Remember sacrifice?

[I wrote this post last August for This Bread Always. I thought it would be good to bump it over here for Memorial Day weekend.]

Today’s editorial in the Chicago Tribune pays tribute to Joe Rosenthal who passed away this weekend. Mr. Rosenthal is the photographer responsible for capturing the image of five Marines and a Navy corpman preparing to raise a second, bigger, flag at the island of Iwo Jima in the closing stages of World War II. With the click of a button, Mr. Rosenthal captured more than an image of a flag raising, he memorialized the longing of a nation for victory and the sacrifice they made to obtain it.

“The action he captured -- a fleeting one-400th of a second -- became the best-known, most enduring photograph of World War II. The image of muscles straining, of hands letting go as the 100-pound pole rose, of a breeze filling Old Glory, inspired an America eager for World War II to conclude. The photo drew power from its composition--its triangles project strength and stability--but especially from its faceless Marines: To their countrymen they were the unknown, individually undistinguished soldiers who were triumphing over tyranny.”

“The fight for Iwo Jima cost nearly 7,000 Americans--and most of the Japanese defenders--their lives. Joe Rosenthal, who died Sunday outside San Francisco at age 94, never confused his role as chronicler with that of the American heroes who captured one of their enemy’s best-fortified strongholds. ‘What I see behind the photo is what it took to get up to those heights--the kind of devotion to their country that those young men had, and the sacrifices they made,’ Rosenthal once said. ‘I take some gratification in being a little part of what the U.S. stands for.’”

If someone were to take a snapshot of the Church today, would it capture the endurance, the sacrifice, the wisdom and zeal of the great saints before us? There is no picture to memorialize the deaths of the apostles. All of them were martyred except for John.

No one captured on film the violent deaths of Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin, and the many forgotten faces of those whose lives consisted of “persecution above ground and prayer below ground.” We have no video documentary of the toil, anxiety, and tears of Athanasius and Augustine fighting to defend the faith once delivered to all the saints.

There is no footage of the persecutions of John Wycliffe, the burning of John Huss, or the cry to Heaven by William Tyndale, “Lord! Open the King of England’s eyes,” as the flames consumed him. Nothing on the sufferings of Martin Luther or John Calvin as they worked to fan the flames of Reformation fueled by the illuminating power of the Holy Spirit, jealous for the glory of the one Mediator between God and man and the free grace bought by His single sacrifice on the cross.

What of the great missionaries of the 18th and 19th centuries: William Carey, Adoniram Judson, John G. Paton, and the myriad of nameless soldiers who carried the gospel of Christ from Europe and America to India, Burma, the South Pacific, and launched the exponential growth in the universal Church? There is precious little video or photographic documentation of work going on today across the globe by those hearts sing with Martin Luther, “Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also. The body they may kill. God’s truth abideth still.”

It continues today. Christians sacrificing at home and on foreign soil, for what?

And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. Mt 24:14

However, I fear that the vast majority of the visible Church is failing to proclaim the “gospel of the kingdom.”

We quickly proclaim the gospel of our traditions. We zealously fight for the gospel of our feelings, the gospel of the heart’s imaginations. If we sever our lives from the root of Scripture and attack others based upon our own sense of right and wrong, we will wither and die.

None of the saints mentioned above fought for their feelings. They knew the testimony of Scripture concerning a person’s trust in their heart.

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? Jer 17:9

This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that the same event happens to all. Also, the hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead. Eccl 9:3

For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. Ro 8:7-8

They fought for the truth of the Word of God, this gospel of the kingdom. Against the Church that clings to and preaches that revealed gospel, even the gates of Hell will not prevail, and that is worth remembering.