Today we celebrate the Holy Trinity, the three persons in one God, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, beginning the long green Trinity season of growth.
The weekend merges with Memorial Day, fittingly, for memory is a gift of God, a cherished record of who we are and who we are to become. We honor our history and those who fought and died for our nation, a history erased, no longer passed on to our children.
We must not forget. We must not lose our memory of the past, whether it be personal, national, or those truths acted out in history, the salvation of mankind. For the past informs the present, directing the future toward the truth.
Tomorrow, Memorial Day, we celebrate those men and women who have given their lives for our freedom, fighting in wars on other shores, in other waters.
We must not forget. The cost of freedom is dear and it is far better to pay that price peacefully through common laws, agreed upon by a common people, and enforced by their representatives.
We must not forget. The imperative of truth seeking and truth telling in our fragile democracy is the foundation of our fragile freedom. There is not your truth and my truth and their truth. There is only the truth, and it is our challenge to seek it honestly as best we can.
My father, a chaplain on board the Phoenix in the South Pacific in World War II, was a man of truth. Fresh out of Dallas seminary, he joined his ship in June of 1944 at the age of 28. He prayed and he preached and he pastored his young charges, as kamikazes dove into the sea around them. He returned to America even more dedicated than when he enlisted.
He continued his passionate ministry, pastoring in Fresno, Palo Alto, Berkeley, Lafayette, and San Mateo. Through the years, he sought the truth so that he could bear witness to the truth.
The Father, the Son, and the Spirit formed and forged him to become true to the ideals of equality, human dignity, and compassion – truly Christian ideals.
We too must not back down in a world of lies. We must follow the path Our Lord lays out for us, embracing every opportunity to heal our broken world.
For we are broken, with hearts both good and evil. But the Father reaches out to us with the Son, and the Son fills us with the Spirit. A trio of loves lives with each believer, a holy nesting birthing a holy voice that sings the song of the Holy Trinity to the world.
And so we sing the words and the melodies of life itself, of freedom itself.
We learn as baby Christians that God gives us free will to choose to love Him or not. For love can only live within freedom of choice. Freedom comes from God, our precious gift from the Trinity of persons, the Trinity of love.
And so we sing of America the beautiful, of the stars and the stripes that unfurl in skies both clear and cloudy. We sing of our history, so that we will never forget the immense and astonishing gift of living in a free country. We sing of our heroes who died to protect this gift, and we sing of their courage as they fought to protect our shores, our families, our children.
It is true that the truth will set us free. Free of the bondage of evil. Free to welcome the freedom of love. Free from the unlove pulling us into a quicksand of death.
For the truth is the Holy Trinity, the reality of God’s great love for mankind, each one of us. The truth is the Ten Commandments, God the Father’s prescription for living in an unloving world. The truth is the Summary of this Law of Love, to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind, and our neighbor as ourself.
So on this Memorial Weekend we pause to praise the God of all memorials, the Lord of all lives, the Father of all freedoms. We remember with our sacred memory those who have gone before us, those who gave themselves for you and me. We tell our children these sacred stories, so that they will tell their children, so that the people of this great nation will never forget our brave soldiers.
For they gave their lives for us, just as God the Son gave himself for us, in the abundance of mercy from the Spirit and the Father. Just as the Son gives eternal life to all believers and living waters in this life on earth.
We remember and we give thanks for all those who seek the truth about man and God, for those who act upon that truth, that freedom be prized and protected, and for those who honor these men and women who gave their lives for us all.
I can hear Our Lord’s words at Heaven’s gates. “Well done, thou good and faithful servant. Welcome to paradise. You have not been forgotten.”
Christine Sunderland
Christine Sunderland 