Sermon Thanksgiving Interfaith Service 11-21-07

Seven score and four years ago, President Abraham Lincoln stood on the battlefield of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania and offered some brief remarks at the dedication of the military cemetery. The ceremony was originally scheduled for September 1863, just two months after the epic civil war battle, but the main speaker Edward Everett could not compose a speech in such a short time so the ceremony was postponed until November 19, 1863. Edward Everett, at that time, was known as the country’s greatest orator. He was a former Secretary of State, a former US Senator and Representative, the former Governor of Massachusetts and the president of Harvard University.

The program for that day’s ceremony of dedication called for prayers by clergy, patriotic music by the Marine Corps band, and the main oration by the Honorable Edward Everett. Almost as an afterthought, the organizers of the event called upon the President to make a few appropriate dedicatory remarks. The bands played their musical selections, Reverend Stockton offered the invocation and then Mr. Everett got up and delivered his well-written oration. He spoke for two hours detailing the battle of Gettysburg, its critical role in turning back the advance of the Confederate forces and the bravery and sacrifice of the soldiers. More music played and then Lincoln got up to speak.

There was a photographer present to record the event but there is no picture of President Lincoln delivering his remarks. It took so long for the photographer to set up his equipment for each picture that by the time he was ready, Lincoln was done with his address. His speech contained 272 words written into ten sentences and it took him a little over two minutes to deliver his remarks. The next day, the Honorable Edward Everett wrote a letter to Abraham Lincoln where he said, “I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes.”

In that brief but exceedingly eloquent speech, Abraham Lincoln reminded the listeners and the entire American nation that in the civil war, in fact in any war, the single most important component is the soldier, on the ground, fighting for his country. As Lincoln said, “We cannot consecrate this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.” While he incorrectly stated that the world will not “long remember what we say here,” he correctly stated, “the world can never forget what they did here.” We, the ones living in freedom, must dedicate ourselves to “the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.” Lincoln challenged us to honor those who died by increasing our “devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion” and for us to “highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.” The suffering and sacrifice of the soldier demands our dedication and devotion to their noble cause, the cause of freedom. The suffering and the sacrifice of the soldier demands our devotion and dedication to the physical, financial, emotional and spiritual well being of the soldier and his or her family.

At the entrance of Infantry Hall in Fort Benning, Georgia, the home of the US Army Infantry, there is a quote from General George C. Marshall who served as Commandant of Fort Benning before he went on to be the Army Chief of Staff and Secretaries of Defense and State. The quote states that in all battles, conflicts and wars, the primary focus must be on the soldier. He is the one that leads the charge. He is the one that puts his life on the line. He and now she is the one that brings the fight to our enemies and defends our country, our rights and our freedoms. As an active duty US Army chaplain, I served four years at Fort Benning as the chaplain for the Infantry Training Brigade, a Combat Engineer Battalion, a MASH unit, and the Officer Candidate School. Our teachers at the chaplain school in Fort Monmouth New Jersey, our supervisors and commanders in Fort Benning drove General Marshall’s lesson home to us on post and in the field. The soldier must be our primary concern as well as the soldier’s family especially during times of deployment. Above all else, we must care for the soldier and the soldier’s family. Always remember it is the soldier who suffers the most, it is the soldier who sacrifices the most. More than anybody else, it is the soldier who craves peace while he and she defends our country and our rights and fights so that we can remain free. To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln who wrote a heartfelt letter on November 21, 1864 to Mrs. Bixby, a mother who had lost her sons in battle, it is the soldier and the soldier’s family who lays “so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.”

In October 1993, my unit, the Combat Engineers Battalion, was deployed to Mogadishu, Somalia. I had suffered a herniated disc a few months earlier so I traded places with the chaplain from our brigade’s MASH unit and he went with the soldiers to Somalia. Along with my duties with the Jewish community on post and with the soldiers of the MASH unit, I was responsible for family support for the families of our soldiers that were deployed to Somalia. That year, Thanksgiving was a very difficult time for those families; they were hurting financially, emotionally and spiritually. I remember making tons of phone calls asking every first sergeant and every company commander to find out which families needed help to properly celebrate Thanksgiving. I then called supermarkets and food banks and encouraged every chaplain to raise funds from his or her congregation. And then on the day before Thanksgiving, using my chaplain assistant and any body I could find, we set up dozens of tables and countless numbers of boxes in the chapel and proceeded to create an assembly lines of turkeys, canned cranberry sauce and sweet potatoes and some miniature pumpkin pies to put together meals for all the families of the soldiers in our brigade who were in need and who were deployed to Somalia. From then on, Thanksgiving always took on an additional significance for me. It provided me with a unique perspective and it reminded me of our blessings and our freedoms and why we need to be truly thankful.

A week after Abraham Lincoln’s memorable Gettysburg Address, the nation celebrated its first national Thanksgiving decreed by presidential proclamation. In his proclamation of October 1863, President Lincoln called upon the nation to offer thanksgiving and praise to our almighty Father for all our blessings and while doing so with humility “commend to His tender care all those who have become mourners and sufferers in the lamentable civil war in which we are unavoidably engaged.” Here again we see that Thanksgiving is immoral and arrogant without concern and compassion for the soldiers and the families who are suffering. A true thanksgiving is impossible without supporting the soldiers and their families.

Today we are not in the midst of a Civil War or a World War but we have thousands of soldiers deployed in Asia and we have thousands of soldier’s spouses, children and parents suffering emotionally, financially, and spiritually. We have lost nearly 4,000 US sailors, soldiers and airmen in a war that was a mistake; that should never have been fought but no matter how we might feel about this war and its administration and management, we must never lose sight of the sacrifice and the suffering of our soldiers and their families. They must be our primary concern. They are fighting for our country, for our way of life and for our belief that all people have the right to be free from fear, free from persecution, free from oppression and free from tyranny.

This is what Thanksgiving is all about. This is what we have to be thankful for this holiday; thankful for our homes, thankful for our families, thankful for our health and safety, thankful that we don’t have to sleep in a ditch in the desert as our soldiers do, and thankful for our freedoms which are soldiers are fighting to protect for us and the good people of this world.

Let us never forget, as in the closing words of the anthem of the US Army Officer Candidate School, “freedom’s never free.” It comes with an exceedingly high price. and let us thank God and show our support for the soldiers who have protected our freedoms in wars past and who continue to do so today and let us fervently hope and pray on this Thanksgiving that there will very soon come a day when each person will be able to sit under their vine and fig tree safe and secure without any fear and no one will study war any more.

And let us say, Amen