When I studied abroad in Leipzig, Germany one summer in college, we took several trips to cities around the country. On one particular trip we toured the city of Weimar with a group of German students. We had a great time joking around as we toured the Bauhaus museum that morning. The Bauhaus was a modern art movement that produced great art and design. The museum was beautiful and filled with surprises about modern day things produced there that we take for granted. One such thing was the aluminum folding chair, something that I associate with the 1950s but was actually invented in the 1920s.

After the museum tour, we ate lunch outside in a local café under the clear blue sky. We found that the Germans were American Studies majors. We were amazed that there was such a thing as an American studies major. They asked us about The Simpsons, and we asked them about what they were into. One student was particularly into Motown and spoke at length about how he wanted to tour Detroit and learn about American music. It became apparent that they weren’t much interested in the Bauhaus but interested in what we Americans thought about the Bauhaus.

It was a morning that has been etched into my memory, just a perfect day filled with good food, great weather, and wonderful conversations. We made new friends that day, lifelong friends. The afternoon held another tour.

Weimar is home to two major institutions. I’ve mentioned the first, The Bauhaus, which ran from 1919 to 1933. It would have gone on longer, but it was shut down by the Nazis in 1933. The Nazis built the second institution of Weimar: The Buchenwald Concentration camp.

As we were walking into Buchenwald for our tour, the mood of the morning was still with us. The Germans and Americans were still talking. I had mind to pick up a map on the way in and one of the Germans said, “Oh good! You can be our leader.” And then the mood changed.

It was such a sudden shift. The group became quiet. It was as if someone had thrown a wet blanket on us. The energy just went out. I was shocked by the sudden shift, and I asked about it.

“Well… You see… there’s only one word in German for leader. Fuehrer.”

We gather on Memorial Day. It is a day where we honor those who died while serving in our armed forces. It used to be called Decoration Day. In 1868 the Grand Army of the Republic, an organization of Union veterans founded in Decatur, Illinois, established this day as a time for the nation to decorate the graves of the Union war dead with flowers.^[1] This day has roots dating back to the Civil War. But now we also remember all those brave men and women who lost their lives in the wars since.

My grandfather is a veteran of WWII, and he instilled in me the importance of this day. It is a day of remembrance. It is a day to gather with friends and family and have a cookout and celebrate our hard-won freedom. It is a day to remember.

When my grandfather was just turning 20, close to the age I was when I toured Buchenwald, he was a staff Sergeant in the army. He was in Germany, too, but for much different reasons than I was. He was at war. He saw horrors I cannot imagine. He saw his friends wounded and killed. He endured things that all of our war movies and video games cannot capture. I know many of the veterans in the room now know more about what I’m trying to say than even I do.  I don’t think he could have imagined as a 20-year-old that he would one day have a grandson who would tour around with the grandchildren of those very people he was fighting against.

Yet there I was. I walked around the Buchenwald camp, and I felt the shame that each German grandchild still carried with them. A shame that hung around them like a shroud, that affected them on a visceral level that even an American college student could feel.

Buchenwald is not preserved like other camps. Most buildings were allowed to fall down. All except the train depot, the ovens, and the gate. When we walked to the gate, we could see something written in German there. And each German student spit at it.

Embedded in the camp’s main entrance gate is the slogan Jedem das Seine (literally “to each his own”, but figuratively “everyone gets what he deserves.”) It was written as you walked into the camp, a message meant for the guards.  It is an easy slogan to believe. Yet it’s not the spirit of our country. We are the great melting pot here in America. And one institution that shows the strength of being a melting pot is our military. The armed forces have had a wonderful history of integration since. They fought the evils of segregation. Men and women of all backgrounds, races and creeds serve together.

As we remember today, we sing songs about the country we love. We start most sporting events with the national anthem. When we sing, we become one. One voice with many harmonies and it shows me how beautiful and necessary diversity is. On that day, like this day; there was a great respect for the ideals of our country, such thanksgiving of those who gave their lives to defend it in all of our wars. It makes me so proud to be an American, I remember those who mentored us, who poured their lives into our life that we get to live in freedom.

Yet that there are things that no amount of flag waving can solve. Things that we can’t just leave to memory. No. We must pick up the work of the fallen. We must ensure that all veterans are honored and cared for. There is a mental health crisis and suicide rate among recent veterans. We must care for them. I don’t know how best to do this, yet we cannot allow lives to be chewed up and spit out by the military industrial complex. And there is a difference between the military, those proud institutions of service and the men and women who serve in them, and the military industrial complex, those institutions of profit that can get greedy and callous to human need and human lives. We need to ensure that we are serving our men and women in the service and meeting their human needs and not letting them be crushed and abused by corporate greed.

May we be the answer to Christ’s prayer and find unity within our diversity, Christ’s prayer “that they all may be one” is true. It is the motto of the UCC, who in 1957, combined 4 different faith traditions, the Christian, Evangelical, Reformed, and our heritage, Congregational, all united. And so, we are called to be a reconciled and reconciling people. This is hard work because we know how to divide. We often trick ourselves into thinking that there is strength in division, when it is the easiest and weakest things we can do. It takes much more strength to love and to unite, especially when our backgrounds are so different. There is no beauty when everyone is singing their own solo, but when we add our voice in God’s song of the cosmos, when we come together, it is a beautiful thing and we become one. When Christ is lifted up, he will draw all people to him! So we endeavor to lift Christ up. We remember those whom we memorialize this day and we seek to follow their good example of finding a common cause, and serving something greater than ourselves.

And we hope for the day when the radical love of our enemies that Christ taught and lived and died for is the spirit of the day. For that beloved community to come in its fullness when we beat our swords into plowshares and we won’t learn war anymore. That there is nothing to fear, that there is no one to fear. A day when the grandchildren of former soldiers talk to one another, tour a museum, share a meal, and cry and comfort one another. For such a day, we pray and work toward. For we know that everyone does not get what they deserve, that grace covers all our wrongs.

May we endeavor to seek to reconcile and unite. It’s hard as it’s so easy to divide. That day in Germany, on the bus ride back to our dorms; the grandchildren of men who fought and killed one another listened to one another. We cried and tried to comfort one another. And it was beautiful and it was brutal. It was “Brutiful” as author Glennon Doyle Melton says. We could have just told the Germans they were awful and their grandparents were awful, but there’s no beauty in that. But that would just be the worst of us talking to the worst in them, for that is what war is. Put down your arms. When you feel conflict welling up and tempting you, remember this great poem by Hafiz,
“Why just ask the donkey in me,
To speak to the donkey in you,
When I have so many other beautiful animals and brilliant colored birds inside,
That are all longing to say something wonderful and exciting to your heart?
Let’s open all the locked doors upon our eyes
that keep us from knowing the intelligence that begets love and a more
lively and satisfying conversation with the Friend.
Let’s turn loose our golden falcons so that they can meet in the sky
where our spirits belong
necking like two hot kids.
Let’s hold hands and get drunk near the sun and sing sweet songs to God until He joins us with a few notes from His own sublime lute and drum.
If you have a better idea, then speak up sweethearts, speak up!
For Hafiz and all the world will listen.
Why just bring your donkey to me asking for stale hay and a boring conference with the idiot in regards to this precious matter—such a precious matter as love, when I have so many other divine animals
and brilliant colored birds inside, that are all longing to so sweetly greet you!”^[2]

May this be our song. A song of peace for lands afar and mine.

[1] [1] Wikipedia contributors, “Memorial Day,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Memorial_Day&oldid=778042340(accessed May 1, 2017).

[2] Hafiz, The Gift, Translated by Daniel Ladinsky page 36-37.