A Sermon by the Reverend Ellen Rowse Spero
First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church,
Chelmsford, Massachusetts
May 30, 2004
Copyright 2004, Ellen Rowse Spero. All rights reserved.
Memorial Day is a time we set aside each year, between the parades and the picnics, to honor and remember those who laid down their lives for our country. In a poem about fallen servicemen, Archibald MacLeish writes, "(The young dead soldiers) say: Our deaths are not ours; they are yours; they will mean what you make them…Whether our lives and our deaths were for peace and a new hope or for nothing we cannot say; it is you who must say this." Lincoln’s second inaugural address was his attempt to make meaning of the young dead soldiers of the Civil War. Newspaper editors at the time commented that it was more a sermon than a speech. And indeed, in his search for meaning, Lincoln turns to religion rather than politics for answers.
Because Lincoln was assassinated soon after giving this address, it is read as his last words before his death. But that was not the context in which he gave it. He was riding the wave of victory: he had won a second term in office and had a mandate that he did not have during his first term. The Union was just weeks away from winning the Civil War, and all looked forward to the end of the bloody four year conflict. This address was intended to set the tone for the future, to look beyond the War to the Peace. Those gathered in Washington, D.C. that day were anticipating a "We Are the Champions" kind of speech. More were gathered than at any previous inauguration and the mood was high. Amongst those in attendance were veterans, many of them wounded, of the Union Army.
So, most were surprised, and many disappointed, by Lincoln’s speech. First, it was brief, last just about seven minutes. Many missed it entirely, arriving as it ended. Second, Lincoln did not pronounce victory: he merely commented that "The progress of our arms…is…reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured." After summarizing the difference between this moment in time and the one of his first inauguration on the eve of the start of war, Lincoln goes on to name slavery as the true cause of the war. And in doing so, he holds both the South and the North accountable: "…(God) gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came…" Lincoln ends the speech by calling for a time of healing and reconciliation: "…let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations."
This was not what the crowd had expected. They did not expect to hear about reconciling with the Confederate insurgents. They did not expect to hear slavery named as the cause of the war, for it had been the preservation of the Union that most had gone to fight. And most of all, they did not expect to be held in the wrong with the Confederacy on the issue of slavery. The crowd, initially prepared to clap and cheer wildly, was mainly silent, except for some sporadic cheering and clapping. The only group who strongly affirmed Lincoln’s words was the African-American veterans in attendance, who, according to newspaper accounts, murmured "Bless the Lord" and "amen" throughout the speech. It received mixed reviews in the Northern Press: some newspapers found it preachy and sentimental, lacking in eloquence and the proper spirit. Several expressed their concern that the president was overstepping the bounds of the separation of church and state by preaching a sermon rather than giving a speech. Others appreciated Lincoln’s call to kindness and charity, to healing and reconciliation. The Southern Press was mainly silent. As Ronald White notes, "In the South, Lincoln’s Second Inaugural offered particular problems. The motto of the Confederacy, Deo vindice (God will avenge), spoke to the South’s self-identity as a Christian nation. Southerners were keenly aware that their Confederate Constitution, unlike the silence of the federal Constitution, included ‘invoking the favor and guidance of the Almighty God.’ Throughout the war, Southern politicians and pastors had comforted themselves, that they were the true Christian people, as contrasted with the North, which they charged had been corrupted by liberalizing movements in theology and non-Christian immigrants. What, then, to make of Lincoln’s Biblical words and theological language?" (pp.294-95).
The cost of the Civil War was very high: an estimated 623,000 men died during its four years, one out every 11 of service age (p. 21). In comparison, an estimated 634,000 U.S. soldiers were killed in all the major wars that followed, from World War I through Viet Nam, only about 11,000 more than died in the Civil War. Then there were the thousands wounded, many of whom were amputees. The war had lasted longer than either side had imagined. Lincoln’s terse words of judgment and reconciliation were not what people wanted immediately to hear.
