Memorial Day - Pt 2

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command you, so that you will love one another. (John 15:12-17 ESV).

Memorial Day is a day to remember the sacrifice of over a million American soldiers from the Civil War to the wars in the Middle East we still fight. All of these incredibly courageous and committed men and women have given more than we could ever expect or ask to secure the freedoms we enjoy. However, God has also given us more then we could ever ask or expect for the ultimate freedom. Today is a time for that memorial as well. God has surrounded us with memorials. In fact, the entire Bible itself is a memorial. We meditate on it daily to remember. The Sabbath was a memorial to Israel’s freedom from Egyptian slavery (cf. Deuteronomy 5:15), and the church switched it to Sundays as a memorial to Christ’s resurrection and our freedom from sin. Israel’s great gathering feast days were memorials (cf. Exodus 13:3). And now each time a local church gathers, each Lord’s Supper celebration, each baptism, each Christmas celebration, and each Easter celebration is a memorial (cf. 1 Corinthians 11:24-26). Remembering God’s past grace is necessary to fuel our faith in God’s future grace for us. This makes the memory one of God’s most profound, mysterious, and merciful gifts granted to us. God designed it to be a means of preserving grace for his people. We must not neglect it unless we are willing to risk great peril. The future of the church, globally and locally, and of each Christian depends largely on how well we remember the gospel of Jesus, all his precious and very great promises, and the successes and failures of church history. Scripture warns us that if we fail to remember, we will be condemned to submit again to sin’s and hell’s enslavement (cf. Hebrews 6:4-8). Such warnings are graces to help us remember. So as we commemorate Memorial Day as Americans, let us do it with profound gratitude for the extraordinary common grace given to us when men and women laid their lives down for the sake of America’s survival. And let us remember the past evils that we may not repeat them in the future. And as Christians, let us make every day, as long as it is called today, a memorial day to call to mind the great gift of Jesus on the cross for our redemption.