Two "Memorial" Days

   We call it Memorial Day. When I was a kid we knew it as “Decoration Day.” It was a day when Mom and Dad would put us in the car, and off we would go to visit the cemeteries where grandparents and others were buried. We would visit these graves, place flowers on the graves in memory of those loved ones, and pause to remember their lives. I especially remember all the flags, and the red, white, and blue flowers, as tribute to those who served our country, many of whom lost their lives while in service to our nation.

   On an April morning in the mid 1860’s, at Columbus, MS, a group of women came to a cemetery to decorate the graves of their soldier dead. The Civil War was still raging. As an elderly woman finished decorating the graves of her two sons, she walked toward two other graves near the corner of the cemetery. As she placed the remaining flowers on these two mounds, another woman standing nearby asked, “What are you doing? Those are the graves of two Union soldiers!” I know,” answered the elderly woman as she decorated the two Union graves. “I also know that somewhere in the North, a mother, or a young wife, mourns for these two as we mourn for ours. They are dead, our heroes of the South; and they are dead, these unknown soldiers of the North. All of them are lying here in our church yard. When the war is over . . . we shall call all of them our heroes. We want someone to do this for our loved ones in nameless graves. We must do it for these in our cemetery.” This story appeared a few years later in the New York Tribune  and was reprinted in papers across the country. A year later, General Logan, National Commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, gave order to designate the 30th of May, 1868, as a day to decorate the graves of all who had fallen in the war.

   On another Spring morning, more than twenty centuries ago, a group of women came very early on a Sunday morning to the tomb where Jesus of Nazareth had been buried. They also were met with a question and an affirmation of exclamation: “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen!” (Luke 24:5-6). Because of that Mississippi morning in the 1860s, we celebrate Memorial Day. Because of the historical events that occurred that morning outside Jerusalem in A.D. 30, we have a greater “Memorial Day” every Sunday (John 19:38-42; 20:1-20; Romans 1:1-4; cf. Habermas 683). As N. B. Hardeman eloquently stated, “He plucked the rose of immortality from the realm of the dead and planted it to blossom and bloom upon the bosom of His own grave, thus giving hope and joy to mankind” (40).

   The gospel of Jesus Christ is the wonderful story of how Christ died for us (Romans 5:8), gave Himself for us that He might redeem us (Titus 2:14), suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God (1 Peter 3:18). When this story was preached, in its fullness for the first time, on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:1ff), Peter, standing up with the other eleven apostles, raised his voice and said, “. . . The patriarch David . . . is both dead and buried, and his tomb is with us this day” (Acts 2:29), but “this Jesus God has raised up, of which we are all witnesses” (Acts 2:32). He has no grave that you and I can decorate. HE IS ALIVE (Acts 1:3)! His tomb is empty (Matthew 28:1-15; Mark 16:1-14; Luke 24:1-48; John 20:1; 21:14). He died for our sins according to the scriptures. . . . He was buried, and . . . He arose again the third day according to the scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:3-4).

   Jesus instructed His disciples to remember His death and, by implication, His resurrection from the tomb (Luke 22:19-20; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26). The earliest disciples of Christ did this regularly every first day of the week (1 Corinthians 10:16; Acts 2:42; 20:7; cf. 1 Corinthians 16:1-2). Therefore, Christians, following the New Testament Scriptures, eat the Lord’s Supper every Sunday and, in so doing, commemorate His death, and celebrate His resurrection. Oxford Philosophy professor Richard Swinburne in his book Was Jesus God? says,

    The Christian Church subsequently taught that God had replaced the Saturday obligation with an obligation to observe Sunday in commemoration of the Resurrection of Jesus which, it claimed, happened on a Sunday and was God’s supreme act of intervention in history. And again God had the coordination reason for selecting a unique day for communal worship. Without (what they believed to be) God’s command Christians might have thought it better to continue to observe the sabbath, or to celebrate the Resurrection monthly or annually instead.
. . . All references in early Christian literature to when [the Lord’s Supper] was celebrated refer to a weekly Sunday celebration. The . . . explicit reference in the New Testament to a particular post-Ascension celebration of [the Lord’s Supper] (Acts 20:7) records a “breaking of bread” on [the] “first day of the week.” . . . 1 Corinthians 16:2 implies that Christian communities met together on Sundays and Revelation 1:10 calls Sunday “the Lord’s Day.”
   There are other days on which it might have been more natural for Christians to celebrate [the Lord’s Supper] (e.g. on the day of the original Last Supper, a Thursday; or annually rather than weekly). No such customs are known. There is no plausible origin of the sacredness of Sunday from outside Christianity. There is only one simple explanation of this universal custom, which . . . must derive at the latest from the first two or three post-Resurrection years. The [Lord’s Supper] was celebrated on a Sunday (and Sunday had theological significance) from the first years of Christianity because Christians believed that the central Christian event of the Resurrection occurred on a Sunday. (68, 119-20)

    A significant historical day for Americans is Memorial Day when we take time to quietly thank God for those who willingly sacrifice their lives so that we may live free. As great as this is, greater still is the first day of every week when Christians throughout the world proclaim the death of Jesus Christ and celebrate His resurrection from the tomb. He has promised to come again (cf. 1 Corinthians 11:26) when HE will decorate those who love His appearing with the crown of eternal glory (cf. Daniel 12:2-3; 2 Timothy 4:8; 1 Peter 5:4, 10; Revelation 2:10).

    Hallelujah! What a Savior!

 Charles C. Pugh III
Executive Director

Works Cited:

Habermas, Gary R. On the Resurrection: Evidences. Vol. 1. Brentwood: B&H Academic, 2024.

Hardeman, N. B. One Dozen Sermons. N.p.: Hardeman, 1955.

Swinburne, Richard. Was Jesus God? Oxford/New York: Oxford UP, 2008.