Observing Memorial Day, Down By the Riverside

As with many holidays, Memorial Day poses a danger: that of people focusing too much on how it is celebrated — with a day off work — and losing sight of why it is celebrated — to honor and remember those who have died in the nation’s armed forces.

The history of Memorial Day is full of some conflict itself. There have been heated arguments over who “started” the holiday — by and large, folks seem to agree that it began after the Civil War, but different cities and states have argued over who exactly began the tradition of setting aside a particular time to recognize those who had died in that conflict. Old Union and Confederate tempers flared over ownership of the tradition.

In 1966, the holiday was federally established to encompass all who had lost their lives while serving, But there remain various groups who yet contend over who observed the day first.

These lingering conflicts have some grounding in something deeply holy: our desire to honor the commitments and integrity of those who have risked their physical selves to defend what they believe in. And yet these conflicts also draw on something perverse: our ability to continue to divide ourselves against one another, and to nurse the wounds of a previous division, preventing it from fully healing, so that we might open it again.

We who follow Jesus might be more acutely critical of this capacity to nurse division — which all humankind seems to share in common — given that the hope we articulate in our faith is that Christ shall one day gather every people and nation together into a reunited humanity.

That same Civil War brought forth the words of a spiritual sung by the slaves whose freedom and human rights were inextricably caught up in the conflict — “Down by the Riverside.”

Although few, if any, of their forefathers had been brought to these shores as Christians, those men and women had heard the gospel teachings clearly enough to offer a beautifully clear message in straightforward lyrics: “Gonna lay down my sword and shield,” is an image comparable to Isaiah’s call to beat swords into plowshares. The chorus “ain’t gonna study war no more” is from the same passage in Isaiah 2.

With “gonna cross the river Jordan,” a lyric remembering the journey by which God guided the Hebrew people out of slavery in Egypt now takes up as an image of entering into heaven through the waters of baptism.

And “gonna talk with the Prince of Peace,” reminds us that the title Jesus bears as a king is different from that of the kings of the earth — a lesson that reminds us that God warned Israel against asking for an earthly king, who would surely take up war and corruption, and draft their wealth and children into it.

“Down by the Riverside” comes out of the same time in the history of our nation that the lingering divisions of Civil War did, and it’s a reminder to us that our hope and calling as children of God is to leave off studying war.

I believe that a Christian can nonetheless honor those who have fallen in war. They are casualties not only of the arms of a foe, but also of the failure of humanity to build a better peace. Those who hold arms take on not only the burden of risking their lives, but are also made to bear those first poisoned fruits whenever nations or radical groups turn to the sword instead of the plowshare.

Too often, Christians in the United States take for granted the peace we enjoy and the freedom we have to practice our religion, and fail to recognize the force of arms that we stand behind.

I offer us this thought for Memorial Day: The work of striving to end divisions is as urgent a duty for all those who enjoy peace as is the presentation of arms for those who in this age must yet study war. And we must understand that each time a young man or woman dies in armed strife, it must be a sobering reminder that we have to work harder to heal divisions and offer our labor and our genius to calming the tensions amongst us.

Above all, those of us who follow Jesus must pray. We must pray for those who have died, that they might be granted rest, and peace, and resurrection. We must pray for those who yet live, that we might study peace, and work both in the intimate space of our own hearts and the great spaces of our communities and nations to bring that peace about. And we must pray that God give us grace and healing when we ourselves fall short, until Christ shall come again to gather us together within a world that shall never require of any human being that they sacrifice their life to our divisions.