Trinity Sunday/Memorial Day Homily

Trinity Sunday/Memorial Day Pete Gdula
Some things are given to us because we’ve asked for them; other things come to us for no apparent reason – even when we feel they weren’t rightly (or wrongly) justified. The grace of God and the Holy Spirit are such gifts. We have God’s grace as something given at the very place we stand. We have Holy Spirit as our guide and advocate in one aspect because we don’t have Christ in human form at this point in time. This is how things emerged and formed this week’s homily. My question was: how DOES one forge together Trinity Sunday with Memorial Day? I found myself asking this question to myself more times than I spent reading the lessons and listening to the hymns. Nothing was coming through. But by Friday Holy Spirit spoke to me in the form of an idea. When your thoughts seem to be scattered and the threads of time appear to be unraveled; when it seems your fall-back plan has fallen through; what does any good disciple of Jesus named Peter do at a time like this? He goes fishing. And so I did. While this didn’t translate into any major “ah-ha moments” for my talk, listening to Holy Spirit’s guidance of doing something which for me are meditative and prayerful was to prepare me for other things.

In the church calendar we are now in what we call ordinary time. The longest of seasons, Pentecost stretches out through summer, fall, and the beginning of winter. We take what we’ve learned from Advent through Easter and now put that knowledge to work as we become the hands and feet of God, taking the Gospel of Jesus into our daily lives, allowing our lives to be built on the firm foundation and framework we’ve constructed in the last 6 months. But when I grasp for something I think should be solid, when what is promised for me seems so far in the future, or when I mistake an intention for something other than what it truly is, IF none of these perceptions are happening all I need to do is listen and look and the original intention will be in front of me.

Yesterday was a prime example of Holy Spirit giving me lessons. I was in the hospital with my wife, who had been admitted to find the source of a severe pain she was having. As I was looking over the lessons again, there in big letters right before me, Romans 5:1-5, were the words on how suffering builds endurance, endurance builds character, etc, and I thought “what a wonderful thing to say to someone in her pain.” So I read the verses to her, commenting about the pain …. And MY first real lesson in pastoral care followed that I’ll remember the rest of my life. That passage is definitely the wrong thing to read to someone when THEY are suffering. They don’t want to hear what suffering brings about, they just want it to be stopped! And YOU may be the bearer of suffering for even trying to read it! We do suffer in our humanity, and it does build character and endurance and hope. But it may not be our position to think of what the suffering and pain will bring about as we live through it. I doubt any of these veterans whose graves we just prayed over thought about the hope they would provide for us today, suffering while in the midst of their duties serving our country. But here we are, almost two centuries in the future from some of them, and we live with the freedoms they defended and sometimes suffered for. Generations have endured, our character is on display and it has left us with hope. All promised by the words of Jesus, how he would send us His advocate while he was away.

Now on this Memorial Day, as we honor those who have died, who stood their ground for us in service to our country, we thank God for them. It is said that funeral and remembrance services are in actuality for the living to help relieve their suffering. We can only understand through hope – the things that come about from another person's commitment and THEIR suffering. It reminds me of a song by one of my favorite composers, Edwin McCain, entitled “Prayer to Saint Peter”. I’d like to close with a portion of it:

“Let them in Peter, for they are very tired. Give them couches where the angels sleep, and light those fires. Let them wake up whole again, to brand new dawns, fired by the sun, not war-time’s bloody guns. May their peace be deep, remember where their broken bodies lie. God know how young they were to have to die. Let them love, Peter, for they’ve had no time. They should have birds, songs, and trees, and hills to climb. Tell them how they are missed. But say not to fear. It’s gonna be alright, with us, down here.”
Amen