This weekend we observe Memorial Day. The history of Memorial Day is rather complex because apparently numerous places in the US claim to have been the first to commemorate fallen soldiers around the time of the Civil War. The story that most resonates with me, however, comes from Columbus Mississippi when, on April 25, 1866 a group of women visited a cemetery to decorate the graves of Confederate soldiers who had died in the Battle at Shiloh. The women placed flowers on the graves of Union Soldiers as well because they were disturbed at the sight of the bare graves. This version resonates with me because it reminds us that death is the great equalizer, that in death neither tribe, language, people, nor nation no longer matter.
I recently heard a radio interview with author, reporter, and movie producer Sebastian Junger. He is the author and film producer of A Perfect Storm and more recently two documentaries about a platoon of American soldiers fighting in a remote area of Afghanistan: Restrepo and Korengal. The interview was about his latest book Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging.
It is about soldiers, but it is not so much about war as about what happens to soldiers — sailors, marines, airmen and airwomen — when they return from war. What kind of a nation are they returning to?
In the interview, Junger notes, “The odd thing about war – one of the many odd things about war – is that the experience of combat produces an incredible human closeness between the soldiers involved. And when soldiers come home, there’s this sort of existential loss of community. You’re not in a platoon. You’re not sleeping shoulder-to-shoulder with other people that you would die for.” They leave a world in which “soldiers all but ignore differences of race, religion and politics within their platoon.” They leave a world where no matter how much you disagree with someone, you are willing to lay your life down for them, just as they would for you. And then, “they return to the United States to find ‘a society that is basically at war with itself. People speak with incredible contempt about — depending on their views — the rich, the poor, the educated, the foreign-born, the president or the entire U.S. government, and they speak with the kind of contempt usually reserved for a mortal enemy.’”
There is something about extremely difficult times — times of crisis, times of disaster — which brings people together. Which brings the best out in all of us. For the six months after 9/11 in New York, both the suicide and the crime rates went down; people were focused on each other and on the greater good. In his book, Sebastian Junger describes going back to Sarajevo 20 years after the war ended — he had been a journalist there for two years during the war and the siege. When he went back last year he met a journalist who had suffered terribly during the war. When she was 17 she was wounded by a Serb tank round that hit her parents’ apartment. They almost had to cut off her leg.
They saved the leg, but they operated on her for reconstructive surgery, without anesthesia, because there was just nothing in Sarajevo at the time. When he met her last summer, almost embarrassed, she said, “you know, the siege was so terrible. It was so hard. But, you know what? We all kind of miss it, because we were better people then. Now we are independent, wealthy, and selfish.”
Our family was not here during Hurricane Andrew, but I’ve heard the stories from those of you who were here then. I certainly heard that it was the worst of times, but I heard that in many ways it was also the best of times because people joined together, helped each other and focused on the higher good. As I heard in your stories, there was no “us” and “them” in the aftermath of Andrew. There was just “us” working together as one community.
That’s the kind of bonding Junger describes that happens to people in our military. And then about 50% of them come home with PTSD. But Junger challenges that diagnosis — how is it that only 10% have actually been in combat and yet so many more come home and are diagnosed as “victims of PTSD”? Instead, what he suggests, is that many of them are experiencing the very real trauma of reintegration into our society. Returning Peace Corps members also often face the same type of depression.
But with our soldiers, what seems to stand out in stark relief, is that “over there” they were cohesive — all for one and one for all, putting aside all differences as if their lives depended on it — because they did — functioning like a tribe (hence the name of his book). And then they return to a society at war with itself. “Soldiers go from a world in which they’re united, interconnected and indispensable, to one in which they’re isolated, without purpose, and bombarded with images of politicians and civilians screaming at one another on TV. A society which is hard on the human psyche, a psyche that yearns for belonging and community. And instead we find that when wealth and modernity go up, community goes down.”
“How,” Junger asks, “do you make veterans feel that they are returning to a cohesive society, one that was worth fighting for in the first place?”
How do you make veterans feel that they are returning to a society that was worth fighting for in the first place? At the end of the radio interview Junger offered this answer: Heal ourselves as a nation, a society, a culture — and the vets will be fine. We are in a frightening place now — socially, economically, and politically. Don’t worry about healing the vets — heal ourselves first and they will be fine.
An important message to hear on a day when the Gospel story is about Jesus healing a soldier’s servant and an important message to hear on Memorial Day. A day when we put up flags and yellow ribbons. When we’re aware of bumper stickers that say “Support Our Troops” or “Thank a Vet,” as we head off to the sales at the mall to buy more stuff. Heal ourselves and the vets will be fine.
We in the church understand this fraying of the core of what holds us together as a people, don’t we? We see attendance diminish — across the board in all houses of worship — as people become more and more individualized, more isolated — still yearning for community, yet becoming more and more isolated and insular. We know the church has what humankind yearns for — a community, a sense of belonging, a cohesion, and our sights set on a higher good. Certainly through the years the church has done much to deserve people’s contempt and condemnation — the list is long from Crusades to shaming and guilting, to clergy misconduct, even to just the garden variety petty squabbling that goes on in every congregation. People look at the church and expect perfection when we know that we are just an imperfect human institution trying to stay focused and serve a very perfect God.
As the Body of Christ — not just another affinity group, but the Body of Christ — it is our mandate to help heal ourselves, help heal our society, help heal our world. In our catechism at the back of the Book of Common Prayer we read: “What is the mission of the Church? The mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.” That doesn’t mean beat people over the head with “our God is better than your God,” or “only our God can save you.” It means that if we believe Jesus Christ is how God shows what self-giving, unconditional love is all about then we better behave the way Christ does. We better be looking for ways to widen our sense of community to include all people, letting all people know that they are loved by God and by us — even if we don’t like them — and that just as we do in times of crisis, our job is to band together for the good of all.
The premise of Sebastian Junger’s book Tribe is that we must heal ourselves by coming together as a nation, a people. The premise of the book The Bible is that all nations, tribes, peoples, and languages were created by the same God, in his image, and therefore to heal ourselves we must all come together as one — not waiting for some common enemy or some time of extreme crisis to unite us as the sisters and brothers we are, but now because that is who God created us to be and that is what God created us to do.
And what better gift could we give to our vets, and what better way to honor the fallen then to work for a time when there is no longer a need for Memorial Day. AMEN.