Class Outline:

Sunday May 29,2022

The Origins of Memorial Day

 

Three years after the Civil War ended, on May 5, 1868, the head of an organization of Union veterans — the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) — established Decoration Day as a time for the nation to decorate the graves of the war dead with flowers. Maj. Gen. John A. Logan declared it should be May 30. It is believed the date was chosen because flowers would be in bloom all over the country.

The first large observance was held that year at Arlington National Cemetery, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. The ceremonies centered around the mourning- draped veranda of the Arlington mansion, once the home of Gen. Robert E. Lee. Various Washington officials, including Gen. and Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant, presided over the ceremonies. After speeches, children from the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Orphan Home and members of the GAR made their way through the cemetery, strewing flowers on both Union and Confederate graves, reciting prayers and singing hymns.

 

Local Observances Claim To Be First

 

 Local springtime tributes to the Civil War dead already had been held in various places. One of the first occurred in Columbus, Miss., April 25, 1866, when a group of women visited a cemetery to decorate the graves of Confederate soldiers who had fallen in battle at Shiloh. Nearby were the graves of Union soldiers, neglected because they were the enemy. Disturbed at the sight of the bare graves, the women placed some of their flowers on those graves, as well. Today, cities in the North and the South claim to be the birthplace of Memorial Day in 1866. Both Macon and Columbus, Ga., claim the title, as well as Richmond, Va. The village of Boalsburg, Pa., claims it began there two years earlier. A stone in a Carbondale, Ill., cemetery carries the statement that the first Decoration Day ceremony took place there on April 29, 1866. Carbondale was the wartime home of Gen. Logan. Approximately 25 places have been named in connection with the origin of Memorial Day, many of them in the South where most of the war dead were buried.

 

Official Birthplace Declared

 

In 1966, Congress and President Lyndon Johnson declared Waterloo, N.Y., the “birthplace” of Memorial Day. There, a ceremony on May 5, 1866, honored local veterans who had fought in the Civil War. Businesses closed and residents flew flags at half-staff. Supporters of Waterloo’s claim say earlier observances in other places were either informal, not community- wide or one-time events. By the end of the 19th century, Memorial Day ceremonies were being held on May 30 throughout the nation. State legislatures passed proclamations designating the day, and the Army and Navy adopted regulations for proper observance at their facilities. It was not until after World War I, however, that the day was expanded to honor those who have died in all American wars. In 1971, Memorial Day was declared a national holiday by an act of Congress, though it is still often called Decoration Day. It was then also placed on the last Monday in May, as were some other federal holidays.

 

 Some States Have Confederate Observances

 

Many Southern states also have their own days for honoring the Confederate dead. Mississippi celebrates Confederate Memorial Day on the last Monday of April, Alabama on the fourth Monday of April, and Georgia on April 26. North and South Carolina observe it on May 10, Louisiana on June 3 and Tennessee calls that date Confederate Decoration Day. Texas celebrates Confederate Heroes Day January 19 and Virginia calls the last Monday in May Confederate Memorial Day.

 

Gen. Logan’s order for his posts to decorate graves in 1868 “with the choicest flowers of springtime” urged: “We should guard their graves with sacred vigilance. ... Let pleasant paths invite the coming and going of reverent visitors and fond mourners. Let no neglect, no ravages of time, testify to the present or to the coming generations that we have forgotten as a people the cost of a free and undivided republic.”

 

The crowd attending the first Memorial Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery was approximately the same size as those that attend today’s observance, about 5,000 people. Then, as now, small American flags were placed on each grave — a tradition followed at many national cemeteries today. In recent years, the custom has grown in many families to decorate the graves of all departed loved ones.

 

The origins of special services to honor those who die in war can be found in antiquity. The Athenian leader Pericles offered a tribute to the fallen heroes of the Peloponnesian War over 24 centuries ago that could be applied today to the 1.1 million Americans who have died in the nation’s wars: “Not only are they commemorated by columns and inscriptions, but there dwells also an unwritten memorial of them, graven not on stone but in the hearts of men.”

 

To ensure the sacrifices of America’s fallen heroes are never forgotten, in December 2000, the U.S. Congress passed and the president signed into law “The National Moment of Remembrance Act,” P.L. 106-579, creating the White House Commission on the National Moment of Remembrance. The commission’s charter is to “encourage the people of the United States to give something back to their country, which provides them so much freedom and opportunity” by encouraging and coordinating commemorations in the United States of Memorial Day and the National Moment of Remembrance.

The National Moment of Remembrance encourages all Americans to pause wherever they are at 3 p.m. local time on Memorial Day for a minute of silence to remember and honor those who have died in service to the nation. As Moment of Remembrance founder Carmella LaSpada states: “It’s a way we can all help put the memorial back in Memorial Day.”

 

Video Presentation: America the Beautiful.

 

If we will know and understand that the voice of God is as real to us as the Son of God has added humanity to Himself and is sitting at the right hand of the Father, and if we pursue that voice with all our hearts, minds, souls, and strength, the sword of the Spirit will eventually cut through all lies, deceptions, misrepresentations, and we will see God and see and experience eternal life in time.

