Sunday Stretch: Memorial Day + Holy Trinity
Start off your week with a grounded take on Bible, prayer, the world, and your life ...
Hi Readers,
Well - it has been an interesting and busy May, in that almost every single Sunday this month has been a “special” Sunday, focused either on a secular holiday (Mother’s Day/May Day) or a church holy day (Pentecost). Recall that our very word: “holi-day” is a mash up derived from Holy Day.
Last Sunday morning on Pentecost, I was attempting to give my 8-year-old a comprehensive briefer on the Day of Pentecost and tongues of fire while on the way to his final state tournament AAU basketball game of the year, while later calling my husband and older son to give them a quick Pentecost/Holy Spirit quiz while they came back from his basketball tournament in Illinois.
I hope some of it sunk in - but it certainly wasn’t the adequate High Holy Day church-focused day that maybe we’d all intended to have, even though when my 8-year-old hit three 3-pointers in the game I insisted it was because he was on fire with the Spirit!
Anyway, as we round out to the end of this month, fittingly our final May Sunday again witnesses the secular and the sacred converging together, with Memorial Day weekend and Holy Trinity Sunday.
If you’re interested in a broader post focused on Holy Trinity Sunday, and looking traditionally at our three Bible texts, I’d like to point you to this one:
Sunday Stretch: Vol. 36
Good Morning, Sunday Stretch-ers, And welcome to all new subscribers! Today is Holy Trinity Sunday in the church, the last Sunday of the “busy” season for any altar guild members, who have been busily changing up paraments (the cloths and decorations surrounding the altar and sanctuary in many churches) for the colors of the changing liturgical seasons.
By the way,
recently covered the idea that your favorite CCM artist in the 90s says something specific about you today. What does it mean if it was Sandi Patty?! I had a few favorite artists back in the day, though I alternated them with my “rebel” favorites like my pirated cassette tapes of 2Pac and Sublime. I guess it makes sense where I am today, because I still love to blast a little Amy Grant.Holy Trinity Sunday is important because it takes a widely misunderstood theological concept and attempts to communicate it in an accessible way through worship: by word, Bible, music, liturgy, and sacrament. What I love about the Trinity is it breaks down the idea of an authoritarian, supreme, Masculine, violent God - another important fact the same
lifts up in her book, Jesus and John Wayne, that masculine Jesus/God is actually a heresy against the truth of a relational + codependent (in a good way) Trinity. I loved that lesson so much that I quoted it in my new book, Disciples of White Jesus.So please do check out that post and also let me know how your church does or doesn’t address HT Sunday this morning.
HOWEVER - I’m going to take a bit of a left turn here and bring our focus today on Memorial Day. For the parish pastors and church leaders reading here (I know there are many of you!) - I want to offer up some thoughts on how we can process this secular holiday in church without turning it into a rah-rah MAGA Christian Nationalist flag-waving spectacle.
Writing as one with a few family members buried at the local military cemetery, and a daughter-in-law of a Vietnam veteran, I do think Memorial Day offers a broader chance for us to honor space for grief, and to lift up the power of collective memories.
In maybe a related vein, this past Saturday (5/25) was the fourth anniversary of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, honored at George Floyd Square with a candlelight vigil and murals.
Maybe the Church’s recognition of Memorial Day can be an opportunity to create space for national grief and mourning, something I don’t think we’ve fully entered into after the national tragedy of the COVID-10 pandemic.
I wrote about Memorial Day back in 2018, when I was preparing to preach on collective memory and how it sustains the Church and creates community. The truth is, if we don’t attentively think about collective memories - they’ll be supplied for us by the grifters, the authoritarians, the Nazis, the cult leaders, and so many more who are seeking to prey on a people wandering in unresolved grief.
So I offer that piece to you below on this Memorial Day weekend, originally published by my friends at Red Letter Christians. I hope you find it meaningful. May you have a blessed weekend - and pray for our family as we also plan to spend ample time finally SPRING CLEANING.
Angela
Memorial Day is here. That spring holiday where we ostensibly honor fallen soldiers, in addition to barbecuing, sleeping in, and celebrating the fact that the snow has finally melted.
It seems lately all of these national holidays have gotten a little muddied. Memorial Day is supposed to honor soldiers who died at war, and yet it has somehow merged with Veteran’s Day in a sort of “honor our troops” “Thank you for your service” conglomeration that bleeds into Fourth of July, Election Day, and Thanksgiving.
No one is quite sure what to do with Labor Day, except somehow spend it in denial of the fact that summer is indeed over.
