I grew up on the knee of my grandfather. Grandpa and I would spend lots of time together. I helped him with yard work at the 2 apartments he owned and his own house. He was a beekeeper, and I helped him with his bees.

Grandpa was in World War II. He was a staff sergeant and saw combat in the European theater. He’d get really quiet around Memorial Day. As would all his buddies at the VFW, where we would spend time between mowing. This weekend, this Memorial Day, I often associate with veterans. But this weekend is not for them. Granted it’s always good to recognize and remember veterans each and everyday, but Memorial Day is not for them. It’s for those who didn’t come back.

Memorial Day was once called Decoration Day. It was started when a group of women went out and decorated the graves of the Union soldiers. It was a somber day. There were no celebrations. No fireworks. No BBQs with friends. It was a grave and serious day. A day to remember those who didn’t come back. Those solders, friends, siblings, children… who went off to war. And who didn’t return.

I know we are already feeling down. So why the reminder? For a few reasons.

We are feeling like we lost a couple months. At least I am. I feel like I’m ready to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day and Easter… and yet I know it’s May. I can’t believe it’s already May and yet I feel like it’s taken eons to get here. It’s a strange time warp. And it’s produced weird emotions in me. It’s a weird state-of-mind.

I’m suffering from Quarantine Brain. I’m no medical professional or psychologist, but I’ve diagnosed myself with Quarantine Brain which is defined as the feeling you get when you walk into a room and forget why you did, but it lasts for months on end. Pair this with a low-level anxiety. It’s a feeling I last had when I was in high school before I met Kate. I was a procrastinator. I would do things at the last minute. After meeting Kate, I realized that working ahead was way easier and resulted in less stress. I was engaging in what business leaders call “work avoidance.” It’s a state where you avoid the stress of a big project you mess around, play games, spend too much time on social media or whatever you’re doing to avoid the actual thing you should be doing. That produces a low-level anxiety and is actually more stressful than just doing the work.

I feel that feeling all the time, that low-level anxiety that I sometimes forget what I should be doing something, but that feeling is just because of COVID-19. And this quarantine.

If I’m feeling this… and all I have to do is stay 6 feet apart from people, wear a mask, and wash my hands… and I’m feeling this level of stress and have quarantine brain… then how did my grandpa feel when he went to war at age 17? How do our veterans feel? Especially those who have friends who didn’t come back. How do the families who had children not return feel?

To honor the enormity of those feelings that cannot be spoken, I encountered this table. It’s named many things. “The missing man table” or “The fallen comrade table.”[1] In my last congregation, we simply called it “The White Table.” We used what we had access to when we set this up, so some elements have been adjusted, and we ask forgiveness for it. Here’s the meaning of the White Table and the symbols placed there-on:

• A small table set for one, symbolizing the isolation of the absent service member. The table is usually set close to, or within sight of, the entrance to the dining room. For large events, the missing man table may be set for six places representing each of the five armed services (Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Coast Guard), with the sixth symbolizing the civilians who died during armed conflict.[8]The table is round to represent the everlasting concern the survivors have for the missing. Our table is square because it’s what is on hand. I like to think of the corners being the individual, family, community, and nation, the circles of influence that the missing person affected.
• A white tablecloth to symbolize the pure intentions of the service members who responded to the country’s call to arms.
• A single rose in the vase symbolizing the blood that service members have shed in sacrifice to ensure the freedom of the United States of America. This rose also represents the family and friends who keep the faith while awaiting the return of the missing service members. We’re using the white rose given out at baptism to show the many we are united in baptism to. It’s placed in a purple vase to remind us of Lent, and the life they gave up so that others might live.
• The red ribbon represents a love of country that inspired the service members to serve the country. We’re using the red napkin to symbolize the love and the blood.
• A slice of lemon on the bread plate that represents the bitter fate of the missing.
• Salt sprinkled on the bread plate that symbolizes the tears shed by waiting families.
• An inverted glass to represent the fact that the missing and fallen cannot partake.
• A Bible represents the spiritual strength and faith to sustain the lost.
• A lit candle symbolizes a light of hope that lives in hearts to illuminate the missing’s way home.
• An empty chair to represent the absence of the missing and fallen

I cannot know the feeling of so many veterans. Veterans who saw their friends die. Veterans whose experience in the military binds them together. Gives them an understanding that I don’t know. But in this pandemic, we’re starting to understand. The impulse to serve. To do good for others. To do what needs to be done to protect one another. It might not be to the level of basic training and the hallowed traditions of each branch of service, but we’re glimpsing it. And through the thoughtful symbolism of this table, we feel the emotional weight of it.

