Memorial Day's different when you're a veteran or a loved one of someone who died for America's freedom.
Every day is Memorial Day. Because freedom's price has a name, a face, an empty chair at the table.
This Memorial Day I've heard some veterans, some families asking a haunting question. It's embodied in a recent statement from one combat veteran, former Navy Seal, and current TV commentator. He said:
"It is important for veterans who fought to...believe the sacrifice was worth it." * The question arises especially when the ground that people bled and died to take - is later lost to the enemy.
"Was the sacrifice worth it?"
Whatever the battle, whatever the war, that's what the warrior wants to know.
As I sat in church this week, a sobering thought hit me. One I haven't been able to shake.
Does Jesus look at me and ask, "Was the sacrifice worth it?"
He didn't risk His life. He gave His life. He came here knowing that He alone could pay the price for the sin of the world. For my sin. "The righteous for the unrighteous," in the Bible's words.
Nothing could break His heart more than to see ground He died to liberate in our lives being lost to the enemy.
Like continuing to hang onto junk He bled to deliver us from. "He personally carried our sins in His body on the cross, so that we can be dead to sin and live for what is right" (1 Peter 2:24). Does He now say to us, "I died so you wouldn't have to do that anymore?"
Sin is so much more than breaking rules. It's really about breaking Jesus' heart.
Like when His blood-bought child fills their heart with pornographic fantasies. Or uses their body - the "temple of the Holy Spirit" - for the very sexual sins He died for. "You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body" (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).
It's got to wound Him again when we wound others He died for with our runaway mouth. Or just keep lying. Or abandon our marriage vows. Or succumb to pride...bitterness...unforgiveness - or so many other dark impulses unworthy of His sacrifice. "Conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the Good News about Christ" (Philippians 1:27).
I guess the most hurtful way to dishonor Jesus' sacrifice is to think there's some other way we can get rid of our sin or get into heaven. Like being good, being religious.
If there was any other way my spiritual death penalty could have been paid, Jesus would never have endured the agony of the cross. Our faith in anything else to make our peace with God says, "Jesus, what You did on the cross was not enough."
To honor the unspeakable blood sacrifice of God's only Son is to abandon any other hope but Him. And then to drop the junk that killed Him.
He looks at me...He looks at the nailprints in His hands - and He asks:
"Was the sacrifice worth it?"
