First Presbyterian Church of Watertown

Exodus 34 and Luke 9

“Do You Want to Know How it Ends?

The Rev. Dr. Fred G. Garry

February 18, 2007

Each November I renew my appreciation for Abraham Lincoln. I usually read one of the latest works. True to form I read Doris Kearns Goodwin’s, A Team of Rivals. It’s an enjoyable book with an intriguing glimpse of how Lincoln gathered his rivals for the 1860 election into his cabinet. The newspaper accounts Goodwin used, though, opened up a series of questions in me.

The contemporary account of Lincoln was shall we say not the stuff of the heroic worship and appreciation Honest Abe garners today. They were vitriolic and just as brutal as our pundits are for our contemporaries.

I am ever mindful that when we read Lincoln’s words we see him through the lens of a Union victory, the Emancipation Proclamation, and his martyrdom. Yet, what did his words sound like to the people who were there? How did Lincoln appear to his own generation?

So I asked John Johnson to dig up the Daily Times articles from 1863 when Lincoln gave his most famous speech, the Gettysburg Address. I did this for a couple of reasons. One, Gettysburg is something I have steered clear of. Civil War literature tends to dissuade the curious. Reading a book on the Civil War demands commitment. You need to be ready to know and be confronted with an enormous amount of detail. No other moment in the Civil War has a greater amount of fascination, so heretofore I’d stayed away from Gettysburg altogether. Now I thought it’s time.

The second reason was that this three minute speech and the Thanksgiving Proclamation that shortly followed are two of my favorites Lincoln penned. I appreciate them because they were written in the darkest hour of the conflict. It was three years old; death tolls were reaching unspeakable levels; and, the complexity of the conflict was taking a heavy toll on families, friends, and the very fabric of the nation.

John sent over the article published here in Watertown and I found the New York Times coverage in the on-line archive. I thought it was interesting that the Watertown Daily Times published the entirety of Lincoln’s remarks and inserted the moments where the President had to pause for applause. Reading the depiction I noticed that both papers gave a general approval of the president’s remarks. Yet, I also noticed that the speeches weren’t the focus. The focus of the stories was the ceremony of opening the monument and cemetery for those killed at Gettysburg.

Now our country, especially on the East Coast, has plenty of war monuments, and Gettysburg is perhaps the most famous. Yet, as I read the stories what struck me was the timing of Gettysburg. Usually, monuments and ceremonies for war dead follow the conflict, after the war is over. Here was a monument being created as the conflict waged on. Intriguing.

The cemetery and monument was not Lincoln’s idea. In fact he was invited to speak as an after thought. A local lawyer in the town asked the great orators in the nation if they would come and speak. He went through his first five until someone agreed. That someone is not a name that has much historical weight for us, Edward Everett. Yet, at the time he was considered a great speaker and true to form he spoke for two hours at the ceremony. Neither paper printed the entirety of his speech.

It is telling that as they were leaving the podium Everett turned to Lincoln and expressed his awe that the President could better convey in two minutes what had taken him two hours. Yet, we know from his own notes and the diaries of those near Lincoln that he thought the speech was a bust; he had done poorly.

Like his greetings to the crowd at Chamberburg, the railstop before Gettysburg, saying, well you’ve come out to see me, and the actuality is far less than what you anticipated so I will take my leave, so was his self-deprication regarding the Gettysburg Address. For him it was far less than what the moment required. As he said in the address itself, history will not remember these words.

Seeing the speech from the articles brought his intent into focus. It also brought the options he didn’t explore into clarity. The focus of the speech was a sense of awe and deep gravitas concerning the sacrifice of 50 thousand men who were either killed or wounded on the Pennsylvania farm fields outside the town of Gettysburg. It’s hard to imagine today what 50 thousand casualties would mean in three days of fighting. The memorial and cemetery at Gettysburg is in many ways the struggle of the small town to imagine what to do with 50 thousand Union and Confederate soldiers who were dead or wounded. For months afterward the town was part hospital, part grieving center for families who traveled to claim their dead, and part massive grave.

I found it poignant that the state to make the largest sacrifice at Gettysburg was New York. Our state lost the most men in the battle. When Lincoln rose to speak on that November morning with tens of thousands of people who seemed to be drawn to Gettysburg by some supernatural force, he could have spoke of the need to stay the course, he could have spoken of resolve and the need to be unshaken in the ideals and risks of the war for the union. He could have claimed victory. For when Gettysburg was seen with the fall of Vicksburg an able politician could claim the tide was starting to turn. Lee’s gamble had failed and this could have been a moment to address not only the North, but taunt the South with words of challenge and resolve.

