Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 10, 2025
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
By faith
Brothers and sisters:
Faith is the realization of what is hoped for
and evidence of things not seen.
Because of it the ancients were well attested.
In my own particular 2025 WASP life, the Civil War is one time in history that fascinates me – the battles, the soldiers, generals and politicians, and especially the places – the briars and the brambles, the ridges and the rivers … the places where those timeless verses from Hebrews 11 stoked soldiers’ courage and guided their eyes toward heaven when their friends were falling dead and wounded all around.
The soldiers are dead and gone, and our new world has surrounded the battle sites. But they are still there, marked by cannons and statues and historical plaques. So on a three-day journey back to Austin last week from Illinois, I visited some of the most famous battle sites, places called Shiloh, Corinth, Tupelo, and Vicksburg (which actually includes Milliken’s Bend, Grand Gulf, Bruinsburg, Port Gibson, Raymond, Jackson, Champion Hill, and Big Black River, all battles on the way to the final battle and siege at Vicksburg, high on the bluffs on the eastern shore of the Mississippi).
Stay awake and be ready!
For you do not know on what day your Lord will come.
Near Pittsburg Landing in Tennessee just north of the Mississippi border, I visited the Shiloh Church, built in 1853 as a Methodist log meeting house. It’s mostly been open ever since. Shiloh is a Hebrew word meaning “a place of peace and rest.” On this sunny Sunday afternoon it was just that. But on April 6, 1862 (our daughter Andi’s birthday 124 years later) it was the military headquarters for William Tecumseh Sherman, forever after Ulysses Grant’s right hand general. In two April days, 23,000 soldier boys were killed, wounded or captured. Confederates won the first day, but on the second the Union prevailed and pushed their opponents down the roads before them. Nothing in US history compared to this bloody battle. What was God thinking?
All these died in faith.
They did not receive what had been promised
but saw it and greeted it from afar
and acknowledged themselves to be strangers and aliens on earth,
for those who speak thus show that they are seeking a homeland.
But now they desire a better homeland, a heavenly one.
Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God,
for he has prepared a city for them.
Driving south to Corinth, Mississippi, I saw the railroad hub which the South must protect and the North must capture and destroy. Every stream of food, clothing, gunpowder, weapons and soldiers crisscrossed through Corinth.
Today it is a quiet Mississippi town. But a modern National Park Service visitor’s center marks one edge of the battlefield. The battle of Shiloh forced the Confederates to evacuate Corinth, although not before a monthlong siege. In October they tried but failed to recapture Corinth, and the Union maintained control over the railroads till 1865, significantly influencing the logistics of the war.
Do not be afraid any longer, little flock,
for your Father is pleased to give you the kingdom.
Sell your belongings and give alms.
Provide money bags for yourselves that do not wear out,
an inexhaustible treasure in heaven
that no thief can reach nor moth destroy.
For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.
Gird your loins and light your lamps.
When in 1864 Grant and Robert E. Lee met in battle, Lee said to his officers, “Grant is not a retreating man.” At Vicksburg in the early months of 1863 he tried seven ways to get at the Confederates, then at last succeeded with the eighth. On July 4, a day after the Union army forced Lee to retreat at Gettysburg, the Confederates surrendered their 30,000 man army in Vicksburg.
Grant’s plans and the achievements of his army at Vicksburg have been studied and admired by historians and generals ever since. General Grant never gave up. He was able to change his plans on the fly when necessary. In the heat and chaos of battle after battle, he became more calm and collected than in a normal time of peace.
In this martial season of my mostly pacifistic life I think of Jesus, and I think of Ulysses S. Grant, and I am caught up short by how they remind me of each other. I don’t have theology to back that up, but I notice their ability to be calm in crisis, acknowledge others around them without surrendering their authority, how they inspired their followers, how they continue to inspire many of us long after they lived their lives on earth.
I was glad last week to follow some of the Civil War path Grant walked. I haven’t made it to the Holy Land, but I think I’d have felt some of the same feelings walking in the steps of Jesus. It seems a little sacrilegious to put them together like this, demeaning Jesus and deifying Grant. But I don’t think so at the moment, so I’ll just sit with them awhile and let God do his work in me.
(Wisdom 18, Psalm 33, Hebrews 11, Matthew 24, Luke 12)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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