Clergy from left, Deacon Amy Schmuck, Deacon Cynthia Biddlecomb, retired, and The Rev. Mary Ann Hill. Photo by Nate Limback/ladailypost.com

By Deacon Amy Schmuck
Bethlehem Evangelical Lutheran Church

This Sunday we celebrate Pentecost, which signifies the official recognition of the Holy Spirit being given to Jesus’ followers and thus consecrating the Christian Church with the presence of a mighty wind, with tongues of fire, and witnessing a sudden ability in all present this moment to hear and understand many different languages speaking God’s Holy Word.

We also this week honor the members of our country’s military branches that have died in service to the United States of America with Memorial Day. I find myself crafting both this article and a sermon today and holding in tension what both Pentecost and Memorial Day bring forth in me as a preacher in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and as a United States citizen who lives here in Los Alamos, NM. 

On Sunday, our church will be draped in red with decorations representing the Holy Spirit for Pentecost. We will say prayers as we usually do, and in those prayers, we will pray for those that have died in service to our country and for their families.  It is a special service to commemorate the beginning of the Christian movement and to celebrate the gifts we are given by the power of God’s Holy Spirit.  We will not make it a patriotic moment as Memorial Day will have its own moment on Monday for our community. 

On Monday at 11:00 AM the Los Alamos community will gather at Guaje Pines Cemetery to hold a special ceremony for Memorial Day, and I am deeply honored to offer the invocation and benediction for all who will gather to remember and reflect. It is an invitation that I hold dear to my heart as a daughter, niece, sister-in-law, and granddaughter to amazing veterans.  I hold a personal tension on this day, and on this occasion as I experience both gratitude and sorrow. 

My grandfather, Ken who died at 99.5 years young last May, trained as a paratrooper and was in the Philippines when the atomic bomb was dropped in WWII. He and his fellow paratroopers boarded a ship heading toward Japan, and while on that ship, the peace treaty was signed.  He always minimized his WWII service saying that by the time he was headed toward it, the war was all over. I always reminded him that paratrooper training could have killed him, and his service was still brave and significant. If he had needed to fulfill his trained duty, and drop in on a parachute to attack Japan, it is very possible he would have died and I, nor my entire family would not exist. Now I live and serve God at a church in Los Alamos, and I am awe-struck at the complexity of this existence of “me” in contrast to the death and destruction the atomic bomb brought to Hiroshima and Nagasaki residents. I hold deep gratitude for my life, and deep sorrow for all that these weapons do to my fellow humans, to the land, to the water, to all of creation even now.

And so, I return with these complexities to the celebration on Sunday of the Holy Spirit, celebration of a God who loves and reconciles ALL of creation unto God-self through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Celebration that through the Holy Spirit, I have not just a human life to live each day here among all that God has created and continues to create, but I also have a calling to servanthood to God, and to God’s holy creation all around me. I get to respond to this call by embodying this immense, inexplicable, uncontrollable, loose and wild LOVE that is God. May this weekend bring you rest and may we all continue to seek restoration and reconciliation in Jesus’ name with each day gifted to us, trusting that God is at work in it ALL. Amen.

Editor’s note: ‘All Shall Be Well’ is a column written by local women clergy, including The Rev. Mary Ann Hill, Rector, Trinity on the Hill Episcopal Church (momaryannhill@gmail.com); Deacon Amy Schmuck, Bethlehem Evangelical Lutheran Church (deaconamy@bethluth.com); and ELCA Deacon Cynthia Biddlecomb, M.Div., retired (czoebidd@gmail.com).