Seneca Presbyterian Church is doing something new and very meaningful this weekend. We are honoring Veterans. Not just by saying a quick thank you and moving on with the business of the day.  Our Outreach Committee has planned a program and reception. It will take place in our Pastors’ Hall on Sunday afternoon (November 10) at 3:00 p.m. Charlie – a member of our congregation who is president of Patriot’s Hall, a war museum dedicated to veterans of Oconee County – will be our speaker.

            It’s natural that a congregation of primarily retirees would take time to recognize this day and say thank you. But I also find it surprising. You see, in over thirty years of ministry, this reception marks the first time a church I was currently serving marked the day. It is long overdue.

            I invited Charlie to join our Wednesday evening Bible study group. That’s the group that helps me live into the text and sermon for the following Sunday. Charlie brought Del with him – another member of Seneca Presbyterian and Marine Corps vet with 20 years of service. I felt honored to be in their presence and to listen to stories of their active duty service along with their ongoing service to veterans in our area.

            I needed their help this week. I had discovered a fascinating and also disturbing topic: moral injury. It is defined as “perpetrating, failing to prevent, or being witness to acts that transgress deeply held moral beliefs and expectations.” (See “Soul Repair” in Presbyterians Today, Vol. 103, No. 8, September 2013) I needed to hear from Charlie – and thanks to Charlie, also Del – that the topic was real and open for discussion.

            Moral injury happens when we find ourselves caught up in a situation where we are forced to act in ways contrary to our moral code of conduct. We may do the right thing in the right moment – like killing the enemy in the moment of combat. But when we no longer live and function in that moment; when other moral codes take over; when a soldier comes home from war, the memory of those actions can create a living hell - even when the action was entirely justified and even when it was the “right thing to do.”

            It seems, some would say, that human beings have an instinct against killing. That’s hard to believe, isn’t it? When we think of Columbine and Virginia Tech and Newtown, we wonder if the opposite comes closer to the truth. Yet it has been said that we have to be taught to hate. What if we have to be taught to kill? And when we must kill, it leaves a giant moral injury in the human soul. Perhaps that is something of why our grandfathers and fathers and brothers and sisters don’t talk about war.

            But we cannot heal the deep wounds of the soul without talking about them. The Church can offer a unique and powerful place for that talking. For in the Church we also talk about forgiveness and about a God who loved us so much that He took on the sin of the world in order to redeem it. 

            We’ll talk about that this Sunday at Seneca Presbyterian Church. Join us if you can.