Every Day Is Jesus’ Memorial Day
This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, that someone would lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, because all the things I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and the fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name He might give to you. This I command you, that you love one another. -John 15:12-17
This Monday, Americans celebrated Memorial Day by remembering those members of the armed forces who lost their lives in the line of duty. When dedicating the Soldiers’ National Cemetery at Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln described those buried there as having given, “the last full measure of devotion.” It was Lincoln’s signature that instituted the Medal of Honor as the nation’s highest military decoration. As part of my own observance, every Memorial Day I read individual Medal of Honor citations. I am profoundly moved by these brief accounts of courage and self-sacrifice. There is one action more than any other for which the Medal of Honor has been awarded: falling on grenades to save comrades. Out of a total of 268 awarded for the Vietnam War, 56 were given for this, just over 1 in 5.
When describing heroism of this sort, people often quote John 15:13 about there being no greater love than to lay one’s life down for one’s friends. But this verse also deserves to be considered in its original context. It is set in the middle of Jesus’ discourse with his disciples at the Last Supper just before his arrest, trial, and crucifixion. He is the one who is about to lay his life down for his friends. But who are Jesus’ friends? They are all those who do what he commands by loving one another as he has loved us, that is, by laying down their lives for others. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer puts it in The Cost of Discipleship, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” Jesus himself told his disciples, “If anyone wants to come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me” (Mark 8:34). Does this mean that Christians should seek to be killed?
Unlike Nietzsche or Freud, I do not think Christian belief is some kind of death wish. Christians believe that salvation—eternal life—is a gift from God that comes to us through Jesus’ sacrifice. But how do we receive such a gift? In The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer makes a distinction between cheap and costly grace. Cheap grace (a term he borrowed from Adam Clayton Powell, Sr.) is salvation with no strings attached. Requiring little from those who receive it, cheap grace is salvation without discipleship, without taking up our cross. Costly grace, in contrast, requires us to submit to Christ’s yoke and follow him. But rather than being a burden, “my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:30). But how can being called to slavery and death be so?
The seeming contradiction is resolved by accepting the fact of our mortality. We are all going to die. Christ’s cross shows Christ’s followers the truth: they must also face death. Living in order to avoid death for as long as possible can only end in disappointment. Jesus teaches, “whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for the sake of me and the good news will save it” (Mark 8:35). According to Paul, this is the meaning of baptism: “all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death. Therefore we have been buried with him through baptism into death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so that we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:3-4). Becoming a Christian is not the end of my life; but must be the end of living life for myself alone.
In obedience to his Father’s wishes, Jesus laid down his life to set us free from sin and death so we can live to love one another. Knowing how much God loves us gives meaning and purpose to our lives so that we no longer have to live as slaves in ignorance and fear. Receiving this grace means living as Jesus’ friend and comrade, united by the shared mission of bringing love to life in a fallen world rife with chaos and injustice. To be Christian is to answer Christ’s call to love others as he loves us. As he told his disciples at the Last Supper, “Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19). The faithful understand God’s love as an order it is their duty to follow. To modify Lincoln’s words from the Gettysburg Address, they highly resolve that Jesus shall not have died in vain; and our new birth of freedom is to live as a band of loving brothers and sisters in a world which seeks to enslave us all.