SPECIAL DAYS: May 29, Memorial Sunday

Lesson: 2 Samuel 1.17-27

Sermon Title: Fallen Heroes

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INTRODUCTION:

Wind Direction (1)

"This house," said the real estate salesman, "has both its good points and its bad points. To show you I'm honest, I'm going to tell you about both.

The disadvantages are that there is a chemical plant one block south and a slaughterhouse a block north."

"What are the advantages?" inquired the prospective buyer.

"The advantage is that you can always tell which way the wind is blowing."

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MAIN BODY:

  1. Memorial Day, You cannot always know which way the wind is blowing.

    1. Which way is the wind blowing?

    2. You can read which the wind blew for King Saul and his sons in a battle with the Philistines in 1 Samuel 31:1-13, NRSVA.

1Now the Philistines fought against Israel; and the men of Israel fled before the Philistines, and many fell on Mount Gilboa. 2The Philistines overtook Saul and his sons; and the Philistines killed Jonathan and Abinadab and Malchishua, the sons of Saul. 3The battle pressed hard upon Saul; the archers found him, and he was badly wounded by them. 4Then Saul said to his armor-bearer, "Draw your sword and thrust me through with it, so that these uncircumcised may not come and thrust me through, and make sport of me." But his armor-bearer was unwilling; for he was terrified. So Saul took his own sword and fell upon it. 5When his armor-bearer saw that Saul was dead, he also fell upon his sword and died with him. 6So Saul and his three sons and his armor-bearer and all his men died together on the same day. 7When the men of Israel who were on the other side of the valley and those beyond the Jordan saw that the men of Israel had fled and that Saul and his sons were dead, they forsook their towns and fled; and the Philistines came and occupied them.

8The next day, when the Philistines came to strip the dead, they found Saul and his three sons fallen on Mount Gilboa. 9They cut off his head, stripped off his armor, and sent messengers throughout the land of the Philistines to carry the good news to the houses of their idols and to the people. 10They put his armor in the temple of Astarte; and they fastened his body to the wall of Beth-shan. 11But when the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead heard what the Philistines had done to Saul, 12all the valiant men set out, traveled all night long, and took the body of Saul and the bodies of his sons from the wall of Beth-shan. They came to Jabesh and burned them there. 13Then they took their bones and buried them under the tamarisk tree in Jabesh, and fasted seven days.

    1. Listen to part of a speech given by Michael Medved that was reproduced in the Hilldale College's publication Imprimis:

      1. War Films, Hollywood and Popular Culture

      2. Michael Medved, Radio Host and Author, Right Turns: Unconventional Lessons from a Controversial Life. Michael Medved is a nationally syndicated radio talk show host, best-selling author and film critic.

"Three elements were always present in classic war movies--films like the John Wayne version of The Alamo, or The Longest Day, or A Bridge Too Far or Sergeant York. First, there was great affection for, and indeed glorification of, the American fighting man, who was portrayed as one of us--as representative of the best of what this country is. Second, there was obvious sympathy for the American cause. And third, the wars being dramatized were portrayed as meaning something....

"It is far more common in war films today, regardless of the war being depicted, for the three elements of the classic war film to be turned on their heads. American troops are more likely than not to be portrayed as sick, warped and demented--in any case, very different from normal Americans. Very often the audience is manipulated to root for the other side, whatever the other side happens to be. And whatever the war, we are left with the idea that it is meaningless."

    1. I do not believe that it is meaningless!

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  1. The direction and intensity of the wind is reflected in the songs that were and are being sun by the troops, the parents, and were being sung by those who fought, lived or died.

    1. In 2 Samuel 1:17-27, NRSVA, David creates a lament for Saul and Jonathan.

17David intoned this lamentation over Saul and his son Jonathan. 18(He ordered that The Song of the Bow be taught to the people of Judah; it is written in the Book of Jashar.) He said:

19 Your glory, O Israel, lies slain upon your high places!
        How the mighty have fallen!
20 Tell it not in Gath,
        proclaim it not in the streets of Ashkelon;
    or the daughters of the Philistines will rejoice,
        the daughters of the uncircumcised will exult.

21 You mountains of Gilboa,
        let there be no dew or rain upon you,
        nor bounteous fields!
    For there the shield of the mighty was defiled,
        the shield of Saul, anointed with oil no more.

