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Memorial Day 2014

'My Peace I Give You'

It was ten years ago, the Fall of 2004. We'd been at war in Iraq for just over a year, in Afghanistan for almost three. We were now a country at war on two fronts, and the planes landing at Dover Air Force Base were bringing home the sons and daughters of this country with flags draped across their coffins. It was all very real suddenly; all very terrible.

But I worried, as a pastor to teenagers, I worried that it actually wasn't very real to them -- most of the kids in our youth groups were hard pressed to think of someone they knew who was fighting; a few could name distant cousins or friends of friends of friends. And so I worried. I wanted them to understand what it meant to be a nation at war, I wanted them to know that those numbers they heard on the news were people like them, young people like them.

So through a friend of a friend, I connected with a soldier named Matthew, who was just back from serving in Afghanistan, and asked him if he would come speak to our youth group, speak to SPF. It's ten years ago now, but I remember it so vividly.

He was late getting there. The Barn was packed with teens, as usual, crammed onto the sofas, talking, laughing, boisterous, and getting a little restless since the speaker hadn't arrived. And then the door opened and he stepped in: a soldier in full uniform, who at the sight of all those teenagers gasped, and took a step back. "Shoot," he said to me, "I had no idea there'd be so many kids here. I thought Afghanistan was scary!" Matthew was 19 years old, barely older than the kids in the room, and nervous, so nervous.

We sat him down in the middle of the room, and then we just let him talk. About what it was like, to be thousands of miles from home in a place of cold and fear and war. "The worst part," said Matthew, "was missing my birthday, AND Christmas." He talked about what it was like to live day after day in uncertainty, and try to hang onto his faith in all that. "Psalm 23 helped a lot," he said.

And then one of the kids asked him if there was one day in particular he'd never forget -- thinking, of course, that he'd tell a story about some firefight, some bombing raid, enemies in the hills. "I'll tell the day I remember most," said Matthew. "It was when they sent us to this one village." We waited to hear what happened. He surprised us. "They sent us there," said Matthew, "because the village needed a well. So that was our job, to help them dig the well." "Everyone came out to see us," he said, "and they were smiling at us -- man, that was so nice." And he paused as he remembered. "That was the best thing that happened there," he said. "It felt really good to do something that helped people out, to feel like you really were doing something to make things better. That was a good day," he said.

This weekend, thinking about this sermon, thinking about Matthew, I found myself wondering what had happened to him. I wondered with dread whether he was in the number of lives that we remember this Memorial Day. And I found out. I found out this ... He ended up going to West Point, where he was President of his Class; he married and has two beautiful boys; he's a Captain in the Army now, and down at Fort Benning in Georgia. And I know all this because of five words that a decade ago didn't exist: "I found him on Facebook." And -- and, I heaved a sigh of relief. Matthew came home. Matthew was one who came home.

Tomorrow, in between barbecues and beach openings, in between parades and digging out the sunscreen, we will remember, we will remember, those who didn't come home. 19 year olds like Matthew, or West Point grads -- privates and captains, soldiers and medics and translators and drivers, in this decade and in decades past. We will remember. We will remember those who never got the chance to stand before others and to tell their stories, to talk about their best days.

And I wonder how many would tell stories like Matthew's, stories of a time when they had a chance to do something that felt good, a time when, in the midst of chaos and war, there was someone who was glad to see them, stories of connection and kindness. I'm going to guess a great many would have a story like that, a story that they tucked away as 'the best moment, the best day.'

You know, because I've mentioned it before, that one of my favorite things to listen to on the radio are the stories from StoryCorps, a weekly spot where someone just tells their story, their particular American story. And a number of them are service men and women telling their stories. All of them move me; one in particular stuck with me as Matthew's story has stuck with me. It was told by a young man named Justin, who had been sent to Baghdad to help train the Iraqi police force. "One day," he said, "we saw this child walking through the compound. His name was Ali, and he was very shy. But the second or third time I met him, he brought his best friend Ahmed, and then Ali really opened up. And once I met these children it made every day something to look forward to. We would play rock, paper, scissors. We would kick around a soccer ball. We were as close as people that don't speak the same language can be. It was the first time I felt like I loved someone who wasn't my family member."

And then, telling the story, Justin paused and his voice choked. "One day Ali showed up, and I could tell something wasn't right. He kept saying "Ahmed, Ahmed, boom." And he dug a little hole in the ground with his fingers, and he placed a little rock in the hold, and he said "Ahmed." And I knew his friend was dead. And so I sat there on the curb with him. Me in desert camouflage, carrying an M-4 rifle, and him just a North Baghdad kid. And we just sat there. And we cried."

