Memorial Day Thoughts - Lincoln's Gettysburg Address

Memorial Day Thoughts

May 30, 2016

  This year Easter came very early and therefore the season of the Sundays after Pentecost has begun earlier than usual. Since the readings, or propers, for these Sundays are  based on the date I do not have any copies of previous sermons that occurred this early in Year C and cannot share with you a sermon for next Sunday.

  I would, however, like to share with you today some thoughts about Memorial Day and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. In preparing for my sermon yesterday, which was based on the healing of the Centurion's slave (Luke 7:1-10), I was exploring material that I could use concerning Memorial Day. I came upon Lincoln's Gettysburg address, which I had not read in quite a long time. I was struck by how incredibly relevant it is to us today, especially with our current political situation. 

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. 

  First of all I am struck by the fact that Lincoln, the first Republican president, begins his most famous speech by stating clearly that our country was not only conceived in Liberty but was dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.  How far we are from fulfilling that dream, from actually living out the reality of that proposition. With those strong and unequivocal words Lincoln leaves no room for prejudice, no room for denying rights to anyone for any reason. He saw an America that at its founding was dedicated to equality. 

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. 

He saw the Civil war as a test to see if a nation based on those ideals could survive. He was fighting to move the country he loved and served toward achieving those ideals.

We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. 

In reading online about the origin of Memorial Day I came upon the report of how after the Civil war ended thousands of newly free ex-slaves went to a horse track in Charleston South Carolina where Union prisoners of war had been held. Many soldiers had died there and were buried in unmarked graves. They went, cleaned up the area, put up a memorial and decorated the graves with flowers as a way of acknowledging those who had sacrificed their lives for other people's freedom.

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. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

He finished his speech with stirring words of encouragement for all of us to be dedicated to the unfinished work which the soldiers buried in Gettysburg had died for. 

It is just as relevant a call to us today on this Memorial Day. There is still so much unfinished work to do to achieve the ideals of this nation and to see that government for the people shall not perish.