"The Speech That Changed America"

Ezekiel 37:1-14

Memorial Day Sunday + May 27, 2012

Reverend Dr. David C. Brown
Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ
400 Glenwood Drive, Chattanooga, TN 37404

Five and a half centuries before Christ, a sensitive young Jew living in exile in Babylonia had a strange vision. It seemed to him that the spirit of God lifted him up from his home and set him down in a valley where some ancient battle had taken place. This long-ago battlefield was filled with dry white bones; they were the bones of those who had lost the battle. In ancient times the victors of battles gave their own dead an honorable burial. The bodies of those who had lost the battle were left where they fell, one final insulting indignity heaped on them. After a while all that would be left were scattered bones.

Seeing those bones reminded Ezekiel of what had happened to his own people. Only a few years before, the people of Judah had fought many losing battles against the armies of the Babylonian Empire, at that time the greatest power in the Middle East. Finally, the city of Jerusalem and the great temple erected by Solomon were taken and sacked. To ensure that they had left no potential army of revolt behind them, the Babylonians rounded up as many Jews as they could, particularly Jewish leaders, and took them back with them to Babylon, there to live in exile. Psalm 137 describes the despair these exiles felt:

“By the rivers of Babylon –

there we sat down and there we wept

when we remembered Zion.

On the willows there

we hung up our harps.

For there our captors

asked us for songs,

And our tormentors asked for

mirth, saying,

“Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

How could we sing the Lord’s song

in a foreign land?

If I forget you, O Jerusalem,

let my right hand wither!

Let my tongue cling to the roof

of my mouth,

if I do not remember you,

If I do not set Jerusalem

above my highest joy.”

Ezekiel had heard many dirges lamenting that the country of Israel had been lost. Now the nation was dead and these white bones were a fitting symbol of the dead hopes of the Jews.

In the midst of his despair, Ezekiel felt he heard God say to him: “Mortal, can these bones live (again)?” To which Ezekiel responded in as noncommittal way as he could without giving vent to his rage and frustration. (This, by the way, is my translation of his words) “Only you know the answer to that, Lord.” To which Ezekiel hears God tell him: “Prophesy to these bones and say to them: ‘O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord… I will cause breath to enter you and you shall live… and you shall know that I am the Lord.’”

Ezekiel did as was told. He prophesied to the bones and soon a vast multitude of living people stood in front of him. Here it is critically important that we understand the true nature of prophesy in ancient Israel. There is a simple way to remember it: “Prophets do not foretell the future; they forthtell the truth of God.” God inspired Ezekiel to tell the Jewish people that God had not forgotten them. God would put new life, a new vision, within these exiles and lead them home to Israel. The homeland they had lost through their own arrogance and pride would be restored as a new land of promise, not just for them, but for all people. Israel would once again have the opportunity to be a light to the nations as God had always intended them to be. This could happen if when they returned they lived out the powerful words of the prophet Micah:

“God has told you, mortal men and women, what is good;

and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice,

and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”

-Micah 6:8

Sadly, they didn’t do that, but the vision of a renewed just and merciful nation has continued through the centuries as a beckoning possibility not only for Israel but for all people.

Twenty-four hundred years later another great visionary prophet looked across another valley where a battle had been fought. For this prophet the battle was much more recent. For three days in early July, 1863, two powerful armies had engaged in a titanic struggle at Gettysburg. Whether the Union Army of the Potomac or the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia would triumph was uncertain until the last day of the battle when Pickett’s charge across the valley from Missionary Ridge to Cemetary Ridge was repulsed with great loss of life on both sides. The next day General Lee led his army in retreat back to Virginia. Though the war would grind on for another two years, Gettysburg marked the high tide of the Confederacy. Now it was no longer a question of whether the Confederacy would be victorious, but only how long it would take to defeat it.

When the two armies marched away from Gettysburg they left a ghastly shambles behind them. The unburied bodies of more than eight thousand men – North and South – were scattered over the open fields and half-hidden among trees and rock formations. Thousands of dead horses were also on the battlefield. As awful as that was, it was made far worse by the twenty thousand wounded soldiers of both armies left to the inadequate care of overwhelmed army medical units and the twenty-five hundred residents of Gettysburg. As days passed, more medical help arrived, but in many cases it was too little and too late. Yet, after the battle the greatest challenge Gettysburg faced was burying all those bodies decaying in the July heat.