22 From the blood of the slain,
       from the fat of the mighty,
     the bow of Jonathan did not turn back,
         nor the sword of Saul return empty.

23 Saul and Jonathan, beloved and lovely!
        In life and in death they were not divided;
    they were swifter than eagles,
        they were stronger than lions.

24 O daughters of Israel, weep over Saul,
        who clothed you with crimson, in luxury,
        who put ornaments of gold on your apparel.

25 How the mighty have fallen
        in the midst of the battle!

    Jonathan lies slain upon your high places.
26    I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan;
    greatly beloved were you to me;
         your love to me was wonderful,
         passing the love of women.

27 How the mighty have fallen,
        and the weapons of war perished!

      1. This was called the Song of the Bow

      2. To be taught to the young men.

      3. So they would remember Saul and Jonathon.

    1. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in "The White Company" also wrote a "Song of the Bow"

What of the bow?
The bow was made in England:
Of true wood, of yew wood,
The wood of English bows;
So men who are free
Love the old yew tree
And the land where the yew tree grows.

What of the cord?
The cord was made in England:
A rough cord, a tough cord,
A cord that bowmen love;
So we'll drain our jacks
To the English flax
And the land where the hemp was wove.

What of the shaft?
The shaft was cut in England:
A long shaft, a strong shaft,
Barbed and trim and true;
So we'll drink all together
To the gray goose feather
And the land where the gray goose flew.

What of the men?
The men were bred in England:
The bowman--the yeoman--
The lads of dale and fell
Here's to you--and to you;
To the hearts that are true
And the land where the true hearts dwell.

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  1. We have our own songs.

    1. We need to learn the songs.

    2. The songs of WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam.

  2. Does the music of the wars to help us remember?

    1. I remember singing the songs from WWI and WWII.

      1. World War I

        1. "Regarding the mother songs, most focused on their valor, the fact that they are the strength of the country and the ones making the sacrifices. In the song Joan of Arc, by Leo Woods, Woods says; of the mothers of France; 'they have borne the burden of grief for many a day, Now other mothers sons enter the fray.' Mothers are mothers around the world, all of them concerned for their poor sons no matter which side they were on, no matter how rich or poor. Alfred Bryan wrote in There's A Vacant Chair In Every Home Tonight; 'In every mansion, every cottage all throughout the land, there's a mother's heart feeling blue.' As the mothers at home were thinking of their sons, the sons were thinking of mom as well. One of the most poignant songs that address that issue is George L. Boyden's If I'm Not At The Roll Call, Kiss Mother Good-bye For Me, a soldier in fear for his life asks his buddy; 'Tell he I know she loves me..and kiss her good-bye for me.'" (2)

        2. This is one that I did not know. "If I'm Not At the Roll Call (Kiss Mother Goodbye for Me)"

'Twas just before the battle boys,
That day I'll ne'er forget,--
A lad beside me in the trench as brave as I have met;--
Tho' death was near, he had no fear,
'Twas very plain to see,--
For just before the battle charge,
He smilingly said to me:--

"If I am not at roll call,
After the fighting is done,
Won't you be kind to my mother,
Just for her soldier son?
Tell her I know how she loves me,
And prays for me constantly,
May angels attend her,
Brave comrade befriend her,
And kiss her goodbye for me."

We all felt glad our little lad,
Came thru the fight all right,--
His courage in the battle gave us help to win the fight,--
I wrote and told her just the words,
Her brave boy said to me:--

"If I am not at roll call,
After the fighting is done,
Won't you be kind to my mother,
Just for her soldier son?
Tell her I know how she loves me,
And prays for me constantly,
May angels attend her,
Brave comrade befriend her,
And kiss her goodbye for me."

        1. Over There

Chorus

Over there, over there,
Send the word, send the word over there--
That the Yanks are coming,
The Yanks are coming,
The drums rum-tumming
Ev'rywhere.
So prepare, say a pray'r,
Send the word, send the word to beware.
We'll be over, we're coming over,
And we won't come back till it's over
Over there.

