This
week marks the 150th Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg—a
turning point battle in the Civil War.
The battle was a three day ordeal.
In total, 51,000 soldiers, Union and Confederate, died at the
battle. It was started somewhat by
accident as Union soldiers encountered Confederate soldiers at a crossroads
outside a small Pennsylvania town.
General Robert E. Lee convinced the Confederate leadership to try once
again to shift the battles to the North by shifting troops beyond the Mason-Dixon
Line. Considered to be one of the finest
generals America has ever produced, Robert E. Lee made a few fatal mistakes at
Gettysburg that changed the shape of the war.
Unfortunately, his counter-part General Meade also made the mistake of
not taking advantage of the victory and allowing the Confederate Army to
retreat. That decision meant that
America’s bloodiest war would continue for another year and a half.
In
November of 1863, President Abraham Lincoln came to Gettysburg to dedicate a
cemetery. The speech he delivered, the
so-called Gettysburg Address, is one of the most familiar pieces of American
public discourse. In a touch of
unplanned irony, Lincoln said, “The world will little note, nor long remember
what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.” Truth be told the world is more familiar with
what he said that day than what they did.
We could lament this fact but, I think it is significant.
The
Gettysburg Address framed the reason for the war in moral and ethical
terms. The nation began with a
premise—God desires people to live free.
Lincoln essentially said that the whole of democracy hinged on the
outcome of the war. Could people live
both free and united? It remains a
difficult proposition. Freedom without
unity is easy. Chaotic and cruel but
easy. Unity without freedom is also
easy. It’s despotic and lifeless but
easy. Freedom and unity together
requires patience, forgiveness, and reconciliation. Today we continue to struggle with whether we
as a people can allow people to say what they want, live the way they want,
worship and think the way the want and still be held together as an indivisible
people. As Christians, we have been
invested in this struggle for well over 150 years. It was the most significant challenge faced
by the early church. Early Christians
pushed against ever seam of culture, language, philosophy and lifestyle to see
if this movement could live up to Jesus’s prayer, “that they might all be one”
(John 17). We continue that struggle
today. May God give us strength.
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