Memorial Day

This memorial day it strikes me, more than it ever has, how complicated this holiday is for people of color. The grief of having lost people you love in war, and the double grief of knowing they gave their lives for a country that did not acknowledge them, or their sacrifice. Not only did people of color go without the benefits and access that white soldiers did, but it was also against policy to even acknowledge valiant acts of courage with medals and recognition. So, by the time these wrongs were corrected, we couldn’t even retroactively celebrate, because we had never learned their names in the first place.

Yesterday, while I sat in the church I was visiting, as the congregation sang the first “hymn” of the day America the Beautiful, it occurred to me how impossible it must feel to those who take so much pride in this day, and in this country, that there are those who experience this day in such a different way. John 15:13 was one of the scriptures mentioned in yesterday’s service. And as I sat feeling uneasy about pledging my allegiance to a flag that represented so much double loss to me, I felt the Holy Spirit press Romans 5:8 into my heart and mind:

We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him.

Selah.

That is what Jesus did for us. With no acknowledgement, for people who admittedly hated Him, He voluntarily gave His life.

We are seen, we are heard, we are loved. All of us. Whether we absolutely love this holiday, or we are deeply triggered by it. God sees us, and He calls us to see each other. To celebrate and mourn with each other. To step outside of what makes us comfortable so that we can enter what is true. That is the church.

Ephesians 2 (for the full chapter)

¹⁴ For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, ¹⁵ by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, ¹⁶ and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. ¹⁷ He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. ¹⁸ For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.