Memorial Day, though.
My grandparents on my dad’s side are both buried at our local military cemetery, Fort Snelling, next to the airport in St. Paul, Minn.
Neither of them died in battle, though my grandpa was severely injured during World War II in the Pacific while fighting as a Marine.
Like many Americans, I don’t have any immediate family members who have died during military service to America. The burden of military service is today disproportionately borne by the few, and military spouses who manage deployments and horrifyingly the death of a spouse and mother or father of their children deserve my great respect and honor.
Memorial Day was borne as Decoration Day, at a time when most Americans did have family members who had died during war, particularly during the Civil War. Some women began a traditional of decorating soldiers’ graves during spring and early summer. Eventually, Memorial Day was officially declared in 1967: at the heart of another war that would cleave American souls: Vietnam.
I preached this Memorial Day weekend, and in preparation for my sermon I’ve been studying the power of collective memory: shared stories told by a community that hold the community together in binds of love.
For Christians, collective memories held by the disciples and other believers of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection created the gospel books we read today in the Bible. As Christians celebrate Holy Communion in bread and wine, we collectively remember the night Jesus was betrayed and gathered with his disciples for the Last Supper by saying: “This is my body, given for you. This is my blood, shed for you.”
Collective memory began with the Hebrew people and what Christians call the Old Testament. Remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy is one of the 10 Commandments.
In Deuteronomy, as the 10 Commandments are recounted, the great Shema of Chapter 6 begins with a command to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind.” The Hebrew people were told to recite these words to their children, to bind them as a sign on their hands, to fix them as an emblem on their foreheads, and write them on the doorposts of their houses and their gates.
Many modern-day Jews keep up this practice by affixing a mezuzah outside their door frames.
Modern-day Jews also share another powerful and horrifying collective memory. Remember the Holocaust. Remember the murder of 6 million Jews. So that it may never happen again.
Collective memory, even painful collective memory, can be a great force for binding together communities, faith groups, and even nations. Americans are bound together by many collective memories, even ones told to us over generations. The rising up of colonists in the Boston Tea Party, then the American Revolution, has been recently retold on Broadway in Hamilton.
Americans collectively remembered the power of America as a force for good against the evils of Nazism, fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan in World War II — with images of American soldiers liberating concentration camps a source of great pride in American exceptionalism.
Americans collectively remember more recent wars as well, though the experience has been fractured since World War II. American soldiers sent to Vietnam, including my father-in-law, faced a climate of protest and anger upon their return. Many of the Vietnam veterans I worked with as a chaplain at the VA Medical Center in Minneapolis never recovered from the sense that many in their country had abandoned them.
Others, meanwhile, felt the shrinking sense of American pride as foreign conflicts (not declared wars) piled up in the Middle East and Central Asia. The collective memory of American pride has diminished as fewer and fewer Americans serve in the military, and fewer families understand the sacrifice of foreign wars and deployments.
I think this is a partial cause of our widening American division: this loss of collective memory as Americans. We have fewer shared memories to draw upon, and today even the glorious memory of the end of slavery in the Civil War has been fractured as former Confederate states finally confront the sins of their slave-holding pasts by destroying monuments to slaveholding Confederate generals who had long been a source of collective Southern pride.
My hope is that as these Southern states destroy the false collective memory of a glorious Confederacy and confront the evils of slavery, they will be strengthened by a new collective memory of a new, multiracial, American South — ready to finally rise from the ashes of the Civil War to repent for the sins of racism and slavery — and rise anew together as black and white Americans reconciled by the power of repentance. This repentance, of course, must be genuine and must tell the truth about the evils of racism over generations in America.
On this Memorial Day, Americans — and I’d say doubly, American Christians — have a new duty. World War II was almost 80 years ago. We cannot keep re-fighting the battles of the past, and we cannot truly honor our military’s fallen this year without beginning to recreate and tend to the new collective memories of modern-day America.
On my mind this Memorial Day, in that vein, is rejecting the idea that a diverse America no longer has any shared narratives. My fellow Millennials, what are our collective American memories that will sustain future generations and overcome the “fake news” that we are fractured beyond repair and uninterested in building coalitions?
Six long years later, I still feel (even more) convicted by these words. And also grateful for the collective memories of protest, resistance, and refusal to give in to hatred and violence - that have formed me in the past six years since I first wrote this.
