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Forget Us Not
Some of our names bring pangs of pain to broken hearts and sorrow’s tears to lonely eyes.
Others of us now are beyond living memory, mere facts on graven granite, marble or limestone.
Some lie in filled-in ditch or covered trench, unknown name in unknown grave.
We died for liberty, for freedom, for country or for culture.
We died for you.
We died by sword or spear, bullet or bomb, hunger or cold, in pride or in panic.
Some of us killed. We killed for peace, we killed to end war, we killed to end killing.
We killed for you.
From tumbled tumulus and broken barrow, from fancy crypt and unmarked tomb, our spirits send out a message:
Forget us not; play pipe and beat drum, wave flags and proud banners, decorate buildings and streets with bunting , make great speeches of honor and respect;
But send us no more friends and companions, no more heroes or martyrs, no more torn or blistered bodies.
Instead, fulfill the promises for which we died: Act in justice not vengeance, bring freedom not fear, cement renewal not new resentments.
Honor us with hosannas of human harmony;
Praise us with paeans of peace.
SERMON
Good Morning!
On this Memorial Day we as a nation commemorate our war dead. We acknowledge the sacrifice of those who gave their lives for this country.
I want to think for a few moments about the people who go into the military and their reasons for doing so. The reason often given, and the one we celebrate the most, is that of a general sense of patriotism. This is a sentiment praised throughout history. The belief that I owe something to my nation or group, that I should be willing to protect and defend it even at the risk of my life, is laudatory. And the added belief that just by serving in the military I make it less likely that anyone will attack my nation or group is a widely held viewpoint.
There are those who join the military in response to a specific threat or incident; Pearl Harbor or September 11th come immediately to mind.
Some have gone into the military because they were drafted and saw no alternative.
There are more self centered reasons for enlisting, of course. Economic or educational factors enter in. And then there are the less admirable reasons for joining up: avoiding a prison term, for example, or the old Foreign Legion standby, to forget someone.
But whatever the reasons for joining may be, those are irrelevant at the moment of death. Someone who has died in the uniform of their nation has died for their nation.
This weekend there will be flags placed on the graves of those known to have died in service of this country. That will include members of the minutemen who died in Westport, Ct; fallen soldiers of World War II in Weston, Ct; and the dead of Iraq here in Westchester, NY.
Those who died fighting for us have bequeathed us many gifts. Our dead soldiers gave us a democratic republic, freedom of the seas, protection against pirates; they preserved the Union and ended slavery, and they saved democracy for ourselves and for others.
It is true that sometimes America’s military has been used for questionable purposes. In America’s history we fought preemptive defensive wars from Plymouth Rock and Jamestown all the way to the Pacific Coast, slaughtering peoples along the way.
And often the military was used to expand America’s economic empire around the world. But that was not the decision of the individual soldiers.
Whatever their motive for becoming warriors and however they were used throughout history the personal sacrifices of those who died are worthy of being honored.
That is true not only for America’s soldiers, but for those of every nation; even those who were in armies that fought against ours.
Those who died, regardless of the uniform they wore or the flag they fought under, sacrificed the majority of their lifespan for their countries. Whatever the specific cause they died for, whatever the purpose political leaders had put them to, they died for their nations and their people.
But there is another group I want to speak to this morning. Jay Janson has pointed out that though we memorialize even those soldiers who fought for causes that can only be described as evil, there is no memorial day for the innocent victims of war. There are commemorations for specific incidents but there is no general remembrance of those civilians who died in the world’s conflicts.
I try to think of the unthinkable, the incomprehensible: the immense numbers of civilians killed in acts of war throughout history. Whether by misdirected bombings, directed carpet bombings, ethnic cleansing, accidental killings or intentional massacres, these were all victims of war.
I think, of course, of our own dead: The dead civilians of the Revolution, the War of 1812 and the Civil War, and of the dead of the World Trade Center. These only rarely have flags on their graves, and hardly ever after their immediate survivors have died.
