Moving from Memorial to Devotion
Having last week off gave the doctor time to rummage through history again.
This is generally discouraged.
Nevertheless, I found myself reading one of the most famous speeches in American history and discovered—quite unexpectedly, although I should have suspected it—that Abraham Lincoln understood the strategic importance of a well-placed but.
Twice, in fact.
The document in question is the Gettysburg Address, delivered November 19, 1863, at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Lincoln was not the principal speaker that day. That distinction belonged to Edward Everett, one of the nation’s most celebrated orators, whose address lasted roughly two hours.
Lincoln spoke for about two minutes.
History can be terribly unkind to verbosity.
The Copy That Survived
There is another interesting story here. Five manuscript copies of the Gettysburg Address written in Lincoln’s hand are known to exist. The version most of us recognize today is called the Bliss copy.
Historian George Bancroft asked Lincoln for a handwritten copy of the speech for Autograph Leaves of Our Country’s Authors, a publication intended to raise money for the Union cause. Lincoln supplied one, but because he had written on both sides of the paper, it couldn’t be reproduced properly. Bancroft’s stepson, Colonel Alexander Bliss, requested another.
So Lincoln wrote one more.
That fifth manuscript became the last known copy Lincoln wrote, and the only one he signed and dated. Because of the care Lincoln took with it, the Bliss version became the standard text. It is the version eventually carved into the south wall of the Lincoln Memorial, while Lincoln’s handwritten Bliss manuscript entered the White House collection.
Quite a chain of custody for two buts.
And since we have come this far, we might as well read them in their natural habitat.
The Gettysburg Address
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
There they are. Two buts. And rather consequential ones.
But, In a Larger Sense …
Lincoln’s first but changes the entire purpose of the occasion.
The people had gathered to dedicate a cemetery. Lincoln tells them that, in the deepest sense, they cannot do it.
“We can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground.”
Why? Because something had already happened there that their ceremony could neither improve nor diminish.
The sacrifice had already been made.
Now, your doctor realizes that comparing Gettysburg with Calvary has rather obvious limits. The brave men who died at Gettysburg were human beings fighting in a particular war at a particular moment in American history. Jesus Christ’s death upon the cross is something altogether different.
But Lincoln’s language gives us a remarkable way of thinking about it.
On the cross, Jesus accomplished something we cannot add to.
“It is finished.” (John 19:30)
We cannot make His sacrifice more complete by our religious performance. We cannot make the cross more sacred with our ceremonies. We cannot improve upon Christ’s righteousness with our goodness. We cannot supplement grace with our accomplishments.
We can remember it. We can proclaim it. We can celebrate it.
But we cannot add to it. The work is finished.
What They Did Here
Then comes Lincoln’s second but:
“The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.”
Ironically, the world very much remembered what Lincoln said there. Still, his point remains.
The event mattered more than the speech about the event.
There is something here worth considering as we approach the gospel. Christianity has accumulated two thousand years of sermons, books, creeds, councils, hymns, liturgies and theological arguments explaining what happened at Calvary.
Some of them are magnificent. Your doctor is particularly fond of the ones containing conjunctions. But none of our words possesses the power of what Jesus actually did.
The gospel isn’t powerful because we’ve explained it eloquently. The gospel is powerful because Christ died and rose again.
Which brings us to perhaps the most interesting part of Lincoln’s address.
There is no but there. There is a rather.
It Is for Us, Rather …
Lincoln refuses to allow Gettysburg to become merely a memorial. He turns toward the living.
“It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work…”
Remembering sacrifice should produce something in those who remain.
Devotion. Resolve. Action.
And here our comparison with the gospel becomes especially useful, provided we maintain one enormously important distinction:
Christ’s redemptive work is finished. Ours is not.
We do not work for salvation. We live from salvation. Paul captures that movement beautifully in Romans 12. After eleven chapters explaining God’s mercy and grace, he turns to his readers:
“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice…”
In view of God’s mercy. Because of what He has already done.
Christian devotion is not our attempt to complete Christ’s sacrifice. It is our response to a sacrifice already complete.
And perhaps that is worth thinking about beyond Gettysburg. It is possible to become very good at memorializing Jesus. We celebrate Christmas. We observe Good Friday. We gather on Easter. We sing songs about the cross. We take communion. We display crosses in our churches and around our necks. We quote “It is finished.”
All fitting and proper.
But, in a larger sense…
What does remembering produce in us? Lincoln stood among the graves at Gettysburg and told the living that honoring sacrifice meant more than remembering the sacrifice. It meant increased devotion.
The gospel asks something similar of us—not because Jesus’ work needs anything added to it, but precisely because nothing can be added to it.
He gave the full measure. The work is finished. Grace has been given. Salvation has been accomplished.
And now it is for us, the living, to ask what lives shaped by that reality ought to look like in our lives. Memorial remembers. Devotion responds. And your doctor suspects that may be one of the biggest buts we’ve uncovered yet.
Please comment!