"A Sermon for Memorial Day"

These are times that challenge Unitarian Universalist ideals.

Our vision of world community

with peace, liberty and justice for all

looks completely unobtainable.

Instead the world spins in a complex dance of hate, 

vengeance and violence.

 

Perhaps you struggle, 

as I do, 

with diminishing reserves of hope.

I see how I could come dangerously close 

to abandoning my faith in human nature.

It is easier to believe 

that people are doomed to fight each other

than to plan how we are going to get along.

And yet what glimmering of hope left for us now

depends on people who continue to affirm,

despite all the evidence,

that humanity can make a world at peace.

 

All year I've thought about war.

When is one society justified 

in making war on another?

Is there a value - such as freedom - 

that is so compelling and life-giving

that we must be prepared to give our lives - and take others' -

in order to preserve it?

Much of the reasoning about war -

from "just war" theory to political rhetoric -

leaves me confused and unconvinced.

A couple of weeks ago,

I heard a brief exchange on the radio with Elie Wiesel,

the holocaust survivor, author and scholar,

who often speaks out about contemporary issues.

He spoke about the possibility of war in the Middle East.

War is a terrible thing,

as he knows better than anyone.

So I was surprised to hear him say,

"There has to be war against war."

His statement left me wondering 

whether war can ever end war.

 

It seems unlikely.

Cycles of violence in the world

are like cycles of violence in the family.

Abuse leads to more abuse,

war leads to more war.

 

Humanity does not agree on just causes.

What is a holy war to one person

is genocide to another.

What gives one society freedom

may oppress its neighbors.

People keep losing their lives,

so someone must say that they gave their lives for a reason.

Did they - 

or is that just to comfort the living?

How will the dead ever know if they were right?

Today, Memorial Day Sunday,

we ask what meaning we can make

of the lives that have been lost at war.

As the young dead soldiers say 

in the poem by Archibald MacLeish, 

"We leave you our deaths.

Give them their meaning."

One way to begin is to look back

at the origin of this observance. 

 

The Memorial Day custom of decorating the graves

of those who died in war

actually began shortly after the Civil War ended.

The cemetery in the town of Columbus, Mississippi,

contained the graves of soldiers from the North

as well as the South.

In a gesture of reconciliation,

the women there decided 

to decorate the graves of all the soldiers -

North and South, 

they made no distinction.

The practice caught on in other towns,

eventually throughout the country,

and became what we now call Memorial Day.

 

The women of Columbus honored the dead of both sides,

sons, husbands, fathers, and enemies,

in their desire for healing and peace.

Letting go of conflict, 

hate, and the need to be right,

they moved instead towards a larger vision of community.

These women took an imaginative step forward

into a new relationship with those who were gone,

which prepared them for a new relationship

with those who were left behind.

 

The dead of the Civil War - and of all wars -

always suggest more than one meaning.

Their causes, after all, were directly opposed to each other.

No doubt both sides believed God was with them.

The women chose to honor them for having died -

not for the causes that led them to fight.

 

Values that define our democracy -

freedom and equality -

were at stake in the Civil War.

Some died for the wrong principles,

ones that were fundamentally in conflict

with our vision of America

and the society we could become.

Perhaps the values in conflict during the Civil War

were less ambiguous than those 

of other wars we have known.

But that is what makes the women's act of reconciliation

so powerful and moving:

that right or wrong,

winners or losers,

there comes a time when we must move on together.

 

Somewhere in the current public debate about war,

I read that our humanity depends on our willingness to die

for a transcendent value - for something larger than ourselves.

Many people have died for transcendent values:

freedom, democracy, peace -

and they deserve our gratitude.

Many of those who died at war

did so believing that their cause was just -

even those we might judge 

as misguided or immoral.

Many people died at war

believing that humanity depended 

on defeating that same misguided or immoral enemy.

 

And we agree with them.

The world has no room for slavery or Nazism.

Someone has to stand up and push back.

 

History has shown us that there are times

when we must decide if we would be willing to die -

or kill others -

to defend the values that define our humanity.

