SPECIAL DAYS: Memorial Day

May 28, 2000 - LESSON: Joshua 4.19-24

SERMON TITLE: What Do these Stones Mean?

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INTRODUCTION:

  1. For Better or for Worse, Lynn Johnston

    Ellie is making the bed and places a small decorator pillow on it.

    She is thinking:

      "John's mother made this pillow...Its been on our bed for 10 years...

      "It has such sweet sentiment--but it doesn't match the decor anymore.

      "I hate to hurt John';s feelings but I'm putting it away.

      "I'll be sensitive about the way I tell him. I know that his mom's handicrafts mean a lot."

So she goes to talk with John:

    "Honey?...This may have been the wrong thing to do--And please tell me if you'd like me to put it back.

    "I've put away that lovely hand-embroidered pillow your mother made for our bed."

John thinks for a moment and then says:

    "What pillow?"

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  1. I suppose that Ellie could get a little upset, she has good cause.
    1. John, you know the pillow what has been on our bed for the last 10 years.
    2. How could you forget the pillow.
    3. Your mother made it!
  2. John by this time could be a little hot under the collar.
    1. How could he be so stupid
    2. He ought to have remembered the pillow.
  3. What is happening is not unusual.

MAIN BODY:

  1. Hey dad, what's that pile of stones standing there for?
    1. What stones.
      1. The stones that are there in Gilgal.
      2. Gilgal near the center of the Promised Land.
      3. It was not a large memorial.
    2. Perhaps they are no longer visible, overgrown with grass and shrubs.
  2. Memory is short
    1. We lose touch with memorials
      1. Part of the Confirmation process is to help our youth learn about our history.
        1. They are to find at least 4 items that have been given in memory of someone.
          1. Outside the door of the office is a table.
          2. There is a bell in our front yard
          3. There is a large stained glass window in the Koeffler Fellowship Hall.
          4. There are the hymnals that you hold in your hand.

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      1. Tomorrow is Memorial Day
        1. There are flags flying in the cemetery.
          1. What do the flags mean
          2. Whose grave do they mark, and why?
        2. There will be a small parade.
        3. There will be a commemorate moment in Oak Knoll Cemetery.
        4. There will be speeches on the lawn of the library.
    1. What stones?
      1. We are surrounded by them.
      2. We are as the apostle Paul writes, " Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses," (Hebrews 12:1 NRSV).
    2. The stones are witnesses.
  1. It is up to us to decider their meaning.
    1. One day a young girl watched her mother prepare a ham for baking.
      1. At one point, the daughter asked, "Mom, why did you cut off both ends of the ham?"
      2. "Well, because my mother always did," said the mother.(1)
      3. "But why?"
      4. "I don't know--let's go ask Grandma."
      5. So they went to Grandma's house and asked, "Grandma, when you prepared the ham for baking, you always cut off both ends--why did you do that?"
      6. "My mother always did it," said Grandma.
      7. "But why?"
      8. "I don't know--let's go ask Great-Grandma." So off they went to Great-Grandma's.
      9. "Great-Grandma, when you prepared the ham for baking, you always cut off both ends--why did you do that?"
      10. "Well," Great-Grandma said, "the pan was too small."

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    1. What is the meaning of the stones?
      1. What stones
      2. The stones that 12 men carried from the bottom of the river and set up as a memorial.
        1. Those twelve stones, which they had taken out of the Jordan, Joshua set up in Gilgal, saying to the Israelites,
        2. "When your children ask their parents in time to come, 'What do these stones mean?'
        3. then you shall let your children know, 'Israel crossed over the Jordan here on dry ground.'
        4. For the LORD your God dried up the waters of the Jordan for you until you crossed over, as the LORD your God did to the Red Sea, which he dried up for us until we crossed over,
        5. so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the LORD is mighty, and so that you may fear the LORD your God forever."
      3. The stones that decorate the graves of the fallen in war.
        1. It is so much more than men and women who died in the service of their country.
        2. It is so much more than about sacrifice.
        3. It is about the rule of law.
        4. It is about mercy.
        5. It is about justice.
        6. It is about love.
        7. It is about freedom.

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  1. What do these stones mean?
    1. Poet, novelist and former head of Czechoslovakia, Vaclav Havel, wrote that:
      1. "The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his life, but that it bothers him less and less."
      2. We need to know.
      3. We need to be bothered to know
      4. We need to be bothered when we don't know.
    2. Look what happened in Israel
      1. They forgot
      2. Their children asked and there was no answer
        1. Don't bother me now, I'm busy.
        2. Go ask your mother.
        3. Go ask your father.
        4. Go ask the priest.
      3. Because there was no answer, God was forgotten or misunderstood.
      4. The consequences were grave.

Conclusion:

  1. We need to see the stones and learn what they mean.
    1. It is not enough to know, we need to know the meaning.
    2. We also need to let them help us create a purpose, the end in view.
    3. John Haughey, S.J., in The Conspiracy of God(2) writes that in one of George Moore's novels,
      1. he tells of Irish peasants in the Depression who were set to work building roads.
      2. For a time everything went wonderfully.
      3. The men were glad to have jobs, and sang songs as they worked.
      4. But after a while they discovered that the roads they were building led nowhere, expired in peat bogs or simply ended.
      5. As that truth gradually dawned upon them, they grew listless and stopped singing.
      6. In the words of the novelist: "The roads to nowhere are difficult to build. For a man to work well and to sing as he works, there must be an end in view."
    4. An end in view
      1. What is our end in view
      2. What is our purpose.
  2. What do these stones mean?
    1. Memorial Day reminds us of the sacrifices of freedom for freedom.
    2. Jesus Christ reminds us of the sacrifice of freedom for freedom.

1. As quoted in Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life (New York: Viking, 1992), xxii.

2. John Haughey, S.J., The Conspiracy of God (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1973), 35.

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