Lincoln didn’t speak of glory, nor did he speak of shame. He spoke of sacrifice. He recast the farm fields of Gettysburg as an altar upon which the sons of a nation had made the greatest of sacrifice. From this sacrifice he claimed our nation would be reborn. For this reason it is perhaps, what many claim, the greatest speech of our grand experiment. To see through the disaster which happened at Gettysburg, to see through the politics of his day, to see through the persistent gamble of conflict, to outweigh the personal demons and doubts and see the rebirth of a nation paid in sacrifice, cast in the simple desire to be free, was and is the clarion call of our land.

I was reminded of this when reading our New Testament lesson. Here was Jesus with three disciples off to pray. As Jesus is praying he is transfigured, he appeared in glory. Standing by him were Elijah and Moses completing the vision. For in this moment Jesus appeared as the fulfillment not only of humanity, what we will become in heaven, but also the completion of the law and the prophets. He appears not only as freed from the trappings of this world, but also as the one who can live as God intends, fulfilling the law with all mercy. Yet, in this moment, it says, they didn’t speak of heaven, they spoke of Jerusalem.

In the moment of his glory it says they spoke of sacrifice. On the mountain side, in the midst of glory and honor, Jesus speaks of enduring the cross, of giving his life away. At this moment Peter rises to the occasion and suggests a monument be erected: three booths. A voice comes from the sky and says, this is my son, listen to him.

I can’t imagine that these verses were the inspiration of his speech, but they were the light Lincoln cast on Gettysburg. It was as if he said, no monument need be built, no glory should be sought here. Speak only of Jerusalem. Listen to the echoes of your sons lost in these fields. Their sacrifice is the only monument worthy to be adorned.

I read around the articles describing the address in the Watertown Daily Times and the New York Times. Each ran as their headline another call of the President. On the day of the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln called for 300,000 more troops. This was a massive demand to put on the Northern States. To make this call and not mention it at Gettysburg, to not cast his comments as a kind of push for people to enlist, is why I find myself drawn to his life again and again.

The day I first read the articles describing the Gettysburg Address and the call for 300,000 more soldiers was the same day President Bush announced his plans for an increase in the troops being stationed in Iraq. John Johnson noticed this as well and we both paused for a moment of silence over the irony.

Politicians critical of the war in Iraq are drawing more and more comparisons to our time in Vietnam. And military analysts are trying to find a category beyond civil war as the complexity of the factions and their strategies seem to transcend all categories. The House of Representatives voted this week to commend our soldiers and condemn the president’s call for an increase; the senate was stymied only by a filibuster. It’s a gamble and a new twist on the relationship of the executive and legislative branches during a war.

Driving around town I heard commentators on the radio speak of this vote while it was pending. When they started to take calls the commentators struggled to conceal their snide disdain for a military wife who chastised their arm chair views and then claimed this conflict had been going on for thirty years and would go on no matter what the troop levels. They asked to her explain the thirty years in a way only professors can. She was flustered and stopped talking. It bothered me for a while until I realized she was, most likely, speaking of the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Plausible, I thought.

Before they shut her down, though, her message came clear. The commentators failed to understand the nature of the challenge and demand of sacrifice.

People are getting more and more impatient for an end to the conflict in Iraq. We don’t like the absence of an obvious conclusion. On the mountainside Jesus stood with Moses and Elijah and showed his disciples the conclusion, how this life will end, he showed them heaven. And it says they told no one. Jesus, transfigured in glory, spoken not of power, but sacrifice. Lincoln, rising to a podium as an extra speaker, could have spoken of glory and victory and resolve, yet instead he spoke of sacrifice.

I am not sure how the conflict in Iraq will end. Such a vision is of little consequence compared to the cost. The cost for freedom, as Lincoln so clearly spoke, is the altar of sacrifice. Freedom is not achieved with military victories or power, but sacrifice. I am not sure how the conflict will end, but I do know it must proceed as every pursuit of freedom has, with the greatest of sacrifice. On the mountainside, Jesus didn’t speak of heaven, he spoke of Jerusalem. And so it is today. Amen.