Burying Old Hostilities
In 1913, two groups of men eyed one another across a hundred foot span in a Pennsylvania field. Long, gray beards swung from faces weathered by age and indescribable loss. Some leaned on crutches. The empty sleeves of others flapped in the July breeze. Each wore a military uniform.
On this same plot of ground, fifty years earlier, the earth had lapped up the blood of these men’s brothers. Thousands of union and confederate soldiers had died in this most horrific of battles. Now, half a century after those hostilities, three hundred survivors of Gettysburg met again. Brother faced brother in this Civil War reenactment.
At the signal, these old enemies advanced toward one another. But as the soldiers met, there was no clash of swords, no screams of the wounded and dying filled the air. Instead, as one eyewitness described it, these men “who half a century earlier had fought…with bayonets and butts of muskets, clasped hands and buried their faces on each other’s shoulders.”
That’s the burial our Lord desires for each of us. To bury our faces on the shoulders of our enemies, to experience how forgiveness shows how small and mean hate truly is.
That is what Jesus gives in his own healing embrace of us. An embrace so tight there’s no room for animosity, recrimination, or judgment to squeeze in. He calls us friends; better yet, he names us brothers. And he will never call us anything different.
Pastor Chad Bird