The Wall 

Memorial Day 2007

II honor men of peace, and even more men who gave up their personal peace to defend the rights of others. But to me the highest honor goes to a man who follows the words of Christ. No blaring fanfare for the silent heroes who just do things right, but only generations who take the best from them and model it for other generations.

As I got ready to speak this weekend, I was reminded of a little boy who saw the honor roll, or memorial plaque on the wall of the church. He asked his mom what it was. she said it is in honor of those who died in the service. He said. “Mom, was it the morning service or the evening service?”
Please, having survived this far don't check out on me now. But maybe in church it’s the preacher who needs the memorial. I have literally died a lot of times, or at least bombed pretty bad.

Now generally I am not in big demand for things. The only time I was in big demand was one time when the President of the United States sent me a personal letter, saying something to the effect that they couldn't live without me and would I please consider coming to Fort Dix New Jersey because I was in great demand. Well, maybe it wasn't quite worded that way, but I have a selective memory, I forget LOTS of good stuff, like the real truth, I volunteered for the draft.

I hate to say this really, but once Uncle Sam got me, he figured I would be a risk to people in combat so he sent me to Germany. That's really where I got fat, and for years I had a guilt complex about that. Germany I mean not the fat, still have that one. Weird huh?

I then had to deal with some stuff and figure out how to get rid of that guilt, so (and this freaks out people I ride with) every time I see a POW or Purple Heart plate, a Veteran Plate, I salute. I also thank each veteran as I can.

Now that isn't bad if they understand you are saluting them. One or two don't see well and they think I'm making a rude gesture and run me off the road....not really.

Now I like to have fun, but when its time to get serious I can do that too and I intend to as I talk about something that means more to me than anything except God and my family.

I have to tell you about my relationship with this particular day and what it commemorates.
I am a man who, like most of us, really would give my life to preserve our freedom. In a way I am still doing that I trust. I tend to echo the old Country song that was popular when I was a teen: “When your running down my country hoss, you're walking on the fighting side of me.

My Dad served, My brothers served; I served; my son served. I had friends, kids I grew up with who got their names inscribed on the wall in DC. There's only one way to get on that wall. I hold sacred, the memory of the ones who fought and died, or fought and lived with unseen wounds to give others the freedom to disagree
.
I believe that the Great Men and Women we honor today read the imaginary fine print on another monument.

The bold print on the Front of that monument to Liberty is a poem written by Emma Lazarus:
It is called The New Colossus and it is the inscription on the Statue of Liberty.

Give me your tired, your poor
your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the tempest tossed to me;
I lift my lamp beside the golden door....
But if there was an unwritten small print which every veteran, every patriot knows and it is this:
Give me your Fathers, your sons
your patriot daughters maimed to keep you free,
The glorious youthful of your teeming shore,
Send these, the children of your dream to me;
To trim my lamp beside the golden door.

It is these, the pride of America, the boy raised in a hopeless Ghetto who has yet to smell the air of real freedom, yet bidden by the call he gives an arm and a leg so others can use theirs to protest what he protects.

It is a farm boy filled with hopes for the future who lays down his life as a seed, a seed that will ensure that in golden fields the flower of freedom will go on.

It is A father who kisses his young bride, heavy with a child he will never see, goodbye that you and I may hold on to our children a little more closely
.
It is A young woman of vision, who sees on some distant hill a banner still worth reaching for, and dying for, to keep the lamp of liberty lit on the shores of this our Great our Native Land.
Abraham Lincoln expressed it best in a letter to a Mrs. Bixby whose 5 sons were reported killed in battle Nov. 21,1864.

I Pray that our heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost. And the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

That is why it happens that when I go and visit my grand kids and their parents in VA, I make a pilgrimage to a place called “The Wall”. Oh. Its real name is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, but to those who go and weep there, perhaps some with that same solemn pride, it is “The Wall.”

I want to talk about that wall today and what it stands for. And I want to compare what many of you and thousands of others went through as they returned to the USA with the treatment of the greatest warrior of all times, Jesus our Captain.

I think it was 1968 when my oldest brother returned from Viet Nam. And I have to tell you in the Nute household, tucked way back in Maine, he got a welcome home.

I was so proud, as a teenager, of the fact that when he was called he went in answer to his country's call. I have become more proud of that and of him over the years. Like many men and women who, despite the fact that war is not good, went to defend a principle of liberty.

But it wasn't long before I began to understand in my young teenaged mind that everyone wasn't as welcoming to men like my brother. I saw TV news shots of the rude way many honorable Americans were treated as they came back to a country and a generation that was so besotted with selfishness it couldn't tolerate selfless sacrifice. It was made guilty, perhaps by those who had given life and limb to allow them, the selfish ones, to have the freedom of expression they turned on the ones who bought it for them.

It didn't make sense to me then and only a little more now as I understand the horrible drive of selfish, me first, attitude our generation was caught up in.

I determined that sometime, as soon as I got out of high school, I was going to serve my country too.
I graduated from high school in 1970 and worked a few weeks, then went to the draft board and volunteered to be drafted. I almost went in the Marines but God spared me.

I remember that I had a chip on my shoulder for my brothers’ sake. I remember after basic going to the High school I had graduated from and in the hall way, as classes went on, a person whom I had known the last year looked at my uniform and sneered and said “Blankety red neck.”

II said “You are Blankety right“, and slammed him against the school wall, and left.
He was insulting my brother, brothers, and I had an attitude.

