1 Peter 3:13-22
John 14:15-21
Jesus promised “I will not leave you orphaned.” This Memorial Day weekend we remember too many who have been made orphans by war, too many who have felt alone in the trenches of war, too many who have returned from the front to feel orphaned by a government which can not offer housing and security to each and every veteran no matter how hard it tries. When war erupts, it leaves orphans on every side.
Memorial Day may be a formalized holiday now, but decorating the graves of the war dead has been a tradition long observed by people throughout history and across the world. Whether soldiers and civilians have willingly sacrificed their lives or had them taken by acts of violence, those of us who have so far survived spend much of our remembering trying to make sense of the loss, to make noble and honorable whatever cause our people have died for. Because war is ...divisive, to put it gently... the battles themselves can be remembered in many different ways. We’ve got all sorts of films and books about Vietnam, the World Wars, historical reenactments of the Civil and Revolutionary wars, to try and wrap our minds around what would move people to such violence, hatred, and fear, or to celebrate victories and study strategies for future engagements. We even have a whole genre of young adult novels that are hugely popular, around a future world of war and destruction, be it one where Hunger Games keep the people in line or one where social genetic experiments toward forcing people into peace create a strain of people called Divergent.
When we fight and divide ourselves, fear and stereotype, bless the Spanish Inquisition and Crusades, lock away the Japanese Americans or shame German Americans out of their first language, beat the peaceful Sikhs because they wear turbans, we create even more orphans. Splitting people away from their roots, separating families on either side of a dividing wall like that in Berlin or Palestine, and then creating that one impenetrable barrier between us by killing one another, the whole human family is made less for our fighting. The ideals we strive for may be higher than ourselves, we may see no other way around current events but what seems a lesser of two evils, but if there ever was a clearer indication than war of how far humanity has fallen, I don’t know what it is. How can we keep doing this to each other?
I think that’s the point of Memorial Day, isn’t it? That we’ve had enough of death. That we’ve seen too many fall. That we are desperate for peace and have buried too many of our sons and daughters, aunts and uncles, fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers, friends and neighbors. Yet even on Memorial Day soldiers and civilians are being killed somewhere in some war or another. Even in those wars we have stopped talking about: the war on drugs, the war on poverty, the war on hunger. Not every war kills with guns and grenades.
And it is into the middle of all of these wars, smack dab into the heart and the hurt of all of this world, that God has come, in the flesh, to live and die and live again. And did you hear what Jesus said after he promised not to leave us orphaned? “Because I live forever, you also will live forever.” I know it doesn’t say ‘forever’ in your bulletins, just “because I live you also will live,” but it’s the Greek, trust me on this one, the Greek word “Zoe” is more than simple biological life, it’s the life-force of God which gives life to all that lives. It’s bigger than whether or not you’re breathing.
It’s the life we are promised. It’s the promise Jesus makes just after washing the disciples’ feet and hours before he is handed over to be killed. He makes these promises, of eternal life and of eternal family, knowing that his disciples are about to watch him be betrayed and killed very publicly. He makes these promises knowing his disciples will scatter in fear and take some convincing after his resurrection. He makes these promises to offer a sure and certain hope and encouragement for the days and weeks and lifetimes ahead.
He makes these promises for you and I and all of those who have lived and died in times of war. Because Jesus has not left us as orphans. There is not a child on this earth who has not been loved by Jesus. Even when orphaned or unwanted by other people, every child is loved and known by Jesus, no matter how old or how bruised by war.
And it is this love, this security of belonging to God’s own family, which frees us up to live as Christ’s own in this world, to live reflecting his commandment to love one another, to live in a true and deep down sort of freedom that is bigger than even our love of country and the freedoms professed in the ideals of our constitution. Because the promised Advocate, the Holy Spirit, who we will be carried by and challenged by and encouraged by for all of our days, is so much bigger and reaches farther than our own limits of imagination. For when we feel stuck in a life or death situation, the Advocate takes us through death and on into life. When we feel destruction is the only option, the Advocate brings forth new growth out of the rubble, new possibility in places of despair, new hope where before there had only been fear.
This Memorial Day weekend, we grieve the dead and recommit ourselves to rebuilding a broken world in the love which has given us life eternal, which has called us God’s own children. And we do it not to make our nation greater, but to remind the world of the love of God which knows no nationality, the love of God which sings in every language of the world, the love of God which cradles every orphan and upholds every widow and unites us in a family so big there is no corner of the world it does not embrace.
No, Jesus does not leave us orphans. God is so close, that it is in him that we live and move and have our being. Thanks be to God.
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