Memorial Day 2008 was marked by a poignant display in my church: a list of 4,500 names, those fallen in Iraq and Afghanistan. I stood there with a veteran as he traced the names and whispered a few he knew with a mixture of pride and deep grief. The church, in its silence, bore witness to his struggle for understanding – and our own.
In the twilight of his reign, King David, recorded in 2 Samuel 23, he calls for water from the well of Bethlehem, his childhood home. His call prompts an audacious act of devotion: three of his “mighty men” broke through enemy lines to fetch the water. They face death that day, not by command, but by unwavering loyalty and friendship to David.
They present David with the water, but he hesitates. He tells them the water has blood in it. Since it has come through the battlefield, this might be literally true. But I think he’s making a deeper observation. The water may still be clear to the eye, but each drop testifies to his friends’ willingness to face death for his sake.
David pours the water out before the Lord, saying, “Far be it from me, Lord, to do this! Is it not the blood of men who went at the risk of their lives?” In the biblical context, this act is not wasteful but worshipful. It’s David acknowledging that the lives of his men are far more precious than his own desires. He will not consume what was bought at such a price.
That story makes me think of Vietnam War Memorial, with its reflective granite walls inscribed with over 58,000 names. By design, to look into the polished granite of the memorial reveals more than the names of the fallen. In the reflective surface, the face of every visitor is reflected back. It’s a mirror held up to every soul and the soul of the nation, a call to consider the legacy such sacrifices leave in those who follow.
Sacrifice is an inescapable part of our life as followers of Jesus. John writes in his first letter, “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for one another” (1 John 3:16).
When this is made real in our lives, we realize that this isn’t spiritual talk about laying down our lives in the abstract. Few of us will be called upon to give up our lives for someone else in a once-for-all gesture of heroic sacrifice. However, we will have countless opportunities to give our lives away, a little at a time. It’s a practice woven into the fabric of our daily life, in the selflessness of marriage, the nurturing of children, and the maintenance of friendships. Each act of sharing a piece of ourselves, though small, is a stitch in that fabric woven in love. It’s at the heart of the life we share together as a church.
In his wonderful book, Whistling in the Dark, Frederick Buechner writes:
“‘The Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend’ the Book of Exodus says (33:11) and in the Book of Isaiah it is God himself who says the same thing of Abraham. “Abraham, my friend,” he calls him (41:8). It is a staggering thought.
The love of God. The mercy of God. The judgment of God. You take the shoes off your feet and stand as you would before a mountain or at the edge of the sea. But the friendship of God?
It is not something God does. It is something Abraham and God, or Moses and God, do together. Not even God can be a friend all by himself apparently . . . Is it a privilege only for patriarchs? Not as far as Jesus is concerned at least. ‘You are my friends’ he says, ‘if you do what I command you.’ The command, of course, is ‘to love one another,’ as he puts it. To be his friends, that is to say, we have to be each other’s friends, conceivably even lay down our lives for each other. You never know. It is a high price to pay, and Jesus does not pretend otherwise, but the implication is that it’s worth every cent.”
Grace and Peace,