Another Memorial Service

One of the many blessings of being a chaplain is to perform a service like this, where our fallen receive honor and faith is expressed in such poignant ways by his fellow warriors. Of TSgt Adam Ginett's friends that presented on Sunday, the 24th, at his service, were four young men of faith. One is a former youth pastor and possibly future chaplain. Two more shared Scripture: One read Psalm 23, the other 1 Thessalonians 2:13-18. Great passages. Adam's teammate, who received a concussion in the blast that killed Adam, is a 21-year-old whose faith would astound most of you. Ministry is in this kid's future. Many more, it would seem, were released to share their faith with me after the service, some in small ways, some in much larger ways. While EOD troopers are typically very stoic about their faith, living daily a life that marches right up to death's door (the very tempestuous IED), they always want a religious service to mark the passing of their fallen. I submit, humbly, a very basic message I shared with these guys at the service - a message that was very personal, as my last message to them, given on my second occasion in which I had to memorialize one of their buddies.

TSgt Adam Ginett

I have struggled with this message today, having been here twice before to memorialize both Brian Berky and Tony Campbell. So it was very difficult to decide just what it was I could offer of any comfort to you today as we now memorialize another brave Air Force EOD technician, Adam Ginett. Those who have spoken before me have captured what a good friend and fellow warrior he was in this life and I have spoken before of the patriotism and selfless service that each of you have shown in simply being here. It puts you on a plane above your fellow citizens and, as I have said before, it embodies the statement of Christ: “Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for a friend.” My respect for EOD, and especially for the warrior ethos among the Air Force EOD component, has grown tremendously this year as I have learned about this elite, tightly-knit community. So I pray you will let me speak a little more personally than is customary for the chaplain’s portion of this service.

Put simply, this crowd breaks down into two groups: Those who have faith in something beyond this life – even if you are struggling with what that faith means in the face of Adam’s death – and those who are skeptical, questioning, wanting answers before they will make a commitment to any eternal meaning or Supreme Being. If I have earned any chips at the table to this point with you, I pray you will allow me to cash them in today with just a little message on faith and hope.

As a chaplain, you know that I come from a perspective that presupposes the existence of God – in fact, a very real Being that is both good and all-powerful. When we are confronted with death, especially when we face it repeatedly, even those who are believers begin to question whether He is truly all good, truly all-powerful, or both. For if He is good, we are left with the question, “Why?” “Why does he allow bad things to happen to good people?” Josh, Chris and Derrick, you guys may be wondering why Adam or Tony and not you. Chris, you may ask why so much of the weight of loss has been put upon your shoulders (as freakishly large as they those shoulders are).

All of the answers as to the “why” often lead us to despair that either God is not really that good, or that He is simply not all-powerful, since He could have stopped all of this pain. But just as we lose loved ones in battle, we also lose them at home, in safety and without the on-going violence of war. We have set ourselves in a hard and unforgiving place on the battlefield and the losses become all the more real, just as the questions about our own mortality and what lies beyond this life do. Chris, you have shared a Scripture that looks beyond this life, from the eternal perspective, and offers the only hope I know that can begin to answer the questions we face at times like this.

From my faith tradition, we begin with the understanding that God is completely good and loving, and that He has plans, as one prophet said, “to prosper us and not to harm us – plans to give us a hope and a future.” What does this mean from God’s perspective? Does it mean we are all guaranteed to be plucked from danger, or insulated from harm, even when we willingly place ourselves in harm’s way for our country or our fellow airmen? Let me suggest that, from our perspective, death seems very unjust – yet it eventually comes to us all. “For it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.” And let me suggest that, as each of us here is painfully aware, this world is not what God meant for it to be. Something has gone terribly wrong.

But the Scriptures also tell us that, “To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.” As Josh has shared, Adam was at peace with standing before God, should his time come during this deployment. And now, absent from his earthly body, he stands before the God of his faith. So then, for Adam and for God, standing on the other side of eternity, there is joy, a place where God has promised to “wipe away every tear.” From the perspective of eternity, all of the pains of this life and its struggles have been made right. Only we are left with the sorrow of being parted from our friend. What we experience as unjust and wrong, those who go before us in faith have found is finally made right in the hands of a loving and good God.

So each of us are left with an intensely personal search for what it means to be left behind here to make sense of it – to find meaning in the midst of our sorrow. Jesus made it personal for his followers. He asked them who the people were saying he was and many different answers were given, but the question he put to them, the same question he puts to each of us, is this: “Who do you say that I am?” No one can answer that question for you. Jesus challenged his followers time and again, stating, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except by me.” And again he states, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

The hard thing for many skeptics is that God never tries to explain Himself. He simply calls on us to have faith in His plans, though they seem not to make sense to us at times. We can respond with either skepticism or faith – and at times there may be a mixture of both. Adam responded to the possibility of his own death with settled faith, as Josh has shared. And the Scripture that Chris shared reveals to us that part of Jesus’ promise is a resurrection that will reunite all of those who put their faith in Him, one which allows us to grieve, yet with great hope. For from God’s perspective, the end of this life is not the end of all things, but a renewal – one in which “there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things” will one day pass away.

And I close with one more Scripture that offers great hope concerning our place with God, if we choose to set aside our skepticism for faith:

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. If God is for us, who can be against us? Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”