I cannot know what it’s like to give everything. None of us can. So we mark this day as our ancestors did. With a solemn contemplation. No social gatherings. No BBQs. Sure, sure. You’re allowed to miss those social things that you’re used to doing this weekend, but may this serve as a reminder of the purpose of this day. To remember. To decorate those who didn’t come back so we have the freedom to have parties and an extended weekend. It didn’t come from nowhere; it came from the fallen. Those who fought and died. So we remember. We decorate. We solemnly consider, “How then shall we live?”

A few observations here on how we shall live. The first is something someone once said to me when I first got here. A former pastor wanted to move the flag out of the sanctuary. And that person responded, “That flag was here before you got here, and it’ll be here after you are gone.” Many pastors, including myself when I first got into ministry, think that flags have no place in the sanctuary. Their concern is justified. We want to be clear on what we’re worshiping. We’re not worshiping nationalism. Sure we can sing “God Bless America” but we also must hold that “God so loves the world.” The God we follow goes from here to the ends of the earth.

Having the flag in the sanctuary reminds us that we are a political people. We can and we must talk how our faith affects how we live together. I don’t mean partisanship, which is the idea that one party is more holy and blessed by God than the other. I have no interest in that game. What the flag reminds me is the dual nature of ministry: to bless people where they’re at and to remind them of their higher nature. We worship the God that meets us where we are and will move us to surprising places.

Generations in the past were taught that you don’t talk about religion and politics, and what has that resulted in? Declining churches and a divided nation. There is no nuance in shouting. Here’s where we are. Maybe we should teach the next generation how to talk about religion and politics, and how to be able to have the hard conversation. To talk openly of our beliefs, and to hold them loosely. To search after our common values, and what binds us even when we disagree.

The flag is a reminder of the quest to look after the common good. Memorial Day is the day to remember those who gave their all to the common good. They lived in the same tension we do. They lived believing that they were an individual with certain inalienable rights and liberties. Like Descartes, they thought therefore they were. But they saw how they could contribute and serve their nation and they left and did not return home.

They did so out of a desire to serve. They saw where they could serve to benefit the common good. As we ponder, we can agree both with Descartes, “I think, therefore I am” yes you are an individual. But you are connected as well. And just as true is the proverb, “I am because others were.”

Because these whom we remember and whose graves we decorate this day and tomorrow, were and we are because they were. It is a somber day. It is a hard day. How then shall we live?

We shall live not by those who proclaim conflict or a false peace. We shall live not by the chicken-hawks who use war and rumors of war and call it diplomacy. No veteran I’ve ever met took joy in combat. When I was a child, I thought I wanted to go to war. When I was a child, I thought like a child. I would play war. In Dungeons and Dragons I was always the soldier who followed a god of war because I wanted to be tough. I wanted to show I was brave. Yet no veteran who has seen combat wishes for war. Each veteran I know hopes to be the last generation that has seen combat. For they know the names of those who died on the battlefields. Peace is the prayer on the lips of every soldier in the foxhole.

How do I know this? I know one man who fell and suffered a brain bleed. It was a long rehab. He had short-term memory loss. The first story he told was of being on an aircraft carrier and being attacked and learning his best friend died in the attack. That memory never left him and was the first to come back. He would tell this story and after 15 minutes would tell it again. He always ended it the same way, “War is hell. I hope you never have to go. I hope no one ever has to lose their best friend in that way.”

He and many like him, have seen the horrors of war first hand. He knows only what I have glimpsed at. As the singer Connor Oberst sings about war, “little soldier, little insect
You know war it has no heart
It will kill you in the sunshine
Or happily in the dark”[2]

War is a false god. War demands too much from us. The problem is that it’s so easy to follow. We can load war into a gun and shoot it into someone else. We can’t do that with peace. Heed the lessons of this day. We look toward our veterans, like the man who lost his friend. We can remember his best friend. Take this day and remember that you are an individual caught up in a illuminated web of community and connectedness. That lives have been given. Names you don’t know because their lives were taken before you could live yours… and they didn’t follow the god of war. They hoped for a day where all nations would beat their swords into plowshares and wouldn’t learn war anymore. We follow a God who loves us, who in Jesus demonstrates to us that he would rather die than keep violence in circulation, who ascends into heaven and sends his followers out to be his hands and feet in the world, to be his messengers in the world that sins can be forgiven, that we can repent, which means to think differently.

God blesses us, we worship God. We lift up those who came before. And try, yet again, to learn to live with one another in peace. For this is the goodness that I share with you today. You are witnesses of these things. May you take today and tomorrow to remember. To decorate a grave. And to think differently on how we shall live. And then…. Live. For you are, because others were. Amen.

Works Cited

^[1][1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_man_table

[2] Artist: Bright Eyes. Song: No One Would Riot For Less. Album: Cassadaga