Commemorate

And Joshua said to them, “Pass on before the ark of the Lord your God into the midst of the Jordan, and take up each of you a stone upon his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the people of Israel, that this may be a sign among you.  When your children ask in time to come, ‘What do those stones mean to you?’ then you shall tell them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord.  When it passed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. So these stones shall be to the people of Israel a memorial forever.” – Joshua 4:5-7

To remember, we raise monuments -- to commemorate is a communion, a sharing of thoughts and feelings.  We remember together.  It is this shared memory that makes community.  We may not have a personal connection with another individual, but we can have a shared memory of who we are as a people. 

It works both ways.

One of the worst things that has ever been done in this country – and feel free to place the blame wherever you like – is the desecration of how we as a people felt on September 11, 2001.  It should have been another Pearl Harbor, something we honored, not for the death and destruction but for the way it brought us together against barbarism.  As it is, we are allowed to remember the tragedy, fear, and despair, even the heroism of the police and firefighters who perished, but we are supposed to be ashamed of the righteous indignation we felt in the aftermath.  They took the images off of television so we wouldn’t be continually stirred up by the inhumanity and insanity of the perpetrators.  They told us that we did not need to sacrifice, that the best thing we could do was go shopping.  They trivialized the awful reality of war and turned it into a video game, distancing us from it, except and until they wanted us to feel guilty and ashamed for the deaths of our servicemen and the “innocent civilians” in the places we attacked. 

In the process, we ceased to be America.  You may say I’m crazy or overstating or oversimplifying or whatever.  I know that I felt like an American all my life.  I tried to figure out a way to volunteer for military service when I was too old to be accepted after 9/11.  I no longer feel that way.  I could say it is because of Barack Obama who is certainly despicable, but I also have to blame George Bush who, for all his “Christian compassion” and resolve after the attacks, refused to call us to war – all of us, refused to call us together against an enemy.  Instead he talked about the “religion of peace” and warred against a methodology.  Instead of sweeping through Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran, punishing and destroying and making it clear that attacking us is a really, really bad idea, we have wasted years, billions of dollars and thousands of lives trying to “democratize” a bunch of people who just want their tribe and their chiefs and their sickness and demons and can understand nothing except force.   

I didn’t mean to get political with this when I started.  I was just thinking of how we become a people, how God made Israel a people, how He wants us to live and operate as the Church.  For us, it is around the table of communion – take this cup, this bread.  Every time, do this in remembrance of Me, Jesus said.  We who share in the memory of the death, burial and resurrection of Christ are the Body of Christ.  We are a people.  And this, regardless of where we live, the language we speak, the name on the building where we worship, is our identity. 

If I have lost, to some extent, my identity as an American, it may be for the good.  More than ever I am convinced that I am at war with the world system, that anyone who hopes in political, economic, or military solutions will be gravely disappointed – sooner or later.  Probably sooner at this point.  I am far from hopeless, and I do not fear the future.  I do get stressed by little things day-to-day, but it is because they are personal, and I hate to disappoint or fail people who depend on me directly in some way, whether family or friends or co-workers.  Then I remember. 

Sometimes I remember the things that God has done for me, miraculous interventions, and trials He carried me through personally.  These are like the memorial stones that the Israelites stacked there on the banks of the Jordan.  I have crossed over into the Promised Land, and this is the way I came, how I got here.  Sometimes I remember the experiences of my youth and recall members of my family and, renewing  the ties to the land and the clan, know that I did not get here alone, that I am who I am and what I am by the foundations they laid.  We have laid stones to commemorate them on the hillsides.

Most of all, I remember the Cross, the bread and the wine, the One who forgives and to whom I belong.  This is who I am.