A month after the battle, Governor Curtin of Pennsylvania appointed Gettysburg resident David Wills to oversee the burials. Wills in turn chose William Saunders, the leading expert in the new “rural cemetery” movement, to design the cemetery. With great ingenuity, Saunders arranged the graves of the known Union soldiers in great curving ranks to avoid preferential treatment of states. Confederate dead, almost entirely unidentified, together with unidentified Union dead were given decent burial. Wills planned from the beginning to have a great dedication ceremony at which a noted orator would speak. The man eventually chosen was Edward Everett, the President of Harvard. Everett was that rare thing, a scholar who could hold mass audiences in thrall. His voice, diction and gestures were quite dramatic and he always offered his orations, which lasted at least two hours, by memory. It may be difficult for us now to appreciate the popularity of these orations, but I think it is fair to say that they were as popular then as rock concerts today.

Because Everett needed sufficient time to prepare his oration, the date of the ceremony was set for November 19. Almost as an afterthought, President Lincoln was invited to attend and deliver “a few appropriate remarks.” No offence was intended. The new cemetery had been funded by support from the Northern states. The ceremony was a matter for the states, not the Federal government. Lincoln accepted the invitation and over the days he had to prepare it, drafted and refined his “few remarks.” Lincoln always carefully prepared his speeches and this would be no exception. He knew exactly what he wanted to say.

Thousands of people crowded the cemetery on November 19. After prayers and music, Everett delivered his masterful oration. When he had finished, the tall man from Illinois came forward and spoke.

(At this point, James Bowden came to the lectern and read the Gettysburg address.)

“Four Score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate – we cannot consecrate – we cannot hallow – this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

These powerful and prophetic two hundred seventy two words are what I am calling “The Speech That Changed America.” Lincoln’s words spell out his vision for America in the first line. Lincoln believed that our nation was conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Not some but all. That was his Revolutionary new vision of what America could and should be, a nation where all people would have an equal place and equal voice. No longer would only rich white men have power over all other citizens. There was no place in Lincoln’s America for discrimination on the basis of wealth or color. This speech also paved the way for women’s rights and suffrage. Today his speech continues to challenge us as we face in overcoming the legal barriers of discrimination against gay and lesbian people. They also inspire us as we are struggling to tear down the walls of religious prejudice, one nation under God but under no one faith.

For Abraham Lincoln, the brave soldiers, living and dead, consecrated his vision of equality. Have you ever noticed that nowhere in this Address does Lincoln single out the South as enemies as Everett did in his oration? For Lincoln, all Americans, North and South, living and dead, together whether they knew it or not paid the price for this new America. Lincoln challenged those who heard him and those who would read his words later to dedicate themselves to his dream of what America should and could be. We the living must be dedicated to the unfinished work those who fought at Gettysburg had so nobly begun.

Now our country is beginning to celebrate the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of the Civil War. Once again in our time we are challenged to decide what America will be. Over these many years we have only begun that work of true freedom and justice for all Americans. Any sensitive person today knows that the work of freedom is not finished. There are still racial, gender, sexual orientation, religious, and economic divisions among us. All Americans are not yet fully equal nor fully free. Those who suffered and died in the Civil War as well as those in succeeding generations who served their country, sometimes giving the last full measure of devotion, have paid a high price for the transformation of America into a nation where there will be liberty and justice for all.

For me it is incredibly sad that our nation today seems to be becoming as divided as was America in Lincoln’s day. The country is now divided into red states and blue states, into liberals and conservatives, into warring political factions who seem to have no real appreciation that we are all Americans. Not some, but all. Carl Sandburg, Lincoln biographer and poet, once made this wise observation. He said the Civil War was fought over a verb(!) Before the Civil War national documents said, “The United States are…” After the Civil War, those documents read “The United States is…”

On this Memorial Day, 2012, let us here highly resolve that those who fought and died in our country’s wars shall not have died in vain. The only true honor we can bestow upon them is committing ourselves to be part of a new birth of freedom and equality for our nation. If we do that, we can ensure that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth. God make it so. Amen.