This Pearl Harbor Day, with images from the funeral of President George H.W. Bush still fresh in our minds, we meditate upon duty. After President Bush lost his re-election campaign, he complained how liberal media had depicted him, but then shifted to a nobler thought. “What I want to have people know I stood for were ‘Duty, Honor, Country,’ and, yes, as Dad taught us, ‘service’” (Jonathon Martin, New York Times, December 7; A17).
I don’t hear people today talk about “duty.” Maybe they are and I’m missing it, but I suspect rampant individualism has made many Americans believe, “You owe me,” rather than, “I have duty toward you.” Doing our duty is, yes, our Christian duty. “Will any of you who has a servant plowing or keeping sheep say to him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come at once and recline at table?’ Will he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, and dress properly, and serve me while I eat and drink, and afterward you will eat and drink?’ Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only down what was our duty’” (Luke 17:7-10). When you realize that everything has in one way or another been given to you, even what you imagine you’ve earned, nothing remains except thankfulness to God shown through doing your duty in service to others.
But for the good of church and country, how can we instill a sense of duty in young people? President Harry Truman said, “The next generation never learns anything from the previous one until it’s brought home with a hammer. I’ve wondered why the next generation can’t profit from the generation before but they never do until they get knocked in the head by experience” (in Jon Meachem, “The Soul of America,” 259). We graduate seminarians with some knowledge and some skills, but only time will tell if they will faithfully do their duty. So with every vocation. Teaching Jesus is the best we can do. If they follow Jesus by cross-carrying, by seeing and serving amidst what is wrong and evil, then they will rise to duty as honored previous generations did.
A memorable image is Senator Robert Dole, himself a war hero, rising out his wheelchair to salute the coffin of President Bush. “Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man” (Ecclesiastes 12:13).
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