The Rev. Dr. John Tamilio III, Pastor

© 2024, Dr. Tamilio

Behind the street where I grew up was a big wooded area.  The woods, as we called it.  This is where we would play.  This is where we would explore.  This is where we played war.  We’d go deep into the woods with our toy guns and divide up into teams.  Even then (in the 1970s), one side would be the Americans and the other side the Germans.  Yes, we were still fighting World War II.

Maybe that’s the way boys are: they play with trucks and guns, and girls plays with dolls and tea sets.  Some people think it is early training, since some of the boys that played war in our forest — and countless others across America — ended up doing the real thing.

War isn’t a game, and it is not what we celebrate on Veterans Day.  Tomorrow, we will honor the men and women who served and are currently serving our country in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Merchant Marines, the Coast Guard, the National Guard, and the Reserves.  These people put country before self, patriotism before materialism, and honor before disgrace.  Their service deserves and demands our respect.

I never served our nation in the military.  There are a host of reasons for this, but, at the center of it all, I can’t.  I don’t have what it takes.  It’s hard to explain, but it just isn’t me.  Therefore, I have a tremendous amount of respect for those who did and continue to do what I am not willing to do.  At one point my brother, who was a Colonel in the Army said, “You know, if you join the Army as a chaplain, you will automatically be an officer.  You won’t have to go to regular boot camp.  You’ll go to the chaplain’s school.  And, you’ll get full military benefits and a pension.”  Of course, there was a catch.  I’d most likely be stationed on the front lines.  After all, that is where the chaplains are needed most.  “Nah, I thought.  I’ll stick with being a minister in a state-side church, thank you very much.”

Chaplains and soldiers and those who serve our country in numerous capacities — not just in combat.  They may be engineers, writers (that I could have done), doctors, nurses, scientists, intelligence, therapists, lawyers, biologists, teachers — the list is tremendous.  Whether they served in combat or in a sundry of other capacities, today we salute those who served our nation in this way.

I know many-a-church and many-a-pastor who feel as if even doing this (i.e., holding a Veterans Day service in which we honor those who served instead of lamenting wars), that by doing this we are somehow condoning or are even promoting violence.

No.  No, no. no.  No one is advocating for war.  People in the military do not wish for war.  But the reality is that we live in a world where some nations use their might to try to take what another nation has: be it resources, wealth, or land.  Every nation has a right to defend itself and its interests against foreign powers.

I wish we did not need to do so.  I wish there was no such thing as war.  I wish we lived in a world that knew only peace and harmony.  But that isn’t the case.  Ever since Adam and Eve bit the forbidden fruit, and humanity fell from the life of “shalom” that God intended for us, war and violence became part of the human condition.  It didn’t take long.  Didn’t one of Adam and Eve’s first two children kill the other?

If you’ve ever seen the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, then you may agree with the filmmaker, by the late great Stanley Kubrick, that violence is part of our condition.  The movie opens with a ten-minute prequel before we find ourselves in space.  The opening is called “The Dawn of Man.”  In it we see two tribes of primitive humanity (i.e., apes), we see them vying for a watering hole.  The turning point is when we see one ape sitting on a pile of bones, the remains of some much larger animal.  The ape is just sort of playing with the bones.  He’s investigating them, sort of shuffling them around.  And then, we have the crucial moment; he realizes that he can hold a large femur bone as a club.  He has discovered the first weapon.  Not only can early man now hunt, but he can also use it as a weapon.  It isn’t long until we see the first war: his troop of apes (interestingly enough “troop” is the word for a collection of apes), his troop wins possession of the watering hole.

Today, that watering hole is something else: land, oil, even religious dominance.  We are a broken, fallen creation, and from now until Christ returns, we will continue to wage war against one another because we human beings are not pre-fallen occupants of Eden.  As Einstein said, “As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable.”

We do need to advocate for peace, and we need to be engaged in the struggle to make it a reality.  For some, this sounds like a far-fetched dream, and maybe it is, but we can still dream — and we put those dreams into action, praying that they become a reality one day.  In the meantime, though, we need to understand that this is not how the world works.  It is greed, not peace, that pervades the hearts of humanity.  We are driven by competition, which, in and of itself, isn’t bad.  When it comes to sports, for example, it is healthy.  When it comes to overthrowing another people, because we want what they have, it isn’t.  Therefore, for better or worse, we need a military, and we need people who are willing to give everything (even their very lives) to defend us.  Today, we honor them and we thank them.

Let me leave you with this.  In writing this sermon, I did a little Google search.  I searched the phrase, “we must always be ready to defend ourselves” for a profound quote to wrap up this sermon.  The first several pages of search results were all biblical!  They were all about defending the faith.  Verses like Proverbs 6:6-8 showed up in my search engine:

Go to the ant, you sluggard;

consider its ways and be wise!

It has no commander,

no overseer or ruler,

yet it stores its provisions in summer

and gathers its food at harvest.

And we have Luke 12:39-40, which reads, “But understand this, that if the owner of a house had known when the robber was coming, he would have been watching.  He would not have allowed his house to be broken into.  You must be ready also.  The Son of Man is coming at a time when you do not think He will come.”

Be prepared.  Be ready.

We live in uncertain times.  War and rumors of war abound.  Even in our own nation, there is great division.  We saw that in bold relief five days ago when we held this divisive and long-anticipated Presidential election.

Yes, we need to pray and advocate for peace, but we also need to be prepared to defend it.  My deepest thanks to those who have defended that peace and those who continue to do so.  May God bless our troops.

Amen.