But it was, perhaps, what they needed to hear. The war and the responsibilities for waging it had aged Lincoln tremendously. He suffered from depression, and had lost two of his sons to illness, one during the war. This speech named his struggles, as well as the nation’s. He tried to make sense of the death and destruction that two groups of people within the same country, related to one another, had been willing to cause one another and to endure. What was the meaning of such sacrifice? His answer presented a compelling challenge to Americans then and now.
The most famous line of the speech is "with malice toward none, with charity toward all…" But the line that stays with me comes earlier: "Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other." In 1865, Lincoln challenged the conceit that we humans know that God or Ultimate Truth is on our side when we go war. He could as easily speak these words today. Whether it is Allah, or the God of Israel or God Almighty, or an ultimately endowed ideal of Freedom or Nationalism, leaders in today’s wars, insurgencies, terrorist attacks, and armed conflicts claim a holy mandate, grounding their cause in divine justice or ultimate righteousness. If this is the context, then we can do anything to achieve our goals, for they serve an ultimate purpose.
In his day, Lincoln challenged the claim of both sides, wondering if "…any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces…" For him, the deaths of the war were the price of 250 years of slavery. For him, hope for the future lay not in the triumph and glory of victory but in the words and works of the Hebrew prophets: to bind up the wounded and to care for the widow and the orphan. For him, the question was not on whose side was God but rather, what did it mean to be on God’s side? Or, to broaden the concept beyond monotheism, what does it mean to be on the side of ultimate justice, ultimate compassion, ultimate good? Few seem to want to address this question.
It is a dangerous question, for it brings us face to face with our darkness as well as our light. As human beings, we are imperfect in our knowledge and biased in our beliefs and experiences. We are mortal, and cannot know the future. I believe that there are causes which are worth fighting for, worth risking our lives for. And we owe a debt of gratitude to those who have been willing to do this on our behalf. But it is wrong to then conclude that there is anything about the holy or the sacred in war itself. It does not reveal the glory of God or the ultimate potential of the spirit of humanity. It does not affirm life and uphold the power of Love. Even when it is necessary and just, war is tragic and destructive. People kill and people die. Cities burn and refugees flee for their lives. As Lincoln notes, the consequences and costs of war spin out of the control of both sides: "Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained…Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding." War does not keep us safe and secure in the world we know nor does it give us the world we want. Instead, it clarifies the cost of hatred and fear. It demonstrates our capability for destruction. In the loss of so many young lives, Lincoln saw the consequences of man’s inhumanity to man: not just in the war, but in generations of slavery. When we treat other human beings without dignity and humanity, we risk losing our own. And if one generation has to go to war to stop a nation or a group from perpetuating such inhumanity, it is often in part because previous generations failed to take a stand in favor of justice and compassion.
Lincoln’s Christian faith led him to a different conclusion than many of those in the North and the South. He discerned that God was to be found where life and humanity were affirmed. To choose to be on God’s side, or on the side of ultimate good or the side of the Spirit of Life, we have to choose the ways of compassion and justice. This is true no matter how we understand or experience the Holy. While Lincoln quoted the Hebrew prophet Isaiah in his call to reconciliation and healing, he could have just as easily quoted Jesus: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself." or Mohammed: "None of you has faith unless he loves his brother what he loves for himself" or the Buddha: "Hatreds do not ever cease in this world by hating, but by love; this is an eternal truth." or the Chinese sage, Lao-Tzu: "Love the world as your own self."
The questions that Lincoln raised and the answers that he offered were not easy to hear then, and are not easy to hear now. Americans want to believe that the values and ideals of our nation are more than good, they are ultimately good, that they are endowed by something sacred and holy. And too, that the deaths of our young soldiers have meaning, that they died fighting for causes deserving of their sacrifice, worthy of our highest ideals. But the answer to that question, Lincoln notes, lies not in the past. Instead it lies in the future: in how we choose "…to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations." We do not have to share Lincoln’s belief in a God who acts in history to grasp the truth of his message: the challenge is not to prove that God is on our side. We should, instead, struggle to discern how we may choose to stand with God, or however we name the ultimate source and spirit of justice and compassion. I believe this is the greatest honor we could bestow in the name of those who we remember this weekend.
Resource:
Ronald C. White, Jr. Lincoln’s Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002.