After Advanced Individual Training, I came home with orders to go to Germany for 17 months; except me and one other guy, the rest of the guys went over to Viet Nam. I really didn't have a full understanding of Nam you understand, and I didn't mind going, but I was not really going to complain about going to Europe.

All along I kept seeing how Viet vets were treated, how the public despised those honorable Americans-and even though I enjoyed my little radio site in the hills, I felt guilty about not going to “NAM.”

Now when I came home from Germany, into McGuire AFB, I was just another GI. But on the other coast it was, as you know, often another story.

Many were mistreated, even abused, despised, spit on, yet all they did was their duty. And it hurt! They needed, deserved, a ticker tape parade and millions of Americans saying, “We don't like war, but we love our warriors.” But it wasn't to be for many years for many of you, some, like my friend Jim, who happens to be African American, came home and found out he wasn't free in a land he had fought and sacrificed his personal freedom for and it just was not right.

But in our own way each one dealt with it, you moved on and for the most part survived somehow.
You know that when that wall went up many of you as you visited felt a deep sense of belonging, a sense that somehow some of the wrongs had been recognized.

I remember the first time I went there and was overwhelmed by the sanctity of that place. I looked up the name of a school chum and as I saw his name it hit me. It was for me that Sheldon died; it was for all the other people standing around that those listed on the wall had made their sacrifice. And I thought about how to best honor my comrades, my fellow soldiers, those who, literally died instead of me. I thought how very much I needed to make my country better in honor of those who died to express their desire for freedom, even in a cause which they may not have understood.
Listen! You are not alone, there is another!

He was given a great send off as he left home, weren't we all? He was treated to a host of singers as he stepped out of his peaceful home into the battle zone that would cost him his life.
He was, to all appearances just an ordinary guy, a little Jewish rabbi with no special halo or anything that marked him as different. Just an ordinary guy, and way before he was born even He knew that he was going to be involved in a battle for the life and freedom of all mankind. He also knew that he could not expect to be welcomed in this world the prophet Isaiah had said:

Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows,
yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
By oppression and judgment he was taken away.
And who can speak of his descendants?
For he was cut off from the land of the living;
for the transgression of my people he was stricken.
He was assigned a grave with the wicked,
and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence,
nor was any deceit in his mouth.
Yet it was the Lord's will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
and though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.
After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light [of life] and be satisfied;
by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many,
and he will bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,
and he will divide the spoils with the strong,
because he poured out his life unto death,
and was numbered with the transgressors.
For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

Here it was. It jumped out at me as I thought of the wall, thought of some small token of honor some way to make this a better place in their place.

If I can tell the world about the one who VOLUNTEERED; not for the draft, but for the death duty, the point man for eternity who suffered more than any man.

If one person could find out that someone else has been there, been despised, rejected, been turned away from, and then been exalted, it might give hope to them and to me as well.

You see here is a man, a God man, who KNOWINGLY, suffered the agony. Who with perfect foreknowledge of the horrible death, rejection, beatings he would go through, decided to go ahead with the plan FOR ME, FOR YOU.

Listen, it’s a dirty job, that war over there, but all war is a dirty job isn't it?

And I honor highly all those who went there, or to Iwo Jima or Pan Mun Jon, or Anzio, Normandy, Guadalcanal, Kuwait Bosnia Afghanistan and Iraq, not because they saw a goal necessarily, but because their NATION ASKED IT OF THEM.

You see, they, you, we did something honorable.

Now listen! It was a dirty job this battle for the souls of men, and only one person could do it. And when he was called he went, with a little difference. HE KNEW, HE KNEW the outcome would be VICTORY.

Hebrews 12 says Because of the joy that was set before him he endured the pain and shame...they joy he saw is YOU and even me coming to know him.

It is somehow easier to face the hard times with hope isn't it?

Wouldn't you have felt better coming home from Viet Nam or Korea if you could at least have known then that what a nation learned in your battles would dramatically shorten a war, in the desert a few years later, that lives spent in your war would have the effect of saving lives in the Gulf?

Listen, Jesus came to give us all hope, as the high priest who really understands. The one who was tested in every point like us and yet did no sin is the one who calls out to each one today.

“Come unto me all you that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest....”

He died in place of you and me. He died a horrible tortured death on a cross to take my place and yours He died FOR us. He died to give you and me life, Eternal life yes, but abundant life now as well. And he is calling out to each one COME and GET REST in me.

He came to give his life for you and something else:

You may not have heard a very sound welcome home as you came back from your war. But I have it on good authority that as you accept Jesus the second you do you will hear Him saying WELCOME HOME. Welcome Home to the family for you are mine and I will work in you and get you safely home forever.

Please accept these lines as my tribute of honor to you and to our brothers on the wall, and in Flanders and Arlington and Hamburger hill and pork chop hill and Taipei and Loch Ninh and Burma and in Battan Baghdad and Fallujah, Kabul and Kuwait and on and on in other places of memory:

The Wall
I walked beside a wall today my soul was stirred as I walked
I knelt beside that wall to pray and in the still I thought I heard
sandaled footsteps nearing with heart felt care a loving voice
said I remember those whose choice has caused their names engraved to be
in sacrifice they honored me who also am upon a wall
of memory in a hallowed hall and as you kneel in silence here
know too that I am always near and honor those who gave it all...
whose names are written on this wall
Steve Nute