THE THINGS WE CARRY

Scripture Readings: Genesis 32:22-31 and 2 Corinthians 12:1-10

There were hotdogs and hamburgers, brats and beer, chips and dip, veggie trays, watermelon slices, and ice cream bars and good times. This is how a movie from a few years back began. The movie was called Memorial Day, and it starred Mike Ferrell of MASH fame as Matt Walker. Matt and his wife were throwing a Memorial Day picnic and all their friends and neighbors were there, a boisterous, celebrating throng. Good times.

“Hey, this must be kind of important of a day to you,” one of Matt Walker’s friends says. “I mean, it’s Memorial Day and didn’t you serve in Vietnam?” Matt reluctantly admits, “Yes, yes, I served.” “What was it like over there?” Matt shares a look with his wife before answering, “You don’t really want to know.” “Sure, why not? I mean it’s Memorial Day, right?”

And so begins a long speech and reminiscence by this Vietnam War vet. He starts telling about his experiences, the friends he lost, the illusions he lost, the pieces of himself he lost. And one by one, two by two, most of the guests began to clear out. They weren’t here for this, for some depressing war stories. They were here for a picnic, a party! Matt Walker, as the stories become more personal and more difficult, begins sobbing, weeping at the things he had seen, the things he had done. Some departing guests become openly angry with him for being such a downer. But his wife, his children, a few close friends gently urge him on. They know that he needs to say this. They know that they need to hear this. And the stories keep coming until at least all the tears, at least all the tears for this day, have been shed. The truth has been spoken. Only a few remained to hear it, but the truth has been heard on this Memorial Day.

Tomorrow we will have a wonderful time watching our son march in the Memorial Day parade. Hopefully it will be a sunny day and the instruments will flash in reflected sunlight, the uniforms gleam, the colorful floats and wonderful pageantry dazzle. Maybe you’ll be there too. But on Memorial Day, will we truly remember? Will it only be a day for pageantry and picnics and a well-earned break from work or will it be for something else, something more?

There’s a wonderful poem written by Michael O’Donnel about that something more:

If you are able, save for them a place inside of you,

And save one backward glance when you are leaving

For the places they can no longer go.

Be not ashamed to say you loved them,

Though you may or may not have always.

Take what they have left

And what they have taught you with their dying

And keep it with your own.

And in that time when men decide and feel safe to call the War insane,

Take one moment to embrace those gentle heroes you left behind.

As I said, it was written by Michael O’Donnel – I should say, it was written by Major Michael O’Donnel and was found among his personal effects after the U.S. Army helicopter he piloted was shot down in Dak To, Vietnam in 1970.

If you are able, save for them a place inside of you…

But I know that this is not easy to do.

The touring Vietnam War Memorial Wall was in Oshkosh a little more than a month ago. I was surprised to learn that it was open for folks to visit it around the clock, through the night. That seemed strange. Who would want to visit the Wall in the middle of the night? A vet told me the answer – Vietnam War veterans would prefer to visit then. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so crowded then. But, more importantly, it would be dark and maybe folks wouldn’t recognize them as they wept, grieving over those they lost, grieving over how they themselves still feel lost. There is a load of grief and darkness those vets carry with them to the Wall. You can’t blame them for wanting to do so under the cover of darkness.

It’s not an easy thing to do, to carry this grief.

Tim O’Brien’s book about the Vietnam War, The Things They Carried, is the best book I’ve ever read about war. It’s part memoir, part fiction – written that way because, as he tells it, sticking to the facts would only cloud the truth. The title is taken from O’Brien’s observation of the various things that each soldier would carry with him, depending on rank, depending on mission, depending on personality. Fifty to eighty pounds they would carry of the things that would help them survive: guns and ammo, water and C rations, maps and compasses, mosquito repellent and salt tablets. And for each solider there was something else they carried, something that served as a reminder of home – a letter, a picture, a pin, a button, a lucky charm, a rock, a penny – these things helped them survive, too, though in a different way. The Things They Carried…

The Things They Carried takes on a different meaning, though, in the second half of O’Brien’s book as he reflects on the experience those surviving soldiers have when they come back home. The things they carry back home weigh much, much more than the twenty to thirty pounds of their wartime packs. These things they carry – the memories, the regrets, the nightmares, the guilt, the grief, the sadness and the horror – these things are a crushing load.

