May 30, 2010

Morning service

"What Death Cannot Take Away"
1 Corinthians 15:50-58

On May 5, 1868, General John A. Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic, an organization of former sailors and soldiers, issued a proclamation calling for May 30th of that year to be "designated for the purpose of strewing flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country..." This inaugurated the first celebration of Decoration Day. The practice of decorating graves on that date to remember the war dead spread throughout the country after that. In 1971, Congress declared Memorial Day a national holiday to be celebrated the last Monday of May. Flags will be placed on each grave at Arlington National Cemetery as they have been since General James Garfield did on that first Decoration Day of 1868. About 5000 annually attend the wreath ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier during the Memorial Day observances. This weekend has become an important national time of memory.

Click the "Play" button below to listen to this sermon or download the sermon in an mp3 format. To download: Right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac) on the "download" link and choose "Save Target As..." to save the file.