Watching, for even a moment, the coverage the other day (June 6, 2019) of the commemoration of the seventy-fifth anniversary of D-Day, can one fail to be in awe of the courage, conviction and commitment—in other words, the citizenship—of those who crossed the English Channel fully aware that many would not survive and equally aware that this was the moment by which a generation would be understood?  Have you been blessed to hear a recitation, or to read the words, of President Franklin Roosevelt’s prayer of June 6, 1944?

I have listened as they—those few remaining soldiers, sailors and airmen—have shared their personal experiences of the invasion by sea of Nazi-occupied, Nazi-fortified France.  More has been said, most recently, than I have heard before about what they saw, how they felt and the others—the ones that did not come home.  The stories create even more powerful images than all the movies—Saving Private Ryan, The Longest Day—combined.  Each story informs of their citizenship; they were citizens, first, of the world.  Not of America first, nor of only their own time, but of the world, for the present but, even more, for the future.  For they fought side-by-side, with British, Canadian and other allied forces, first to set free the people of France and, then, to eliminate the scourge of Nazism, fascism, and imperialism.   It was one of those moments when the challenges were so great that, truly, a whole generation had to rise to greatness in order to meet those challenges.  These citizens of the world recognized that there was far too much at stake, that there was no time to focus on individual rights, on the interests of a single nation, or on the economic costs and benefits of doing the right thing.

There are challenges today.  Because the world has changed so much, the challenges to our freedom, our health, or our existence—are, perhaps, less obvious than the great challenges faced by “The Greatest Generation.”  They may be hidden from view, but these challenges are no less critical than those faced in 1944.  Whether it is the damage that industrialization has wrought upon our environment, the loss of privacy and individual security resulting from reliance upon technology that is understood by only a few, or the increasing disparity in wealth among people, the time has come for action by the “citizens of the world.”  It is truly the world—all of the people—whose interests must be considered and preserved. 

It’s not easy to talk about it—the truth of our situation.  We have been taught, for a generation now, that we do not have to pay for our privileges.  Even to pay taxes for the services of government, for the safety of our armed forces, for the protection of our police, for the health of our citizens and the education of our children—to pay taxes so that the roads we drive over, the bridges that cross the great rivers, and the infrastructure that supports all of our economic accomplishments—to pay taxes is a burden that we should attempt with all our might to avoid paying.  We have been convinced that we owe nothing to the world around us, not even to the people who work in unimaginable conditions to make the clothes we wear and the cheap items we buy, use, and then throw into landfills when we are done.  We have been taught to put our own interests first, to put our own country first, and to hide from sight the plight of others who have the courage to seek better lives for their children, even at the sacrifice of their own lives.

We—this generation of people and, because God has blessed America, this generation of Americans—we must recognize this moment and, like those who planned and trained and died, and those who lived, seventy-five years ago, we must set aside the privilege of the individual and the myth that one country can stand in isolation from the globe and we must take on, instead, the mantle of citizenship that requires us to act boldly and bravely in the face of these dangers.

Seventy-five years ago, our fathers and grandfathers, uncles and friends, our teachers and mechanics and lawyers and accountants, reporters and bankers and carpenters and engineers—men who had postponed their own lives in service of the greater good—taught us a lesson in courage that, in my mind, is exceeded only by the courage of One who carried His own cross to Golgotha.  Seventy-five years ago this day, a president whose most significant accomplishment over the first eight years of his time in office had been to head off the powerful forces trying to drive even the United States into fascism—to overthrow our democratic form of government, one bit at a time—found that, in the end and after all the planning, the best thing he could do was to humble himself and to pray for the salvation of the world.  Can we summon that courage again to save those who have neither voice, nor money, nor power to save themselves?  Can we humble ourselves once more?

God is waiting for us to answer; God waits for us to rise as citizens of the world.