It is not only Americans whom I think of today. It is the dead world wide. Millions upon millions of people, men, women and children, killed accidentally or killed intentionally, killed slowly and barbarically or killed so swiftly they did not know it, it doesn’t matter. We human beings have a tendency to dismiss in our own minds the dead who were killed in a manner that allows them to be called “collateral damage”. They are still dead, and are still victims of horror. Of all of the innocent civilians I say that their deaths should be remembered, their sacrifice should be mourned.
And I want most particularly this morning to think about those innocent civilians killed by our own military in actions throughout time. They are part of the cost of war that we all too often fail or refuse to count, because to do so would be to remind ourselves of our moral culpability for their deaths. If we do make a distinction between collateral deaths and intentional deaths, let it only be for legal purposes. Morally and ethically, they are all the same.
Among the victims of war are those members of the American military who found themselves in terrible circumstances and responded by becoming what they are not naturally; who found themselves killing and maiming and, on occasion, doing so without immediate cause. They, too, are victims--though no more so than someone who grows up in terrible circumstances and responds by robbing, stealing or killing. It is especially important to remember this today as it becomes clear that at least one massacre of civilians was carried out by U. S. Marines in Iraq.
I stated that we have culpability for the deaths of innocent civilians. Every people is ultimately responsible for the actions of its military, but people in democracies more than others. We can say, “No”. And so we are morally responsible for the deaths of all civilians killed by our military.
And yet here is a paradox: The civilian population of any nation is responsible for the actions of its government and its military, and yet no matter how heinous or barbaric those actions are, all civilians who are killed in war are innocent victims. The killing of civilians in reprisal or as some kind of punishment is not acceptable, and their deaths are unjust tragedies. And so, no matter what some may think our government may have done in the Middle East, no matter what someone’s sense of anger or desire for revenge, attacks on our civilian population as happened on September 11th are unjustified. And attacks by American forces on civilians—whether atrocities like My Lai or the carpet bombing of civilian populations--are also unjustified.
On this Memorial Day I pause to think of the innocent civilians who died in the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. They too are children of God, children of the Cosmos, and should be mourned by us.
Thirty thousand died in the invasion of Iraq; thirty thousand.
I partake in those deaths, and so, I believe, do you. Their blood stains us whether we wish it to or not.
Religion teaches us to try to view the world from a higher perspective than our own limited human viewpoint allows. As we look at the dead of the world’s wars, soldiers and civilians, as we think of the vast numbers, the untold millions whose lives have been taken, let us ask ourselves this: from the vantage point of the divine--of God, the Goddess, the Cosmos--is there any cause designed by human need or human greed, human desire or human goals, that justifies this slaughter, this blood, this waste?
Even if we can rationalize those deaths in our own hearts and minds, still it is fitting to ask whether their deaths are justified in the heart of the divine. Like Cain we have killed our brother Abel. In our Universalist tradition, the message of the Bible would be that God still loves us--but we have killed his sons and daughters, we have killed our brothers and sisters. And no matter how we justify that in our own limited human minds those justifications will seem petty and feeble from the divine perspective.
For today, let us mourn the dead throughout human history. For all those whose deaths may be laid at our feet, let us mourn and repent.
For tomorrow, in every future moment of choice, for war or against, let us humbly ask whether our vision is one with that of the divine.
For today and tomorrow, let us work for a world of justice so that we may have a world of peace. Let us purge ourselves of stereotypes and unwarranted fears and angers, let us find peace in our hearts to replace petty resentments and grudges, whether personal or group. Let us strive to infuse ourselves, our hearts and minds and all of our relationships with love, hope and compassion.
The day will come when human beings set aside war. The day will come when the human family will look back upon our era as the time of the warring states when the world lived in anarchy and turmoil.
We can help to bring that day into being first by thinking peace within ourselves, then by speaking and acting peace in our relationships and by calling others to the same goal.
Then, when we do that, when we build peace and understanding, when we build a world of hope and promise, then we may consider ourselves to be instruments of the divine and creators of the human future that is to be.
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