. That’s what happened to a young man named Michael Delitie.

He had just completed law school and as a vacation reward he was taking the Sunset Limited train all the way from California to Florida. The train had just pulled out of Mobile, Ala., and Michael had taken his shoes and glasses off, stretching out for a little nap. But he was jolted out of his nap by a sharp crash and thrown out of his seat. When he got his wits about him he realized that the train had derailed.

One of the other passengers had a little penlight flashlight on their key ring and by that little beam of light they managed to find their way to the top of the car outside, where they found that the car was now in a bayou with the bridge above. They were only 10 yards from shore, but in deep water, so they would have to swim. Michael could have made it easily, but people were screaming, the car was filling up with smoke and the car next to theirs was on fire, adding to the panic.

So he climbed back down where he had come, and as calmly as he could told the others to follow the sound of his voice, and he would guide them to safety.

A timber had crashed through a window during the derailment, and Michael wrapped his left arm around the timber, and with his right arm helped the passengers get out to safety. But there was another problem—some of the passengers couldn’t swim, so those he managed to get up to the roof of the car and onto a float where they were able to reach shore.

Later, during the news account of the rescue one of the passengers, Sr. Adele from San Antonio, Texas, said that Michael’s courage had kept the passengers calm as they escaped from the car. Another woman just kept saying over and over, “a man named Michael saved my life.”

When Michael was interviewed, it turned out that he never did get his glasses and shoes back, although he kept going back into the smoke-filled car for suitcases and pocketbooks. His arm was scraped where he had clung to the timber, and his bare feet were bruised, but he didn’t just swim to shore and save himself. He said “I did what anybody would have done in the same situation. There was no time to think. I just couldn’t let the other 30 people in the car die, just because I was afraid.”

Isn’t that like our own story? We have a great God who came to earth in Jesus Christ for one reason. We were lost, we were dazed and confused in the great train wreck of life, but Jesus said, “Follow me, I know the way out.”

And so conquering his own fear, he wrapped one mighty arm around the grace that flows from his father’s heavenly throne, he helped each of us one by one escape the bonds of sin and death, and safely reach the shore of salvation. But there is one catch and you say, “Aha, Pastor, there’s always a catch,” and I say, “You’re right, there is always a catch.” Jesus departed from this world with one commandment to his followers: “As you have been loved, now love one another.”

And that means grab somebody else on your way out of the train wreck, and rescue them, too.

My generation’s war was Vietnam, and that was a strange and confusing time to grow up. Maybe all times are strange and confusing, but the decade of the 60s was especially strange. Everything that people thought about they knew about the world and life was being turned upside down.

Values were changing, but the one most important value of all was the idea of self-sacrifice, the kind of giving that Jesus modeled for the world. Suddenly it was very fashionable to be selfish and hedonistic.

A saying became popular back then, “Make love, not war,” and it symbolized the notion that was spreading through the country that the pursuit of pleasure was what was important, not the idea of helping those less fortunate than ourselves.

Have any of you ever been to Washington and visited the Vietnam Memorial? It’s a very stark reminder of the cost of war—58,000 names of the dead, and I personally knew only one of them. His name was Charley Burkhart.

Charley was about the same age as me, and he was a nice kid, kind of happy go lucky and not so good in school, the kind of kid who was always getting into trouble, not because he was bad but because trouble just seemed to find him. We all went to Catholic school together until it came time to leave elementary school and go to high school. The smart kids went off to Catholic high school and it was just expected you’d go on to college, and the ones who didn’t make the cut went to public school, and in those days that meant you were headed for the draft pool.

That’s exactly how it worked out. I and just about everybody in my high school class went off to college and a deferment from the draft and Charley entered the military. No one was ever more proud to wear the Marines uniform.

In 1970 I read a newspaper report that Charles Burkhart had stepped on a land mine in South Vietnam and was gone. Charley stands out in my memory because he was the only casualty of Vietnam who I knew personally, but on Memorial Day he really comes to the forefront, about the challenges that life poses and the questions that must be answered.

Why did Charley die and not the so-called “smart” kids? What does his death command of others? What does it mean when Jesus instructs us to love one another, just as he lays down his life for his friends?

What holds us back from self-sacrifice? We’re not asked to lay down our lives like Charley, or like Christ.

We’re probably not even going to be put in a situation like Michael where we have to make split-second decisions to help others in peril. But we are commanded to love each other, as we have been loved. And this is likely to require us to get over our fears, one way or another.

Part of the problem is that the commandment is vague. Love one another. Again, what does that mean? Some of the dopiest songs ever written have been about love. The Beatles made a mint out of “She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah,” but its status as a work of art is questionable.

One of the stupidest songs of love ever written echoed the words from “Love Story, “Love means you never have to say you’re sorry.” Anyone who has ever been on a date knows love is constantly saying you’re sorry.

You see, these songs talk about love as a feeling, a feeling that is really intense, and unlikely to last very long.

But Jesus was definitely not talking about love as a feeling, and that’s the key—he was talking about love as an action.

He’s talking about bearing fruit, making real contributions to the kingdom, whether we like the people we are to love, or not. We have to remember that to be Christian is an active verb, not a passive one.

When we talk about the need, the commandment to love such people, even at the cost of getting over our fears to do so, it’s not a pleasant prospect. It’s inconvenient, it’s uncomfortable, it feels foolish.

Sometimes we try to love and we don’t even see a successful outcome. But it doesn’t matter whether we think we’re successful. Whenever we love, God is pleased—and joy is our reward. The joy of knowing and relishing the fact that something right has been done, a little good has triumphed over apathy; a skirmish on behalf of the reign of God has been fought and won.

The best, and most famous Memorial Day sermon was preached even before there was a Memorial Day.

On Nov. 19, 1863, in a Pennsylvania town not much bigger then than Vanderbilt is today, Abraham Lincoln rose to speak at the dedication of a national cemetery. The windbag who preceded him spoke for almost two hours, while Lincoln’s remarks lasted less than five minutes, but the president’s words echo in our minds and hearts today.

He started with a great first line: “Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

Reflecting on the losses at the terrible battle of Gettysburg, and the battles that still awaited, the president continued, “It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.”

Can you hear that Lincoln is still talking to us? There is other unfinished work for you and me, on behalf of the Kingdom of God, and on behalf of this suffering world, those for whom Christ willingly gave his life through love and asked us—commanded us—to do the same.

In Thanksgiving for all those who gave their lives on behalf of future generations, may this Memorial Day be an opportunity for us to dedicate ourselves to the work of love, to the goal of reconciliation, and the outcome of joy.