The Battle Primeval - The Prize for Veterans, Scarred and Schooled

Preached on the 100th Anniversary of Armistice Day, 11-11-1918-- Veterans Day, Sunday 11-11-2018

Scripture readings: 2 Samuel 1:17-27; Philippians 2:19-30; Luke 22:24-38

I’ve loved dictionaries since I learned how to read. That makes me a genuine dictionary veteran. My big old dictionary tells me that the word veteran comes from the Latin word “vetus”; which means old. The ancient meaning of veteran is old.

Various Veterans (Pre., During, and Post.)
Members of their families

Yes, I am a dictionary veteran.

OK, I’m on a roll here. My big, old dictionary tells me that a veteran has: “Grown old in service having served for a long period; experience through long service or practice; “as veteran politician”; as “veteran toper” (look it up); … especially of soldiers, having had long service, or much experience in warfare.” “One who has seen long service in any occupation”; …or “field”.

(adapted from “The New Century Dictionary” c. 1927—1940)

Since “veteran politician” is part of the mix, we can see that even though you may be a veteran, that may not always be a good thing. But I’ve always seen it as a good thing.

For me, and for all the kids my age, the word veteran meant our dads, and sometimes our grandpas. For us, when we played war, it was usually World War II, and that was part of our looking up to our dads and wanting to be like them, because they participated, in some way, in World War II.

Even when our dads weren’t always such good dads, being sons, we still wanted to be like them. So being a veteran was always a good thing. It meant quality.

It meant skill, ability, knowledge, discipline, confidence, strength, responsibility, taking care of others, and putting others first. We saw our own personal veterans taking care of their us and teaching us the stuff we needed to know.

Maybe military veterans think that the meaning and result of being a veteran is different from this. Their kids don’t.

When I got older, I was a Republican in college and so, maybe, I was strange in yet another way; but the veterans I knew in college, and in seminary, were the grownups whom the rest of us only pretended to be.

When I was a kid, the most fun veteran I knew was my cousin Larry Oliszewski, who was an officer in the Coast Guard. He treated me like a younger brother and taught me some exciting things about electronics that I’ve forgotten since.

Or else the most fun veteran I knew was my Uncle Eddie Stoll who showed me what fun it was to use your brain to see things the way no one else can see. He could read Dr. Seuss to my little sister and make up verses off the top of his head that were as funny as anything in the book.

My sister knew those stories by heart. She knew what Uncle Eddie was doing and it gave her a fit because she had such a hard time not laughing at the way he was ruining her story. I wanted to play tricks with my brain.

In seminary, there was Tim McClain, or army captain Timothy McClain. He left the service in order to prepare for the ministry. Captain Tim, we sometimes called him, had the greatest sense of humor. He also had a different perspective. Again, he was just more mature than most of us. He had a better sense of what mattered. He had a better sense than we did of what other people would need from us if we were serious about our calling to be pastors.

Another veteran was the youth group leader in my home church. When I was eighteen, I started going back to church again after some absence. Navy Veteran Larry Jenkins taught us to understand the Bible just by asking us questions.

I think he was in the Navy for six years, so he wasn’t that much older than us. He knew how to teach younger people and make them like it. He shared his skills, and taught us to love the Bible and see it as our friend.

Larry became my friend. He was already in college. When I started college, Larry wasn’t a classmate of mine because he was studying computer science. I wanted nothing to do with computers. He was my friend, and he helped me get my driver’s license at last: which is another story.

Years later, I was an interim (temporary) pastor in a church near a naval air station. About a fourth of our congregation was from the Navy: people who lived off base. It was 1988, and the church was having its centennial. As interim pastor, it wasn’t even sure that I would be there for the centennial.

The church leaders worried that the church was too much in flux to organize such an important event. They had some doubts. Would the Navy families even be interested in our centennial, let alone help the rest of us?

The Navy people, the men and their wives and their kids, picked right up on it. They used their veterans’ skills of organization. They were driven by their dedication to the American heritage, which they were sworn to defend, to love our farm town. Their skill in team work showed us that they identified with us, and they taught us to identify better with them. The Navy helped the love within our congregation to grow. Isn’t that what veterans do?

What they had, as veterans, seemed to me, in some way, transferable to the rest of us, if we paid attention to them. We could learn better from veterans to be better veterans of life, of Jesus, and of the church of Jesus.

