Memorial Service for President John F. Kennedy

November 24, 1963
Rochester

President John F. Kennedy, died November 22, 1963

INVOCATION

In the course of our lives there comes to us experiences which cause consternation and confusion. As we reel under the blows of grief and shock, we would turn, each of us, with seeking minds and yearning hearts to that source of creation and guidance, we name with the name of God. May not our differing assessments of God's reality and presence interfere with our common prayer in such a time as this.

We seek strength to overcome the disheartening lethargy which is natural when our President has been struck with terrible, deadly bullets. We would grieve for him; but we would also draw upon the resources which sustained him—faith in the enduring values of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; faith in a constitutional order to fulfill the best values we cherish.

We would reach out in compassion to his family in their hours of agony. May they be helped one day by the knowledge that men are measured in deeds not years; and that the good that great men do cannot be erased by a sniper's bullet.

Enfold us all with the bond of united goals and precious values. We hope that tears will make our vision clearer; and we trust that the blows of violence will strengthen our resolution that our land shall be fair and all our people one.

Amen.

Readings
(1)“The Spirit of the United States” - gathered from the writings of Abraham Lincoln
(2) “For John F. Kennedy His Inauguration” “The Gift Outright” Robert Frost
(3) “Profiles in Courage” - concluding paragraphs John F. Kennedy


SERMON: Behold the Man

The President is dead. These are awful words echoing from the Atlantic to Hawaii, from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico.

Who can measure the pit of hate or sickness from which gushed the poisoned feelings that motivated the trigger finger?

The President is dead. These are sorrowful words which put the heaviest burden on his wife and children, his father and mother, his brothers and sisters.

Who can measure the abyss that is their loss?

The President is dead. These are shattering words which fragment the stable feelings of wholeness which we have invested in a government of law, order, checks and balances. But the system prevails; the Vice President has sworn that he will protect, preserve and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help him God; Lyndon Baines Johnson becomes the 36th President of the United States. We owe him our support in a time of crisis. We owe him the expression of our convictions as he considers the many decisions which now are his solemn and heavy responsibility.

A man is dead. What can one say? Everybody in the last thirty-six hours who has attempted to write or say words for the occasion must share the feeling of the Reverend Samuel K. Lothrop of Boston, who said following Lincoln's murder by an assassin, "Brethren, but one theme can command your attention today.... I feel almost incompetent to direct your thoughts this morning, as I have scarcely been able for the last twenty-four hours to collect and guide my own. Language is impotent." (quoted, p. 876, Carl Sandburg, THE PRAIRIE YEARS 1864-65). Yet we need words, however halting they may be, for words represent the principles and goals for which good men die — in Ford's Theatre in Washington or in an automobile in Dallas.

If John Fitzgerald Kennedy had never accepted the challenge and responsibility of the most difficult task of political leadership in the world, he would probably be alive. With his extraordinary endowment of intelligence and energy, he could have lived in cultured, spirited ease, insured by family wealth. He might have indulged his fine sense of art and culture, which both he and his wife shared and enjoyed. Music, art, poetry, sports and travel—all these were his without limitation, had he so chose to order his days. He shared the Kennedy Love for children; and he sacrificed much of the private privileges of family life, although obviously, he shirked none of the responsibilities of the good parent.

Instead of all this that might have been, he is dead before his time. His body was pierced by bullets triggered by violence bubbling over from the depths of hate and malevolence. Yet, despicable as this murder was, we harm only ourselves if we forget that a person is presumed innocent until proved guilty by a jury of his peers. To behave otherwise is to be false to the cause for which Lincoln and Kennedy died.

Centuries ago, a Roman occupation official brought another man before a mob and announced "Ecce Homo " - behold the Man. Later myth and theology created an intricate structure of doctrine, transforming Jesus into a savior-god who atoned for the sins of all men.

Now John F. Kennedy, first of all would consider it sacrilege and presumption to be so compared. I do not make the comparison. Yet there is this enduring truth: when a man is killed because of the ideals he cherished and the truths he believed, in a real and human sense he atones for the failure of us all to have made the ideals real.