I remember talking with a World War II vet who worked on the railroad when he came home from the war. He passed over a bridge on his way home from work. He told me that every day for a whole year, every time he passed over that bridge he thought about throwing himself over. He thought about taking his own life.

The things we carry can feel impossible, can’t they? And now we’re not just talking about our veterans.

The first parish I served as an ordained pastor was a small family church in a small town in Wisconsin. When I first arrived, the matriarch of the church, the woman who really held the whole place together, was falling apart. Just weeks before I came, her beloved husband had died after a long bout with cancer. Every Sunday as I preached, for the first three months, she would sit in the third row on the right and just sob, cry her way through the whole sermon. And here’s the funny thing – no one said a word in that church. No one found it strange or inappropriate for her to come to the church to do her grieving. They knew what it was she carried and they tried, as best as they could, to help her carry it.

You know how it is – folks will disappear from church for a couple months and when you ask them why they’ll tell you that they had surgery and they didn’t want to show up in church with a walker or a cane. Or they had a loss in their family and they didn’t want to come to church and cry in front of everybody. That little family church and that wonderful woman from my first parish taught me differently. They taught me the church is a place for laughter and for tears, for strength and for weakness. How is it the Apostle Paul put it? “If one suffers, then all suffer together… if one rejoices then all rejoice together.”

One of the mourners at my mother’s funeral several months ago was Henry, a man who had been a part of my family’s church for years and years. Henry had been a professional colleague of my mother’s and much admired in the community – until he was charged with a terrible crime. It’s always interesting to follow these kind of stories in the newspapers as more and more juicy details emerge. It really peaks your interest. It’s the first thing you look for when you open the paper. Unless, of course, it’s someone you know. Then you read it with a funny feeling in the pit of your stomach. I can remember talking with my mother over the months of the legal proceedings as she fiercely defended Henry against what she thought were certainly vicious lies, then as doubts began to creep into her mind, and then as it slowly dawned on her that at least some of the allegations were true. Ultimately, Henry pled guilty and went away to prison for five years.

Among the few people who consistently visited him in those years were church members, including your former Interim Senior Pastor and my mother. Their visits were so faithful that Henry, when he was released, returned to church. His wife had divorced him and moved away. His children were grown up and gone. But Henry came back. And he was welcomed. His guilt, his grief, his redemption – all of them were welcome at that church.

That’s why he was one of those who grieved my mother’s death. And why it was such a comfort to have him share that load of grief with us.

The things we carry with us here this morning are guilt and grief, pain and illness, difficulty and darkness. The question is whether or not this is a place where such things can be shared; whether or not we are a people open, loving and trustworthy enough to share these things with.

Have you ever heard the word “triumphalism” before? It’s a political word referring to a national ideology that always talks about victory and never talks about its cost. It’s a religious word that refers to a church that is looking for glory and celebration, power and dominance, not for opportunities to suffer and serve. Triumphalism is all parades and no funerals; it’s all strength and no weakness; it’s all empty tomb and no filled cross; it’s all resurrection and no crucifixion; it’s all sunshine and roses and no Via Delarosa.

Triumphalism doesn’t want your pain, your grief, your tears or your story. It only wants celebration and joy, plastered-on smiles and everything troubling kept out of sight. It wants a fabulous Memorial Day parade and a pleasant picnic following. It doesn’t want to remember, to remember real pain, real sacrifice, real loss.

Our readings this morning put the lie to triumphalism. Does Jacob prevail over God in our Old Testament Reading? Well, we know that he walks away from his encounter with a new name, a blessing in hand, and a permanent limp. Does the Apostle Paul, with all his ecstatic revelations, achieve a kind of heavenly perfection? No – there’s a thorn in his flesh, an affliction that remains. The things they carry, Paul and Jacob, never go away. No easy triumphs here, no short-cuts to victory – just the long pilgrim road that must be walked faithfully and together, singing the songs of our faith even as we are sometimes wincing in pain.