Jesus didn’t talk much about soldiers, but Jesus found Roman soldiers to be people of great potential faith, especially the key officers called the centurions, who held commands of about a hundred soldiers. A Centurion’s long veteran experience allowed them to look inside you: see you for what you are.

They saw Jesus for who he is. So, they had absolute faith in him when they saw through him.

Jesus is our Lord. He created us. He has the ultimate ability to look through us and to know us for what we are. He sees our weakness and our sins, but he also sees our enormous need as no one else can. Veteran Jesus can see that we are his children: worth dying for.

Our veterans sometimes have a greater ability to look into people, in times of peace and conflict, and size us up. If we study them, and our veteran Jesus, then we will look into people, to know their weaknesses, but also see their great need. We will see children of Jesus, worth dying for.

King Saul was a warrior for many years. This made him a veteran. He was also the king, and so he was commander-in-chief.

Prince Jonathan, heir to the throne was a warrior and a veteran, as well as a prince. Being a veteran helped him protect David from his father, the King.

Grown-up shepherd boy David was a warrior, a veteran, a valued, trusted officer, and the victim of Saul’s insane hatred and many murder attempts. Saul tried to kill David; yet David always showed his respect for Saul, as his commanding officer, even though his commanding officer wanted him dead.

When Saul and Jonathan died together in battle, David spontaneously burst into a song of praise and grief. David celebrated Saul and Jonathan, both, equally, as heroes and friends. As fellow veterans, they still shared a bond that none of them ever forgot.

It was such an unlikely bond of love, but it was real. It would be impossible to even believe in such a bond, unless we shared some part of one of the great commitments which they shared. This bond was their commitment of their lives to the service of the Lord and his people.

We can’t share all their battles. We can’t share all the battles of the military veterans we know. As a body of the followers of Jesus, gathered together, we can share the battles of being a team, a single family, a single unit, wherever we come from, however different our private histories may be.

A veteran named Joe Engel told me, a few days ago, about this instant bond that one veteran has with fellow veterans as instantly as the bond is known.

The apostle Paul never served in the Roman military. But he was a veteran servant of Jesus. Because of this, Paul felt perfectly at home calling other Christians his fellow soldiers. This wasn’t because they were in the military. This was because they were all becoming veteran servants of Jesus.

Being veterans was only part of it. Paul also felt at home calling them sons, brothers, and sisters. He could even be the father of his brothers and sisters and his fellow servants. It was all one for Paul. This is a gift we might see in some military veterans better than we can see it in ourselves: this band of brothers.

Veterans may fight each other, as my dad did and went to the brig for it. Veterans also know their calling to fight for each other, for life and death.

Christians sometimes find it easier to fight each other, than to fight for each other. We need to fight for each other’s faith, and well-being, and healing, and wisdom, and strength. Military veterans know the secret, among themselves, of what we should know from Jesus.

Jesus is the great veteran of our wars. He is the greatest veteran in the battle for the lives and souls of us and everyone we know. Jesus gave his life in this battle. He gave himself so fully that he rose from death. He mortally wounded death in the process.

We can learn from veteran Jesus how to die for him, and for each other. We can learn from Jesus to die to ourselves, and get so connected with Jesus, that we also rise new, every day. Our dying is done with Jesus, and so we rise with him.

Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, predicted that Peter and the others would think that they couldn’t help Jesus unless that had swords, and money, and used them for the success of the cause. To their shame, they found, in the garden of Gethsemane, and on the mount of crucifixion, that Jesus’ weapons are never swords, or money, or any power of this world.

Jesus reminded them that they (and we) are always taken care of in God’s own way. They learned, from Jesus, that the greatest weapon of all is the cross. Our best weapons are the love both of his cross and our own: the cross of our love for him and others.

Veterans know that their greatest gift, and their greatest weapon of war and defense, is themselves. That’s not far from understanding the cross of Jesus.

I think that you become a Veteran when you devote yourself to a cause that is not just a little bit higher than yourself. It’s a life cause. It’s indescribably greater than yourself, and the cause is part of the age-long battle for God’s love to re-win and to remake the world.

There is something in us, and in this world around us, that does not serve God’s cause. We call this sidetracking of God’s service sin.

Our battle comes from this. The battle clearly has casualties. It leaves unhealed wounds. It leaves scars, and changes lives, and gives wisdom, and insight, and strength, and comradeship.

Joining in this battle together, and with Jesus, is a calling to give ourselves to a better world coming. That future world is of the kingdom and the family of God: the very thing for which each one of us was specially, personally designed and created.