Justin's back home, too. After he got home, he decided to go to law school; will be sitting for the bar exam soon. "I learned in Baghdad that I hate seeing people in need and being unable to help," he said. "So I wanted to find a career where I wouldn't feel helpless anymore."

When we use the word 'peacekeepers,' a 'peacekeeping force,' what we picture is folks like Matthew and Justin, armed,in places of conflict, trying to, well, "keep the peace." And that's what both of them did, that's what they were there to do: with an M4 slung over their shoulder, keeping the peace. Matthew and Justin and all their sister and brothers in arms were sent to keep the peace. But in the stories that they shared, what we catch a glimpse of is not peacekeepers, but peacemakers, peace builders. Matthew and his well for a village that was thirsting; Justin sitting down in the dirt to weep with those who weep. Those are stories of peace making.

When Jesus knew that his time with his friends was drawing to a close, there was a lot he wanted to make sure they knew before he left, a lot he wanted to be sure they learned. And so, John's Gospel tells us that he talked a lot, that last night with them: he told them to love each other the way he'd loved them; he told them that he would never be far from them. And then he said the words that Charlie shared with us: I give you peace, he said, my peace I give to you. I do not give as the world gives.

In other words, he was saying, there's a peace that I can offer you that's a different kind of peace than what the world out there can offer. And I think what he was saying was this: that in the world as it is, peace is just, well, keeping the peace. Peace is just when folks aren't fighting, at least for the moment; peace as the world knows it is when people retreat to their corners for a while, and for a while there is calm. But the peace Christ offers is something different; the peace Christ calls us to is much, much more. It is peace that is made. It is peace that is built. It is a peace that is a work of love, peace that is the presence of love. It is the kind of peace that comes when two people sit down to cry together, or to laugh together; the kind of peace that comes when soldiers lay down arms and dig a well, and a village rejoices. It is the kind of peace that comes when barriers are broken and shared humanity is found. And on this Memorial Day, Christ calls us to commit ourselves to that work of peace, so that one day we will have no more names to add to monuments, no names to read off while trumpets sound Taps, no more flags to add to fields of green.

It feels a long way off, that vision, I know it does. But there are those who are working for it daily, and their work must inspire us. Earlier this week, I went for a walk with my friend Carol Passmore, who was eager to tell me about an event she'd attended in the city just a couple weeks ago, a dinner for a group called Seeds of Peace. "This young woman spoke to us," said Carol, "you have to see if you can find her speech online, she was amazing." So I did. And she was.

Seeds of Peace has been around for 21 years, the simplest and most daring of concepts: take Arab and Israeli young people and put them together; bring them to a camp in Maine for a summer and let them learn each other's stories, understand each other's humanity. And in that most simple and yet radical of concepts, the seeds of peace are sown. At the dinner Carol attended, a young woman named Lior Finkel stood and spoke, a young woman who years ago had traveled to that camp in Maine, and then returned to Israel, where she is at work, daily, for peace. And she said this: "Signatures on treaties are good. But it is the people who step by step will create reconciliation. It is we who must build the foundations. And so I will continue to work until the day comes when I get to see my children visiting their Palestinian friends in Ramallah, until their Palestinian friends join us for a day at the beach in Tel Aviv. When the basis of our societies is acceptance and tolerance, then there will be the peace that is lasting."

Peace I offer to you, Jesus said, not the world's peace, but my peace. What that young woman was describing, that was Christ's peace. What our world yearns for, is Christ's peace. The peace in which swords are made into plowshares, and spears into pruning hooks; in which wells are built for the thirsty, and joys as well as tears are shared; the peace in which all Matthews, all Justins, and all their sisters and brothers in arms come home.

We're not likely, any of us, to find ourselves on the ground in places of strife, on the streets of Tel Aviv or Ramallah. But daily, daily, in many and small ways Christ offers to us the chance to work for his peace, for Christ's peace. Mother Teresa once said every act of love is a work of peace, no matter how small. And daily, daily, we have the chance to do that work of peace, to seize hold of Christ's peace, a peace not as the world gives he said, but as I give. And daily, daily, we have the chance to pray for the work of faithful people around this world who are beating swords into plowshares and building wells and helping people simply to talk to one another. On this Memorial Day, we honor the Matthews and the Justins who did not return home, those whose names are many, those whose names we know and those we do not.

And the greatest honor we can give them, I believe, is to reach for the peace Christ offers, to work for the peace Christ holds out to us, to be Christ's peace one to another, until the world knows only peace. Amen.