Olive Crest United Methodist Church
7180 North 60th Street
Omaha, Nebraska 68152

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Rev. Debra Tompsett-Welch

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The Spiritual Life

July 1999

How to bring your life great power

By Rev. Michael Lee Burgess

How can your world, your life in it, have great power? When it reflects some of the trailing clouds of glory, when it participates in the eternal things, then it has the power to change the world and your life into a thing of power. On July 4th, buried beneath the layers and layers of commercial fussing and family traditions is a thing of great power, the concept, an idea of liberty. Liberty, that idea that has so moved hearts and mind of millions of people that they have been willing to sacrifice and die that it might not be lost. Liberty is, like many things of power, hard to define, but part of its living power is the understanding that the rights of individuals are of eternal value before God. When we say that our God is a God of justice, we mean God cares about how and individual is treated and also how we treat each other in our collective life. It is not just a private or collective understanding, but both. We cannot be human in isolation, yet we can not be only a member of a group either. Liberty, is the space and opportunity to grow into both, an individual of sacred worth and a fellow worker in the building the kingdom of God.

It is a Great Work, this work of living a life in liberty. And as with all great works, there is a cost involved in overcoming the inertia that resists growth, or the active opposition of forces that tear apart for personal gain or selfish grasping after power and security. We live in a pretty comfortable world, the struggle is often masked and obscured in the daily living. Sometimes we can only see it clearly in a different setting. I watch a movie called Saving Private Ryan. It is a movie about the D-Day invasion of Nazi-occupied France, which marked the turning point of World War II. In it, director Steven Spielberg tells the story of an eight-man Army squad searching behind enemy lines for paratrooper James Ryan whose three brothers have been killed in combat. When they finally find him, after losing two of their squad on the trip, he refuses to leave his men and the critical task they are performing of guarding a bridge. His commitment inspires them to also help out. During the battle to hold off the Nazi troops and tanks until help can arrive, nearly everyone but Private Ryan is killed. At the last minute the captain who has lead them is shot and as he dies in Ryan's arms he says, "be worthy of this". My mind flashed back almost 2000 years to a lonely wooden cross raised against a dark sky and a man being tortured to death by the roman soldiers. "Be worthy of this", I have been loved so much, that someone was willing to die for me, for the right thing, that I might be free of the bondage's that keep me from becoming my best self. True liberty, purchased with blood. Remember how I said that your life has power when it participates in eternal things? One of the most powerful things that I experienced in the movie was when the general read a letter from Abraham Lincoln that inspired the effort to save Private Ryan.

"Executive Mansion, "Washington, November 21, 1864

Dear Madam: I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom."

I have been sacrificed for in so many ways by those who have come before me. This is not a things of guilt, but a cause for gratitude and recognition of the value others have seen in me. I have been found worthy of sacrifice, now in only falls to me to try and be worthy of that sacrifice. And a day of solemn gratitude would be a truly worthy celebration of Independence Day, in both its earthy and eternal meanings.

Thank you for what you have done for our world and the building of the kingdom of God here on earth and join with me in working to do that for the children who are coming after us.

Your brother-in-Christ, Reverend Michael Lee Burgess

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