PRAYER
Dear God,
A large part of our faith is centered on what we remember: about you, about ourselves, and about one another. On this Memorial Day weekend, help us to remember your forgiveness, your grace, your love, and your truth. Help us to work together to share our memories without shame or glossy nostalgia, but instead to use our shared memories to connect with one another and look to see what new stories you are writing among us today. Also give us space today to mourn and to grieve, as we remember how you wept over Jerusalem and at the side of your friend, Lazarus.
In Jesus’ name we pray,
AMEN
**As we continue in this *abnormal* month of May holidays, I am sharing again this version of the Sunday Stretch free-of-charge. We will get back to our normal routine soon - and these posts are typically available only to paid subscribers. A huge thanks for supporting the study, writing, exegesis, and journalism that goes into making
.**An Invitation
A Community that prays for one another is transformed by the power of the Spirit. We’ve been praying for and with each other now for over a year! For the new year, and about once a quarter, I will re-start this space for prayer requests and praises. Please email with your own requests and I will share here with your permission!
We have begun a new season (PENTECOST) of the Church Year, which means I have restarted our section here for prayer requests. Please hit REPLY to this email or leave a comment to add a public or private prayer request to this list. Thanks for praying with me!
On this Holy Trinity Sunday, we give thanks for the gift of a relational god, no one person higher than the others, but instead a God grounded in relationships and mutuality.
On Memorial Day weekend, we pray for all those who are grieving and mourning today the death of loved ones, especially those killed in war and on military duty. We pray for improved care for bereaved families, and space for grief in all its stages. We also pray for those who have died by suicide or from complications of addictions and mental illness after serving in the military.
For all those engaged in the activity of care, of mothering and fathering and parenting and loving all those in need. May caregivers be celebrated in this month not only with empty words or platitudes but by valuing the work they do and changing policy to support and sustain their work.
For students, teachers, administrators, parents and families as school years come to an end. May all know the good work they have done this school year, and be filled with the energy of learning - even throughout the summer and the rest of their lives after graduation.
For the new bishop-elect of the Minneapolis-Area Synod of the ELCA, Jen Nagel, and for all of the candidates who faithfully engaged the process, may your Holy Spirit be our true guide and faithful leader
For so many loved ones of mine who have recently been diagnosed with cancer and are undergoing treatment. May they have caring and high-quality care, rest as needed, and loving support of family and friends.
For a college friend of mine’s daughter, who was recently diagnosed with cancer and is recovering from emergency surgery.
We also pray for all those who are caring for loved ones who are going through myriad health challenges. Grant them rest and relief in the midst of difficult and tiring times.
For ongoing war and bloodshed in Israel and Gaza, that humanitarian pathways will be opened up to make way for food and supplies into Gaza, that a way forward out of war will be heard by Israel and Hamas, that all those in danger, including hostages, will be protected and set free. For all leaders to prioritize human life over power.
In Gaza, we pray especially for Sully’s loved ones (and all of our loved ones throughout the Holy Land in Israel and Palestine) that they might find protection and safety, and be able to gain safe shelter and access to their homes, or to be able to escape to safety in other countries.
For those who continue to live and fight in Ukraine, that the world will not turn away its attention from the plight of Ukrainians and their stand against authoritarian Russia.
For the United States and her politicians. That governmental leaders might see themselves as servants and examples, and for wisdom and courage for all who serve in government, especially the judicial system as it faces former President Trump’s cases.
For all those who don’t have a safe place to live or enough food to eat, that they might be first and receive what they need.
For all those living with addiction and mental illness, that they might find a way into recovery
For farmers and all those tending fields, gardens, and livestock. For farmworkers and those who travel north in the summer to work under difficult conditions: may be they be treated humanely and granted safety and fair working and living conditions.
For all around the world who face persecution for their religious beliefs, especially for religious minorities in places where governments sanction religion-based violence
For Christians to be emboldened to speak out courageously against anti-semitism and to acknowledge how we have been complicit in anti-semitic actions and speech against our Jewish siblings
For governments and leaders to prioritize climate change solutions and not be only ruled by profit or big business
For all the concerns deep on our hearts, that you hear and know and acknowledge, we pray …
In the boundless joy of a Spirit-filled existence, to worship God with exuberance, excitement, love, and inclusion,
In Jesus’ name we pray,
AMEN
P.S. …
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Oh, and where is the 3-point line for 8-year-olds?
If I understand correctly CCM is Christian country music. I don't like christian music in general, this clueless boomer would have to pick whomever the artist was who sang “Dropkick me Jesus through the goalposts of Life”.
BTW Angela I love your new portraits! ;)