One way to honor

and to give meaning to those who have died

is to ask ourselves

what we would do with our lives.

These are hard questions,

even when they are only theoretical.

How much harder they must have been

for those who actually gave their lives as their answer.

 

My own thinking goes like this.

There are values and ideals and people

for which I am willing to die.

Our faith tradition contains inspiring examples

of people who died for religious tolerance

and the abolition of slavery;

activists working in Europe

during the holocaust

and in the South during the civil rights movement.

I hope that I would have the courage

to do as they did.

 

I am also a pacifist.

I would not kill 

or ask others to kill

to defend those same principles.

But that does not mean 

I would not act.

First I would turn to history,

which has shown us that there are alternatives to war,

such as resistance,

that can be a powerful tool of persuasion.

 

While we were in Bali last month,

we learned about one such historical example

that may be unfamiliar to you.

In the early 1900's after centuries of Dutch supremacy,

new provocations caused the local Balinese princes to resist.

The Balinese and the Dutch military 

were unevenly matched

and many Balinese were killed in battle.

In Denpasar, now the capitol of Bali,

the local king could see that his palace was surrounded

and defeat was imminent.

According to one historian,

"The only honourable thing left for him

was to die a dignified death,

rather than be exiled [like other kings],

to die away from Bali,

and without the proper cremation."

So the king and his entire household -

men and women -

dressed in their finest costumes,

set their palace on fire,

and processed away from their grounds

to the street where the Dutch troops

were waiting.

The Dutch commander, 

astonished by this demonstration,

told his troops to halt.

 

What happened next is not entirely clear.

According to the museum at Denpasar,

horrified troops watched as the royal family committed suicide 

Their last stand for their way of life

was to destroy themselves.

 

Another account suggests that they rushed the Dutch troops,

giving the soldiers no choice but to shoot them.

Before long the entire royal family lay dead at the feet of the Dutch.

Neighboring royal families followed suit.

Rather than fight any longer,

they chose to surrender with dignity and drama.

In doing so,

they won important gains. 

Newspaper accounts of the deaths of the royal families

shocked the world 

and shamed the Dutch colonial administration

into offering the Balinese people

enlightened governing policies 

and the preservation of the culture.

One of the great contributions the Dutch made to Bali

is that they refused to allow any missionaries on the island.

As a result, the Balinese way of life and religion

remained untouched for many years.

 

The Balinese resistance was not nonviolent.

In the rush to bring about their own deaths,

they clashed with Dutch troops 

and one Dutch soldier died.

Still, what is so powerful about their demonstration

is how it transformed their enemy.

Because of it,

the Dutch preserved the values and traditions

for which the royal families

had sacrificed their lives.

 

What I learned from this example

is that there is more than one way to defeat an enemy.

Unlike today's suicide bombers,

the Balinese intended only to kill themselves

in a passionate witness to what they believed.

What other forms of resistance could we create to make a similar impact?

We have only begun to understand

the power of nonviolence

to persuade and transform our opponents.

The greatest scourge of American history, slavery, 

may have been defeated in the Civil War,

but not until the nonviolent methods 

of the civil rights movement

did attitudes really begin to change.

Perhaps Memorial Day itself,

beginning with the women of Columbus, Mississippi,

lay the groundwork for a nonviolent approach to social change.

It would be one more way to give meaning to the dead:

to strive for a world

in which ways other than war

could settle our differences -

even big, hateful differences -

to bring us just a little closer to peace.

 

Making meaning of the dead

is an important moral, civic and spiritual exercise.

Each of us has good reason, 

especially in these violent times,

to struggle with the questions they raise

as we prepare to meet the challenges ahead of us.

As people of faith, 

we bear a particular responsibility

to sustain hope and faith in humanity.

May our soul-searching lead us to new heights of reconciliation,

new gestures of compassion,

and new respect for the sacrifice so many have made.

References used to prepare this sermon include Island of Bali, by Miguel Covarrubias (Alfred A. Knopf, 1946) and Memorial Day, by Mir Tamim Ansary (Heinemann Library, 1999).