The things we carry. The question is: can we share them? Can we share the load with one another?

There was a king with two children, one of whom would assume the throne after the king died. When his death drew near, the king called his children before him. “I have taken all the treasure of our kingdom and split it into two enormous bundles, bound by ropes, and placed them on the far ends of the kingdom. The one who retrieves their treasure and brings it back to the palace first will become the new ruler.”

At dawn the next morning the two children go on their horses and, on the king’s symbol, began galloping in opposite directions to the far ends of the kingdom to retrieve the treasure. The king’s son galloped north, the king’s daughter south. As the king’s daughter rode, she saw young man in tears by the side of the road. At first, she galloped right past him but her conscience made her turn back. “What’s wrong, young man?” she asked. “I’ve lost my way,” the boy told her. After listening carefully to the young man, the daughter brought him up on her horse and took him safely back home. Immediately, she resumed her gallop toward the treasure. But as she rode through a village she saw a house in flames. She raised the alarm and roused the villagers, saving the family inside and dousing the fire. By now, it was quite late so she accepted the invitation to stay the night with the grateful villagers. At dawn the next day she galloped off again but once again a need interceded. She stopped and helped a homeless family, she stopped and ministered to a town afflicted with illness, she stopped for hungry children, grieving parents, to settle disputes, to help bring in the crops; again and again she stopped on her way to help those in need.

It was five whole weeks before the king’s daughter reached the far end of the kingdom and spotted the huge bundle of treasure that had been awaiting her for so long. She knew that her brother had probably been crowned weeks again, but she wanted to fulfill this task. She grabbed on to the treasure which was surprisingly light, and started carrying it back to the palace. Traveling now on foot made this journey even longer. And again she would stop to help this person or that along the way. It was three more months before that day, midafternoon, when she finally returned to the palace. Her father rushed down the steps to greet her. Her brother looked stunned to see her. “I suppose I should greet you as ‘your majesty,’” she said to him. “No,” he told her. “I rode straight to the treasure and reached it the third day. But it was much too heavy for me to bring back here.”

The king’s daughter then explained why she had been so much delayed by the lost and forlorn, the hungry and the homeless, by all those whom she had helped along the way. Her brother shook his head in disbelief: “But that still doesn’t explain why you were able to carry such a heavy load all the way back here.”

The king said, “For those who are used to carrying the load of others, nothing is too heavy.”

The things we carry with us this morning are grief and guilt, pain and suffering, stories and memories – things we find difficult to share, things we may have never told another living soul. Many of us come this morning feeling that our lives are wrecks, like they are ruined. But as the Persian mystical poet Rumi wrote, “Where there is ruin, there is also the hope for a treasure.” The treasure is found when we are able to share the load with one another, when we make things a place for laughter and for tears, a place where the things we carry can and are shared.

When we find this treasure of shared pain, of shared grief, of shared sorrow, it’s then that we can rejoice. We rejoice not because the way is easy and the victory is certain, but because the way is so difficult and the outcome so often in doubt. We understand that from the most important moments in our lives we do not walk away tall and strong and confident and unaffected. We walk away limping like Jacob, clutching a hard-won blessing in our hearts, knowing that we now have a new name because we have become changed persons. And if we haven’t exactly won, at least we have battled to a draw. And if we even haven’t done that, at least we have battled.

We rejoice because we have discovered like the Apostle Paul that our strength is in our weakness, that “we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; ⁹persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; ¹⁰always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.”

We rejoice because we have found in one another the living body of Jesus Christ, a family of faith that shares in suffering, shares in sorrow so that we can share in rejoicing. No matter the things we carry, we know that we have a savior that calls to us here: ‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” Amen.

Sermon preached by Reverend Steve Savides at First Congregational United Church of Christ, Appleton, Wisconsin on Memorial Day weekend, May 25, 2008.