Freedom is not free.
This truism is engraved on a wall of the Korean War Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC.
And we have all heard it stated before, and it is as true in the spiritual realm as it is in the material realm. But I fear it is oft forgotten, with the consequence that we take our lives and liberties here for granted.
To value what we have today we each constantly need to be reminded that my life, my freedom, have come down to me as an inheritance purchased at the cost of others’ sacrifices.
Others have suffered, others have died, others have fought in horrific circumstances carrying wounds, external and internal, for me to be here, standing in this pulpit – for us to be here in worship – and for us to have the lives we live today.
This reality really came home to me in 1977. It was during the Cold War and I was stationed in Germany at what used to be one of Hermann Goering’s premier airfields outside of Hanau, near Frankfurt.
Gail’s sister Carole was visiting us and one of my friends – our aviation maintenance officer – and I decided we would take our families on a short vacation and go to Normandy in France.
Gail and I packed Carole and our camping gear into our Toyota Celica, and Dale and his family packed into their big American boat, I think it was a Bonneville or some such large car, and off we went with our Michelin road maps.
A day and a half later our tents were set up at a campsite not too far from our destination, and we set off on our adventure to touch history, as it were.
We found a parking area and walked down to the beach. There was a sign posted there in English, French & German warning people not to walk on the beach in bare feet. We soon discovered why. The evidence of battle was still there.
It was low tide. In the distance there were a number of rusted partial remains of what must have been landing craft or vehicles of some sort that would have been covered at high tide.
Walking along this vast, flat, low tide plane of wet sand I found at every step we were treading on the debris of battle. Strewn along the entire beach there were corroded 50 caliber and 30 caliber casings and cartridges that broke when you tried to pick them up; short rusted remnants of barbed wire, unidentifiable bits and pieces of rust here and there.
I found tops of what appeared to be C-ration cans on which some of the writing was still noticeable. I found a corroded blade from an entrenching tool. I toed something hard, and investigating uncovered an artillery shell, whether German or Allied I didn’t know, that was split down the side.
It was both exciting and somber to walk in the midst of this unbelievable field of evidence that whispered to us of the great and momentous event that happened here on June 6, 1944.
After some hours of walking the beach we turned inland and climbed up the sandy escarpment covered by the low grasses and various green things that grow on the margins of beaches.
Past huge chunks of concrete, half buried in the sand that were at one time German gun positions and strongpoints, we followed a marked trail that I later discovered was used by the soldiers crawling out of the horror that was Omaha Beach.
When we got to the top of that trail, I remember making a final turn that put us on the edge of a scene that literally took my breath away. 172 acres of manicured grass studded with just over 9,000 crosses and stars of David, marking the final resting places of many who had been on that beach we had just walked on.
I was stunned. It just struck me that the ground we had crossed had been purchased by these men; I couldn’t speak because it would have given voice to the sobs that welled up uncontrollably from my guts. It was from that point that I realized that my life, who I was, what I had: my career, my family, my education, was all part of an inheritance, an inheritance that was purchased at a cost.
It was from that moment that I had a different perspective about my dad, wounded by shrapnel on a bombing mission over Germany, about Mr. Bacciochi my friend’s dad who had this huge ugly dent in his stomach we saw (and recoiled from) when we went swimming; a wound he received as a marine on Guadalcanal. And the quiet, strange, old man who was our next door neighbor; a man who survived gassing and artillery barrages in the trenches of France during World War I.
Just a few years ago we had the opportunity to return there. It was a bit different this time. I had become a Christian by then. The beaches had all been cleaned up. People were swimming and strolling and sunning on the sands we had walked some 30 years prior.
And this time there was a personal element, I had the opportunity to talk to a couple of guys who were there on that beach. I asked one of them, a bit incredulously, you mean you came ashore on D-Day? He pointed back over his shoulder and said yeah — right down there. He never forgot exactly where he had come ashore. They said they come back every year to visit their friends. The profundity of that statement struck me later.
Even more personally, we discovered the grave of a distant relative, the uncle of one of Gail’s cousin’s husband, a B17 pilot shot down near Cherbourg, bombing a German missile site. As the attendant led us up to the cross, one among so many, it seemed to stand out more as his name became legible. Both Gail and I became very emotional. And it was odd that even though we did not know this young man, it still seemed that the cost became more personal, it somehow connecting us him, to the place, and the time.
As a Christian this time, seeing this place through Christian eyes as it were, it struck me how these crosses echo some Godly reality to us. Considering the crosses at Normandy, reflecting the cost paid for my life there, brought me to reflect on the one cross what Jesus has given for me. My remembrances of the cemetery at Omaha Beach lead me to consider Jesus and what he has done for my freedom and my eternal life.
Maybe it is something of the image of God in humanity, that men would give up their freedom, risk everything even their lives for someone else, whether out of love of country, desire to confront evil, or just out of obedience, they risked all and some gave all for the sake of others, for the sake of something greater than themselves.
Maybe it’s just me, but as I looked anew at that field of crosses I saw a reflection of something greater, I heard the distant echoes of what Paul reminds us of in Romans that “very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man, someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:7-8)
And of what Jesus said that “greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13)
So we recognize our veterans today, recognizing what they were willing to risk, and indeed did give, up to and including their very lives for their friends, their families, and the generations following.
And we are thankful to them and those who gave all to purchase the inheritance of liberty they gave to us,
And, I pray, I hope that as we recognize the sacrifices made by those we honor today, as we consider the fields of crosses marking lives given, as we consider the wounds internal and external received in defending liberty and confronting evil, we see also, reflections, echoes of what Jesus has suffered and given for us.
Freedom is indeed not free. Ultimately our true freedom has been purchased eternally, and permanently, by him who we call our Lord, and our Savior, Jesus Christ.
And it has been purchased for us time and again in our short history by those willing to risk all; by these we honor today.
Neither debt can we ever repay but we can acknowledge it in thankfulness and in how we live our lives, knowing that all we have and know today has been purchased at extraordinary cost, and bequeathed to us as a gift. What we do with it is up to each generation of inheritors who must remember that freedom is not free.
For that which we hold dear, we are less likely to lose.