A Note From the Pastor
Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
Being someone who has always had an interest in the American Civil War, I was a great fan of the Ken Burn’s Civil War television series on PBS. Of all the memorable scenes from that series, there is one that I return to again and again. At the end of the episode that focused on the battle of Gettysburg, the narrator describes a remarkable thing that happened in 1913 on the 50th anniversary of that monumental battle.
Surviving veterans of the two armies came together at Gettysburg to stage a re-enactment of Pickett’s charge. All the old Union veterans took their places up on the ridge behind the trees and among the rocks. All the old Confederate veterans started marching toward them across the wide field below. Then something extraordinary happened. The old men on the high ground, the Union side, suddenly left their posts and with a loud cry ran down the hill toward the Confederate vets. But this time, instead of engaging in battle as they had a half-century before, they threw down their weapons and threw their arms around each other. There on the killing fields of the past, they embraced and openly wept.
Thinking of those former foes now embracing each other, I am reminded of some words from Frederick Buechner: “When Jesus commanded us to love our neighbors as ourselves, it was not just for our neighbors’ sakes that he commanded us to love them but for our own sakes. Not to help find some way to feed the children who are starving to death is to have some precious part of who we are starve to death with them. Not to give ourselves to the human beings we know who may be starving not for food but for what we have in our hearts to nourish them with is to be, ourselves, diminished and crippled as human beings.”
I suppose we can continue to wound and defend ourselves from each other. But hopefully, in the church if nowhere else, we can learn more about hugging than hurting. May our church be a place where we both are loved and learn to love, are forgiven and learn to forgive, and where we discover that our lives are so intricately interwoven that there can be no peace and love for any of us until there is real peace and love for all of us.
Gene
