From the Rector…
At the football game on Saturday, three helicopters flew over the field at the end of the National Anthem. Though none of the three were around in the Vietnam War, their presence connected me with my father in a way I had never truly appreciated before. I had a sudden, overwhelming realization that the only reason I was standing in Bryant-Denny Stadium was because of a helicopter and its courageous crew, in a jungle half a world away and a lifetime ago.
My father was Army Special Forces during the Vietnam War. Though he is officially listed as a postal clerk if you look him up, the only mail he delivered was in the form of Agent Orange. He sat on the Ho Chi Minh Trail and radioed in information related to convoys and logistic routes. One day his location was compromised. He skinnied down the tree he had been sitting in and made a run for it. He had to swim across a river with a gunboat fast approaching. He made it to the other side, only to find his campsite compromised. He had already called in a chopper to pick him up and had to call back to meet at a secondary rendezvous point. By the time he reached the second location, he was under fire, and a gun battle ensued between the VC in the jungle and chopper crew in a clearing. My dad tried to wave them off, but they made it clear they weren’t leaving without him. He made a run for it and was shot in the knee—one of two Purple Hearts, along with a Bronze Star he would receive during the war. The crew hoisted him on board and took off. They saved his life. Without them, neither my sister nor I would be here today.
There is a certain amount of irony in the world that we can never fully appreciate—a sort of symmetry in which the seams of our existence are woven together in unfathomable ways. Because of the courageous actions, or perhaps stubborn resistance, of one chopper pilot, my life became possible. I will never know that man’s name, or where he came from, or what his life circumstances might have been, but I owe him so much for giving me a father whom I have loved, honored, respected, and cherished.
God in his goodness has created us in such a way that we can never truly be independent of one another. Instead, our lives are intertwined in deep and abiding ways. We are interconnected and cannot survive, much less thrive, without one another. The bread I buy from the grocery store has literally hundreds of people responsible for its existence and my ability to purchase it—from the farmers in the Midwest who grow its grain, to the factory workers who bake it, to the truckers shipping it in every stage of its existence, to the stock boys and cashiers who sell it to me at the grocery store, to the construction workers who built the store, and the bank that processes my debit transaction. The list goes on and on. Did I say hundreds of people? More like thousands are engaged in this simple transaction of my purchasing bread.
The interconnectedness of our world is not limited to the here and now; it extends back through time. Our ancestors made choices—simple or complex—that determined our future. The Bible does an excellent job of tracing us back to the very roots of humanity—Adam and Eve—and connecting that long line of descendants all the way to Jesus and a little beyond. The implications of the Old Testament are woven throughout the New Testament.
The church has its own part to play in our interconnectedness as keepers of the faith and determiners of our hopes. We are called to participate in that work by remaining connected to the saints of old, even as we look to the future. Hebrews 12:1 calls this “the great cloud of witnesses”
that helps us remain steadfast in the faith while we do the work of growing and nurturing the kingdom of God.
When we are intentional about living as part of that great cloud of witnesses and remember that we—the whole world, both the living and the dead—are deeply interconnected, we grow in our compassion for one another and learn to extend grace in ways we might not otherwise be capable of doing.
Light and Life
Candice+