By The Rev. Anne Bolles-Beaven, Sabbatical Priest“As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” May I speak in the name of the Living God. Amen.
The soldier had what looked like a quiver of them on his back: American flags on small dowels and he solemnly stood them upright one after another with military precision in front each headstone in what turned out to be rows and rows and rows of headstones at Arlington National Cemetery. On this Memorial Day weekend we remember those who have given their lives in the service of their country; who like the disciples in the gospel this morning were sent into a world hostile to them and laid down their lives in the service of a mission larger than themselves.
Are there any in our midst who have served in our nations’ armed forces? Could you please stand. The most cursory student of history knows we owe you a debt of gratitude. On behalf of the rest of us, I’d like to give a special word of thanks to those of you who were willing to be sent—they aren’t called “orders” for nothing, are they? Are there any who supported a family member who served? I’m glad Michele Obama has made the support of military families one of her main concerns because Lord knows the families of our service men and women bear a great part of the unseen cost of our nation’s defense: long deployments, fear for loved ones, the sometimes dangerous transition to peacetime life after war, the reality of post traumatic stress. These things are better understood now though still difficult to deal with in the suck-it-up stoicism of military life. My dad dealt with a lot of it: “I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one.”
I grew up in the military. My dad was a naval captain and chaplain. Church wasn’t in parishes but on naval bases with military personnel. My dad served for 36 years: 20 active, 16 reserved. We knew about being “sent.” Some of the places my dad was sent were to the S. Pacific in WWII, to circumnavigate Africa when I was 4, to be the chaplain of a Marine infantry battalion in Vietnam when I was six in 1966-67—and where he earned the Bronze Star with Combat “V” for valor. As a family we were sent from Indiana to RI to MA to Virginia to Newfoundland—which necessitated breaking out a map—then back to RI where my folks retired and still live. My older brother was ROTC in college, serving 20 years in the marines: 12 active, 8 reserved retiring as a Lt Colonel. He was married for 20 years to a naval pilot. She flew C130s those big huge cargo planes.
We knew from military. I was never cut out for it myself, disagreed with my brother about it in college but at its best there is little like it. The military we knew was a community of dedication, commitment and self-offering that ran in illustrated parallel to the gospel in our house. We heard the gospel themes of costing love, danger, sacrifice and courage in the sea stories that riveted us. Countless evenings were spent regaled at the dining table or sitting at the feet of guests in the living room listening to stories in which our parents saw and taught us to see the great realities and truths of the gospel enacted in real time and with power.
Stories like the precious water from a canteen poured over a wounded comrade’s head in the Vietnamese jungle, “It is like the precious oil on the head, running down upon the beard,” wrote my dad in Vietnam, quoting Psalm 133, “on the beard of Aaron, running down over the collar of his robes.” Stories like the nun cutting the bloody boot off a wounded soldier told, “I wouldn’t do that for a million dollars” who replied: “neither would I.” The family friend in the Coast Guard, commander of an 83 footer search and rescue boat that was one of the boats that responded to the destroyer the USS Turner that blew up off the coast of NY. Another boat returned first and was given quite a bit of press. Peter’s ship didn’t come in for 18 hours. He was credited with saving 49 members of the crew, the majority of those who were left, heroically pulling up alongside the burning ship and not giving the order to abandon ship until all the officers were accounted for as wounded or dead. To our parents these were signs of the power and presence of God alive and at work,” the God who seeks until he finds, the God who bears what cannot be borne for love of us.
We were raised on mission: “The mission of my letter.” “The mission of my phone call;” my dad literally talks like this. The gospel wasn’t long ago and far away it was unfolding right now in our lives with passion and purpose. It was our mission. Military people understand mission. We understand being a part of something larger than ourselves being under authority greater than our own. It was a military man who said to Jesus, “I am a man under authority with men under me. I say to one, “Go” and he goes, to another, “Come” and he comes, to another “do this” and he does it. Only say the word and my servant will be healed.” Jesus marveled at the man’s faith in Jesus’ power over demons and disease: “Never have I seen such faith,” said Jesus, “even in all Israel.”