 

Of course, we have to have become believers in Christ first, and having discovered Him as our Savior, which enters us into union with Him, we can see God in His word, in our daily experience, and both through our submission to the Holy Spirit.

 

Long after God spoke reality into existence, He began to speak His word to men who wrote down God’s revelation under the inspiration of God the Holy Spirit. This went on for over 1500 years until the apostle John finished the Book of Revelation. The written word, we are told, is breathed by God (2TI 3:16). So, we have the word that created the world and the word that reveals God to mankind, both originating from the One who is everywhere in His world and indwells every believer.

 

Is God’s person, fatherhood, brotherhood, and mentorship our reality?

 

God’s voice that created the world is still within it. He is universally present. His Spirit is in us. His word is preserved for our full study and analysis. This is reality. Yet, the presence of God everywhere and within, and the reality of the creative and living word may not be manifested to the believer.

 

Reality and manifestation of reality do not coexist all of the time.

 

God sends mankind pictures and rules (John’s conversation with Wisdom and History). [The Pilgrim’s Regress, C.S. Lewis]

 

Nature, landscape, science, the heavens, love, marriage, children, family, work production, innovation, art, literature, beauty, wealth, power, kingdoms, and more are all pictures of God that can lead anyone to desire the true fulfillment that these pictures spark in us. But we can lose that desire quickly and in turn the picture into an idol. All mankind are idolaters. We can even want only desire itself, losing sight of everything except stimulation. God obviously understands the danger inherent in giving us the pictures, but they are the only things that are going to drive us to understand that our fulfillment and satisfaction is in only in Him.

 

The pictures are not alone - there are rules as well. God gives us the rules for everything I just mentioned. Chastity, temperance, generosity, patience, and more and we all violate them. But without the rules we couldn’t really pursue the pictures very well. For instance, the picture of love becomes lust without the understanding of the rules of relationship, and the relationship disappears in the face of the menace called selfishness. But just like there is danger in the pictures there is danger in the rules. Worship of the rule alone is like worshipping the Law over the Lawgiver. We can become legalists, ascetics, stoics, Pharisees. We grabbed hold of the rules and lost the picture.

 

The pictures and the rules point us towards life, but are not themselves life. Life is Christ.

 

Still, when we honestly try to unite both the picture and the rule together, we become closer to the real life, but haven’t yet seen it or reached the Promised Land. Life is Christ. The picture of love and the rule of love may give us a good marriage and family, but it they don’t crystallize in the cross of Christ, we have still come up short. As believers we can lose sight of this foundational truth and fall into the scheme of the devil where we worship love itself, marriage, even the doctrines of the Bible and lose sight of the fact that we haven’t been worshipping God as a Person. God is not an idea or a doctrine. He is a Person and the doctrines are about Him, revealing Him to us so that we can look upon Him in loving adoration and total abandonment.

 

Some may well say, “Okay then, I know what to do. I’ll throw out the doctrines and the pictures and the rules and I’ll just gaze upon God.” That would be like a man with very poor eyesight, throwing away his reading glasses so he can gaze straight at the book. It’s all a blur and he can’t distinguish anything he sees.

 

We must accept all that God gives us in this life, knowing well that we will not understand all about this life (Ecclesiastes, Job), and enjoy them all according to the rules (Word of God), never forgetting that they are all designed to show us God, His real Person, now, in time, day after day, and ever increasing in wonder and fulfillment.

 

A believer may be so immersed in the hustle and ways of the world that they don’t seek God very much, nor understand that God’s word is alive and powerful. But God cannot force the seeing of reality upon us. This is why whisking us off to heaven wouldn’t mean understanding. God is a person. Heaven is His dwelling. Heaven would be more of a picture to us and not a Person. We might even be told the rules of heaven and do them, but we would still not see the Person of God. If you went to heaven, you would see what the environment of holiness looks like but you wouldn’t actually see holiness, for holiness is in God’s person. And, being made in the image of God, we are designed to see and understand God, and that can only happen when we see Him for ourselves by the process of participation with Him in life. Hence, the doing of righteousness, the presenting of your very body to Him as a living and holy sacrifice (like a lamb on the altar) which is your spiritual service of worship, the obedience (ROM 12:1), and the ethical struggles with temptation, are all contributing to your beholding of God’s glory. It won’t always be easy, nor simple and straight forward, but whatever we must do to fulfill righteousness has eternal reward - we see more of God and as a result become more like Him.

 

One of the rules is the sacrifice of our bodies on God’s altar (sounds like Someone we know).

 

ROM 12:1

I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.

 

We are to give our bodies to God as a sacrifice. Sounds like our Lord, and it is. As the Lord said:

 

JOH 6:38

“For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.”

 

MAT 26:39

"My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as Thou wilt."

 

HEB 10:5-7

Therefore, when He comes into the world, He says,

"Sacrifice and offering Thou hast not desired,

But a body Thou hast prepared for Me;

6 In whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin Thou hast taken no pleasure.

7 "Then I said, 'Behold, I have come

(In the roll of the book it is written of Me)

To do Thy will, O God.'"