May 28, 2006 Sermon

Remembering Sacrifice
Ephesians 1:3-10

We begin with a Northern Lakes Community Church annual Memorial Day tradition. We ask all who served in any branch of the military, whether in peacetime or war, to stand.

Thank you. We do this every year in order to remember the sacrifices servicemen and women have made on behalf of our nation. They have given; we have received. Of course, not every soldier makes ultimate sacrifices. When asked what he did in the Army, my father replies, “I played my trombone.” Drafted at the tail end of the Korean conflict, he successfully auditioned for the Provost General’s band. “My main sacrifice,” he told me, “was that I was in the last company in the Army to have to go through sixteen weeks of basic training. The guys in the company across the street from us arrived a week later than we did, but they went on to their assignments in the general Army seven weeks before us. We had to do two of everything. Two bivouacs, two rifle trainings, two everything. They only had to do one. But really, the biggest sacrifice I had to make was giving up two years of my life to the Army.”

Others went to war but suffered from nothing worse than athlete’s foot and boredom. Richard Montgomery wrote a compelling memoir of his service during World War II. He participated in the Battle of the Bulge, the Germans’ final counterattack. But Richard’s part in the Bulge consisted of marching back and forth, then sleeping in the snow and mud along the roads. As the battle ranged around his unit was never quite in the right (or wrong, depending on how you look at it) place.

A surprisingly large number of soldiers never face battle. Yet their sacrifices are no less real. The simple fact of their service commands our gratitude. They prepared. They went. They gave up years of their lives in the service of our nation. Thank God they did. And thank God nothing worse befell them. Had my father gone to Korea I might not be standing here today. Death threatens all soldiers. As Stephen Ambrose wrote in his compelling book, D-Day, entire boatloads of men died within seconds after the ramps went down on the beaches of Normandy . Most of these men had never seen combat. They averaged nineteen years of age.

Several men in our congregation served in Vietnam . At least one served during the first Gulf War. More than one saw combat. One has told about getting separated from his unit and having to crawl back in what he hoped was the right direction. The worst part of it, he said, was crossing the roads. They were too open, too exposed. These men could tell us more about sacrifice than we want to know. If they share the feelings of most of their fellow soldiers over the years, they did not feel noble about their sacrifices. Mostly they felt the overwhelming desire to survive. Yet they did serve. They risked their lives for what they hoped was a higher good. History may debate the righteousness of different wars, but we may never doubt the sacrifices the men who fight them must make.

Most of us have no experience of true sacrifice. In the absence of real losses we imagine that the minor problems we do have amount to major sacrifices. We complain about having to pay $3.00 a gallon for gasoline. We complain when commercials last too long. We complain when somebody else’s child gets the role in the musical or playing time on the team at, we feel, the expense of our own child. We complain that our grown children don’t call often enough or that our aging parents call too often. We forget, or we have never learned, the nature of true sacrifice.

True sacrifice means giving dearly for a higher purpose. This is precisely what Jesus of Nazareth did, perfectly and eternally, for all humanity. Whereas soldiers occasionally must give their lives for questionable causes, Jesus gave his life as part of God’s plan. His sacrifice was righteous. It was meaningful. It was effective.

We read today from the opening to Ephesians. Paul, or another evangelist, wrote this letter within a decade or two of Jesus’ crucifixion. Ephesians teaches God’s purpose in establishing the church. Ephesians tells us that in Christ we have forgiveness, in Christ we have salvation, and in Christ we have been joined to one another. The actual word for “joined” literally means “sealed”, as in the seal on a canning jar after you put in the snap beans. God has sealed us together—us with us, and us with Christ.

Christ died so we could be made one—one with Him, and one with each other. Christ sacrificed all so we could become one.

Our passage begins with a blessing for God because God has blessed us in Christ with “every spiritual blessing.” God chose us “before the foundation of the world.” Before creation started, before the Big Bang or however God kicked it all off, God chose us. He chose us to “be holy and blameless before him.” God chose us before the beginning. God chose us to be holy. But we are not holy. The very fact that soldiers must sacrifice their lives in the endless wars of humanity proves this. What could Ephesians mean by calling us holy?

The answer comes next. “(God) destined us in love to be his sons (and daughters) through Jesus Christ.” Though we remain unholy, God has declared us holy through the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. God’s perfect will was that we would be perfect. When the human race proved itself incapable of obeying God’s law, God yet loved us so much that he covered our sin in Christ. This sounds like a trick: God cannot bear to look on our sin. So God fools himself by hiding us behind the sinless Jesus.

But God has not tricked himself. Jesus’ sacrifice had a place on the schedule from before the beginning. And the purpose of it all was to love us so much we would love him right back. “For he has made known to us,” Ephesians concludes, “a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things to him, things in heaven and things on earth.” Jesus gave his life to seal us together with him, with God the Father, and with one another. We need to respond to such Amazing Grace with gratitude.

For years after the end of the Vietnam War, the soldiers who fought in it faced criticism at home. While they had gone off to fight the nation experienced horrible turmoil. Protests flared. Rioting paralyzed college campuses. Allegations of atrocities committed by our troops dominated the news. But as time passed the fever abated. Extremists found other causes to champion. The national wound began to heal.

On Veteran’s Day of 1993 a memorial on our national mall in Washington D.C. was dedicated. A bronze statue about 300 feet from the black wedge of the Vietnam veteran’s memorial, it depicts three female nurses. It is the Vietnam women’s service memorial. The Washington Post interviewed Florence Johnson, one of the 25,000 who attended the ceremony. Mrs. Johnson wore the all-white Gold Star Mothers uniform. She had lost her son in Vietnam . “Maybe one of these woman soldiers took care of my boy before he died,” she said. “I came to say thank you.”

Ask veterans what they would like in return for their sacrifices and most will be uncomfortable with the question. But a simple “thank you” is always in order. Turns out thank you is what God would like in return for the sacrifice of his son, Our Lord, Jesus Christ. Ephesians even tells us what form God wants that thank you to take: faith in Christ as our Savior.

Respond to the sacrifice of Jesus on your behalf. Respond with a new dedication to grow your faith in him. Thank him by remembering Christ’s death in your prayers of thanksgiving. Thank him by completing the seal on your life: the bond between you and Christ, and between you and your fellow believers. Our faith in Christ seals us together. Jesus sacrificed his life to make it happen. Thank God!