        1. One of the greatest W.W.I "good-bye songs ever published; K-K-K-Katy. It was written by Geoffrey O'Hara and published in 1918. (3)

K-K-K-Katy

Jimmy was a soldier brave and bold,
Katy was a maid with hair of gold,
Like an act of fate,
Kate was standing at the gate,
Watching all the boys while on parade.
Kate smiled, with a twinkle in her eye,
Jim said, m-m-m-meet ya by and by.
That night at eight,
Jim was at the garden gate,
Stuttering this song to K-K-K-Kate.

K-K-K-Katy, beautiful Katy,
You're the only g-g-g-girl that I adore;
When the m-m-m-moon shines,
Over the c-c-c-cowshed,
I'll be waiting at the k-k-k-kitchen door.
K-K-K-Katy, beautiful Katy,
You're the only g-g-g-girl that I adore;
When the m-m-m-moon shines,
Over the c-c-c-cowshed,
I'll be waiting at the k-k-k-kitchen door.

No one ever looked so nice and neat,
No one could be just as cute and sweet,
That's what Jimmy thought,
When the wedding ring he bought,
Soon he'll go to France, the foe to meet.
Jimmy thought he'd like to take a chance,
See if he could make the Kaiser dance,
Stepping to a tune,
All about the silv'ry moon,
This is what they'll hear in far off France.

K-K-K-Katy, beautiful Katy,
You're the only g-g-g-girl that I adore;
When the m-m-m-moon shines,
Over the c-c-c-cowshed,
I'll be waiting at the k-k-k-kitchen door.
K-K-K-Katy, beautiful Katy,
You're the only g-g-g-girl that I adore;
When the m-m-m-moon shines,
Over the c-c-c-cowshed,
I'll be waiting at the k-k-k-kitchen door.

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      1. World War II

        1. Bless 'Em All

        2. I'll Be Seeing You, as sung by Vera Lynn.

I'll be seeing you;
In all the old, familiar places;
That this heart of mine embraces;
All day through.

In that small cafe;
The park across the way;
The children's carousel;
The chestnut tree;
The wishing well.

I'll be seeing you;
In every lovely, summer's day;
And everything that's bright and gay;
I'll always think of you that way;
I'll find you in the morning sun;
And when the night is new;
I'll be looking at the moon;
But I'll be seeing you.

        1. When The Lights Go On Again (All Over The World) - Vaughn Monroe & His Orchestra

Written by Eddie Seller, Sol Marcus, and Bennie Benjamin

*When the lights go on again all over the world*
And the boys are home again all over the world
And rain or snow is all that may fall from the skies above
A kiss won't mean "goodbye" but "Hello to love"

When the lights go on again all over the world
And the ships will sail again all over the world
Then we'll have time for things like wedding rings and free hearts will sing
When the lights go on again all over the world

When the lights go on again all over the world

        1. (There'll Be Blue Birds Over) The White Cliffs Of Dover: Lyrics - Nat Burton; Melody - Walter Kent, 1941

There'll be blue birds over
The white cliffs of Dover,
Tomorrow, just you wait and see.

There'll be love and laughter
And peace ever after
Tomorrow, when the world is free.

The shepherd will tend his sheep,
The valley will bloom again
And Jimmy will go to sleep,
In his own little room again.

There'll be blue birds over
The white cliffs of Dover,
Tomorrow, just you wait and see.

    1. I served in the Navy during the Korean War, but always on the East Coast and Western Europe.

      1. I do not remember many songs from the Korean War.

        1. I did find this song on the Internet.

THE CHOSIN RESERVOIR
[A SONG/POEM] BY BOB HAMMOND US ARMY 57TH FA/ 7th DIV

Mortars crashing, Carbines flashing,
screaming men and boys,
Bugles, flares and Howitzers;
a symphony of noise.

He is thinking of his childhood
when he saw the soldiers come
to this peaceful mountain valley
that had never heard a gun,

And he's never understood it,
he will always wonder why,
why so many men had come there
from so far away, to die.

How they fought with savage fury
agonizing through the snow,
fingers turning black with frostbite,
Death was sweeping to and fro.

Mac Lean and Faith, Commanders;
Hodge, and thousands more,
fought and froze, and bled to death
at Chosin Reservoir

So, let the veterans tell the stories,
let the legend live and grow,
let the Chosin be remembered
with the Men of Alamo,

With Bastogne and with Wake Island,
and the Bunker Hill Command,
and wherever there's courageous men
to take a valiant stand.