We never understood comments like you can’t expect too much from church members—after all they’re volunteers. Volunteers? What are you talking about “volunteers”? We’ve been baptized, confirmed and commissioned. “You did not choose me but I chose you,” Jesus said in the gospel last week. “I appointed you to bear fruit, fruit that will last.” “Love one another as I have loved you.” “Go into all the world baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” says Jesus at the end of Matthew’s gospel. It’s not called the Great Suggestion. It’s called the Great Commission. “As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” Friends, we’re not volunteers. We are on a mission.
How might our lives be different, I wonder if we saw them this way? Not as the center of our universe but claimed by something larger—our God, our nation, this person in need whom I am in a position to help. Love claims us—God’s love, love that that makes the soul expand, love that causes us to forget ourselves, take risks we wouldn’t ordinarily take. Share our time, our money, our canteen and our lives. By all logic there ought to be less of us but instead there is more. We lose our lives and so find them. We die to ourselves and learn how to live at last. We find that all Jesus told us is true—not that it’s easy.
We don’t like to talk about war, about conflict, in polite company, certainly not in church. It’s another way we try to be more spiritual than God. But Jesus meets it head on in the gospel. “I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one.” Guard them. Protect them. “Sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth.” Jesus is telling the truth in this passage. There is no way we can look at the world with its genocide, murder, poverty and violence and say there is no evil here. There is no struggle going on here. There is nothing to fight against here. Read the gospels. Jesus came among us healing, preaching good news to the poor, forgiving sins, searching out the lost, the lonely and the left behind and he was opposed almost every step of the way. He came in love, by love, for love and he was challenged and resisted: Get behind me Satan. We said “No” to him and the life he offered on Good Friday. On Easter Sunday he fought back: “Yes.” Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Jesus never raised a hand in anger but he was in every way a warrior. So were Buddha and Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. They were spiritual warriors who faced off with Satan in the wilderness, temptation under the Bo tree, waged war with hunger strikes and peace marches. They fought to the death with a weapon called love. Love is not in the gospel sense, primarily an emotion. It is not a soft focused Hallmark card—ever. It is an act of will, an inclination of heart and mind and strength toward a purpose larger than us, a good greater than our own. When Jesus said to the woman caught in adultery, “Neither do I condemn you,” when he stood his ground before Herod and Pilate, when he took a child and put him in the midst of them, when he “stretched out his arms on the hard wood of the cross” he was showing us what love looks like, the love to which he calls us, the love with which he sends us.
Christianity is not bland, boring, passive and inept—though we often make it seem so. God has enlisted us in a cause. We all signed on at our baptism: to renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God; to renounce the evil powers of this world that corrupt and destroy the creatures of God; to renounce sinful desires that draw us from the love of God” and to “turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as our Savior; to put our whole trust in his grace and love; and to promise to follow and obey him as our Lord.” These are our marching orders. They are dynamic and powerful and life giving for ourselves, for one another and for our world. What life might be possible if we lived into them with soldier dedication? What seeds could such love plant?
This vestment used to have—if you can imagine it—gold orphreys, these bands were glittering gold: “I felt like target practice,” my dad said of wearing it in the Vietnamese jungle glinting in the sun. The local nuns replaced the gold with green velvet. God bless them. He loaned it to me when I was doing an interim at Holy Spirit, Verona, about 10 years ago. They had no green chasuble which I happened to tell my dad: “Oh, I’ve got one you can use, Annie.” “Great,” I say. He sends me this one. “How’s the chasuble, Honey?” “Uh, it’s great dad. But it’s camouflage. It’s practically brown.” “Well, that’s from the heat—hotter than hell in the jungle.”
Christ was with my dad when he sent him to celebrate the Eucharist on the front lines, on the hood of a jeep in the mud with the marines in Vietnam. Christ was with me when he sent me to Verona. Christ is with us now in all the places to which he sends us: to work, to school, to family, to growth personal and relational, to kindness, compassion and love. When he ascended into heaven it wasn’t the end of him being somewhere. It was the beginning of him being everywhere. “As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” Lead on O king eternal till sin’s fierce war shall cease and holiness shall whisper the sweet “amen” of peace, for not with swords loud clashing, nor roll of stirring drums but deeds of love and mercy the heavenly kingdom comes.” (Hymn 555 v. 2)
© 2009 The Rev. Anne Bolles-Beaven
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