Behold the Man: He was a competent politician and won the Presidency in the face of what many believe to have been impossible odds. Any President who attempts a program will raise up a whole host of determined and resolute opponents. People differ in the ways of achieving national goals and interpreting current conditions. But who will deny that President John F. Kennedy was eloquent in his expressions of the democratic goals we all share?

Of Lincoln's assassination, Carl Sandburg wrote, “an old proverb known to woodsmen was fitting: 'A tree is best measured when it is down.' Often came the statement that over the world the whole civilized Family of Man shared in regrets or grief for the loss of a hero who belonged to humanity everywhere.”

History has not yet measured John Kennedy. But surely among our treasures to be counted as valuable are such statements as his inaugural address and numerous other affirmations when he articulated the best of our hopes and dreams.

Behold the Man. Every one of us who walks the earth of a free land has been purchased with great sacrifice. An old truism in the ancient Christian tradition is that the “blood of martyrs was the seed of the Church.” This is true in human experience. In the promotion of great ideals, the milestones of progress usually carry bloodstains. Every leader who gives voice to the grand goals of freedom, equality and human dignity creates conflict with individuals and forces hostile to the ideals and their achievement. Pitirim Sorokin, the sociologist who studied the lives of saints and martyrs, observed how “every great saint or altruist has had conflicts with many persons and groups and often has fallen victim to hostile forces.” Lincoln, Gandhi, and now John Kennedy represent three stellar examples in modern times of the personal cost of faithfulness to principles and goals.

Somewhere (source?) I clipped the following:

“A legend tells of a liberated slave who went to see President Lincoln and assured, him that he would not accept freedom as a gift, that he proposed to pay for it. He threw a silver dollar on the President's desk. The kindly Mr. Lincoln tried to show the man that he could not pay for his liberty; that the very fact he thought he could indicated that he did not fully appreciate the priceless gift. When the freed man insisted, the President took him to the window and showed him the row on row of soldiers graves across the river in Arlington. He asked him how his money could pay back the lives that had been given that he might live in freedom. When the poor man asked what he might do, he was assured that he must walk the world with gratitude and live like a free man."

This applies to us too, as obligation and privilege.

Behold the Man! His body will not rise again, but his spirit never need be entombed as long as there are those who persist in laboring to fulfill the dream of one human family living in decency, freedom and peace.

Behold the Man! May his spirit abide until peoples of this nation and the world endorse the dream with reality by their acknowledgment of a common origin to their lives; by a common sharing of rights, liberties and opportunities; and by a united effort to achieve peace with freedom, justice with universality and joy with mutual dignity.

PRAYER AND BENEDICTION

Prayer:

Eternal Spirit of Creation and Growth, of Life and Death, we seek understanding of the forces which flash in and through our lives. As events of staggering surprise disturb our inner security, we would attempt to know more of the reasons why good men must be victims of the violent emotions of fanatics and haters. Recognizing that human events reveal again and again that good persons are sacrificed because they personify a great cause, we would search for more understanding, to the end that the value of each individual may be recognized and prized, even by the most bitter of foes.

We grieve for the untimely and brutal murder of President John F. Kennedy. We grieve because he was a man who time and again demonstrated that his was clearly a profile of courage. We need men of courage to sustain us when we grow timid or depressed. We grieve because he was a man who loved his family and should have had many more years to watch his children grow. We grieve because he was a man who was sensitive to life, appreciated the creations of the arts and the fellowship of people and should have had more years for life and joy. We grieve because he was a man and no man should die this way.

We grieve because our Presidents must offer themselves as living sacrifices, not only to the assassin's bullet, but also to the grinding years of overburdening problems, the lashing moments of critical decision and the laborious days of manifold responsibilities. Make us conscious of the high cost paid by all those who give great service to the values chartered by our Constitution.

We would pledge ourselves to becoming better citizens because such costly examples should remind us how lax we are at times in meeting our obligations as members of a nation which must press forward to the fulfillment of its laws and values.

We would pledge our support to President Lyndon Baines Johnson. He shares the sorrow of us all, but immediately bore enormous responsibility. May we encourage him whole-heartedly, not only by approval of his policies, but also by searching examination and studies of various proposals to the end that he will know what the people believe as he makes the decisions which are his solitary responsibility.

“May we be brave in peril, constant in tribulation, and, in all changes of fortune, even unto the gates of death, loyal and loving to one another.” Amen.