One Hunderd and Fifty Years Ago....

 

On July first through the third, 1863 one of the bloodiest and most gruesome battles took place in Gettysburg, PA. Numbers vary but on that day there were some 50,000 individuals who gave their lives fighting for the principles they held dear. In addition, almost 28,000 were wounded and over 11,000 captured or missing. Nearly a third of Lee's general officers were killed, wounded or captured.

On Facebook there have been a number of individuals who question the relevance of the remembrance of this battle, particularly by the means of enactments of the battle. Personally, I have no desire to dress up as a Union solider and defend Little Round Top. However, to say that we should not remember this battle by whatever means we deem fitting is shortsighted and puzzling. 

During the Civil War many gave their lives in order to give our nation the opportunity to live on and attempt to become for the world the "shining city on a hill". That task has been a work in progress. We have failed to be that shining example, but I believe that there are those good and noble people among us who still strive to fulfill that goal.

At the 29th General Synod at Long Beach California, the United Church of Christ passed this resolution "To Recognize the Need for Compassionate Care and Healing to Our Veterans". Every sane person hates war. Some of the wars we have fought as a nation have not only been unnecessary and immoral. There are those who have demonstrated against and refused to fight in those wars and I commend them for their honesty and courage. However, that does not give us the right to treat poorly those who served. They served with honorable intention and should be respected for their service.

 

 

As the observations end this day in Gettysburg let us recall what our beloved 16th President, Abraham Lincoln, said over four months after the battle:

"Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation: conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war. . .testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated. . . can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.

We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate. . .we cannot consecrate. . . we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us. . .that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion. . . that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain. . . that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. . . and that government of the people. . .by the people. . .for the people. . . shall not perish from the earth. "

 

I will end with Isaiah 2:2-4:

In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it.  

Many peoples shall come and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.'

For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

And all of God's people said, "Amen"!