Memorial Day Sermon 2010

“A Time to Remember”
Rev. Suzanne M. Marsh
Unitarian Church of Harrisburg
May 30, 2010

Memorial Day is a tough holiday for many Unitarian Universalists. After all, our principles tell us that we “affirm and promote the goal of a just and peaceful world”. Many UU’s are pacifists, or quasi pacifists. We can’t get our minds around the idea of a holiday that seems to be a celebration of war.

We find ourselves caught up in the cacophonous cries from both sides of the issue, one group claiming that on this holiday what we experience is not patriotism but nationalism or jingoism. This side tells us that there is no such thing as “just war” and that we cannot celebrate and honor the lives of those who served and died in war in a land where we do not belong, where many innocents died, which we entered for all of the wrong reasons.

And the other group tells us that we must honor our soldiers, and insist that our government and therefore our troops are always right. They tell us that anything less than full support of the troops, and the war, is unpatriotic or even traitorous.
This is not a new dilemma for UU’s. We have a long history of an uneasy relationship with the idea of war and while we have always had outspoken critics of war among us, we have also had those who supported war, especially when they felt the cause was just. One of our great Unitarian theologians and preachers, Theodore Parker, proudly displayed in his study the musket that his grandfather, Captain John Parker, used when he led the rebel troops to meet the British at Lexington Common. And our own Julia Ward Howe wrote the lyrics to that great tribute to war “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”.

We have had our pacifists as well. William Ellery Channing published a number of essays against the very idea of war , and on the eve of the Civil War, Adin Ballou published his essay on “Christian Non-Resistance” . And most of us know the story of how Henry David Thoreau went to jail rather than pay taxes to support what he deemed to be an unjust war.

One of our most famous pacifists and early proponent of non violent resistance was John Haynes Holmes from the Church of the Messiah (later Community Church) in Manhattan. He took on the American Unitarian Association in 1918 when it essentially tried to make every church support WWI. He also maintained his absolute anti-war position during WWII, which cost him dearly. In his treatise “New Wars for Old” Holmes said this: “ Thus, as regards the question of peace, the non –resistant asserts, without qualification or equivocation of any kind, that war is the sum of all villanies and peace the sum of all blessings.” His position is very clear and unequivocal. But what do we do with those who feel otherwise?

Unitarian Universalists have a tricky relationship with war. It is my opinion that most of us consider ourselves proponents of the “just war” doctrine. War is to be avoided at all costs, but if all else fails, sometimes we just have to fight. But regardless of what we each believe about war, this brings us back to where we are today, struggling to properly celebrate Memorial Day.

Garrison Keillor wrote a column in 2008 about a conversation he had with a military couple. It spoke to the patriot/traitor debate. Here, in part, is what he said:
“What is mysterious to us civilians about the military is the Semper Fidelis part, the discipline to march into extreme danger to carry out wholeheartedly a mission about which you yourself are deeply skeptical. "Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die," as the poet Tennyson wrote of the Light Brigade that rode into the valley of death on the orders of an arrogant idiot, and men have been riding off to death in behalf of many arrogant idiots ever since…………... This is a heroism that is not expected of you or me.

Many men have been carried to the cemetery with honor guards and rifle salutes who, if the truth be known, knew their missions were not worth the price but went anyway. Many, many of our honored dead were dissenters.

What makes no sense at all is when the arrogant idiot expects us civilians to support his unprincipled policy as a way of "supporting our troops." The troops are not mercenaries, they are American soldiers in a long, proud tradition going back to Gen. Washington's Continental Army at Valley Forge, and what gives their mission dignity and meaning is that it comes from a constitutional government in which war is not a point of personal privilege but a matter to be openly debated, opposed, protested, reported. For the troops to fall into line is a noble thing; for civilians to fall into line is shameful."

I know there are those among us who feel like Holmes, who agree with Keillor, who fall in line with our government’s current policies. I also know that there are those here who have lost loved ones to war. There are those who have family members serving right now in harm’s way. We know of the sacrifice of soldiers, of humanitarian workers, of many others who have served in the past or who currently serve proudly and with honor in war zones all over the world. And we also know this, if they come home, even if they are physically intact, few of them come home without hidden scars.

Perhaps just for today, right here and now, we can sweep aside the politics and focus on the actual people. Because when all is said and done, when we are done discussing all the grand theories and ideas about the why or the why not of war, it is actual human beings who go to war. They go for so many reasons: out of duty, economic hardship, love of country. And whatever we think of their reasons, the overwhelming majority of them went because they believed what they were doing was necessary and right.

These breathing, bleeding, real people and their loved ones pay the price and it is that suffering and sacrifice of our fellow human beings that we gather to honor today.
Let tomorrow be for debate, today let us remember and bear witness.

May it be so



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Sources and Inspirations

“Christian Non-Resistance” An Essay by Adin Ballou. 1846

“Discourses on War” William Ellery Channing. Ginn & Company; Boston, 1903.

“Theodore Parker: Yankee Crusader” Henry Steele Commager. The Beacon Press; Boston, 1947.

“Historical Dictionary of Unitarian Universalism” Mark W. Harris. The Scarecrow Press; Lanham , MD, 2004.

“I Speak for Myself” John Haynes Holmes. Harper & Brothers; New York, 1959.

“New Wars For Old” John Haynes Holmes. Dodd, Mead & Company; New York, 1916.

“Theirs is Not to Reason Why” Commentary by Garrison Keillor. April 2, 2008, Tribune Media Services.