Once they fought to save a nation,
they could not have offered more
than the sacrifices made there
at The Chosin Reservoir

In the bitter bloody battles,
at The Chosin Reservoir.

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      1. I was too old to serve in Viet Nam, but not too old to bury the dead.

        1. The music takes a decided turn into dark images and forbidden words.

        2. Lydia Fish wrote SONGS OF AMERICANS IN THE VIETNAM WAR (4)

Fan blades/helicopter blades rotating slowly above a troubled dreamer, Jim Morrison's voice singing "The End"...

Young soldiers, on their way to Vietnam in the summer of Woodstock, marching on board their plane at Ft. Dix singing "Fixing To Die"...

Correspondent Michael Herr catching helicopter rides out to the firebases, "cassette rock and roll in one ear and door-gun fire in the other," or crouched under fire in a rice paddy while Jimi Hendrix' music blares from the recorder held by the soldier next to him...

Grunts linking arms in a beery E.M. club and screaming out the lyrics to the Animals' "We Gotta Get Out of This Place"...

The troops had their own top forty, of songs about going home, like "Five Hundred Miles," or "Leaving on a Jet Plane," or of darker or more cynical album cuts which reflected their experiences: "Run Through the Jungle," "Bad Moon," "Paint it Black," or "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down." References to popular music are an integral part of the language of the war: "Puff the Magic Dragon" or "Spooky" meant a cargo plane outfitted with machine guns, "rock and roll" fire from an M-16 on full automatic. But there were other songs in Vietnam, too 310 kb -- the songs made by the American men and women, civilians and military, who served there, for themselves.

        1. There is a whole Album: In Country: Folk Songs of Americans in the Vietnam War

          1. Green T-Shirt Blues

          2. Grunt - William Lee Ellis

          3. Six Clicks - Chuck Rosenberg

          4. Saigon Warrior - Saul Broudy

          5. First Cav - William Lee Ellis

          6. Ho Chi Minh Trail - Saul Broudy

          7. Panther Pack Is Prowling, the/Ling Po Drove the Truck Away - Chip Dockery

          8. King of the Trail - Chip Dockery

          9. Tchepone - Toby Hughes

          10. Sitting in the Cab of My Truck - Chip Dockery

          11. Ba Muoi Ba - William Lee Ellis

          12. Pull the Boom from the Gas Hole - Dick Jonas

          13. Jolly Green - Saul Broudy

          14. Cobra Seven - Saul Broudy

          15. Green Beret and Friendly Fac - Tom Price

          16. Firefight - William Lee Ellis

          17. Will There Be a Tomorrow? - Lisa Ellis

          18. I've Been Everywhere - Chip Dockery

          19. Here I Sit - Saul Broudy

          20. Danang Lullaby - Saul Broudy

          21. Fighter Pilot's Christmas - Saul Broudy

          22. Chu Yen - Saul Broudy

          23. Boonie Rat Song - Chuck Rosenberg

          24. Battle Hymn of the River Rats - Dick Jonas

          25. Crack Went the Rifle - Saul Broudy

          26. Freedom Bird - William Lee Ellis

          27. Played Around and Stayed Around Vietnam Too Long - Saul Broudy

  1. Why the songs?

    1. They evoke images of men and women with whom the music was shared.

    2. They reminds us of battle fields.

      1. Marne

      2. Somme

      3. Battle of the Bulge

      4. Iwo Jima

      5. Pusan

      6. Inchon

      7. Kae Sanh

      8. Tet Offensive

  2. We honor memory and courageous sacrifice.

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CONCLUSION

  1. Perhaps no greater insight into the understanding of remembering and memorials can be created than that which was created by Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg.

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 can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not 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 to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of 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.

  1. The last two sentences sum up the purpose and the meaning of Memorial Day.

    1. We may not remember the men and the women, who they were or are, and where they came from, or where they lived or died.

    2. Let us never forget what has been accomplished and what remains to be done!

1. Pastor Tim [posts@cybersaltlists.org]

2. Retrieved from http://parlorsongs.com/insearch/worldwar1/ww1no1.asp

3. Ibid

4. SONGS OF AMERICANS IN THE VIETNAM WAR Lydia Fish (copyright 25 December 1993) http://faculty.buffalostate.edu/fishlm/folksongs/americansongs.htm

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