I preached my first sermon in 1975. That seems absolutely bizarre to me. Until 1983 I mostly worked with Youth and music, but still preached quite a bit. This was in the Bible Belt, where you had a Sunday morning service, a Sunday evening service and a Wednesday evening service, which was actually a preaching service and not a Bible Study. Our Pastor gave me all the Wednesday nights and some of the Sunday nights. In 1983 I was called as the pastor to a church, still in the Bible Belt, and from that first Sunday there until the last Sunday of 2006 I pastored that church and then another in Ohio. For a couple of years I pastored two churches in Ohio at the same time. When I went to the funeral home in 2007 as staff clergy I was still in a pulpit somewhere almost every Sunday. In 2016 we came to Indiana. I have no idea how many sermons I have preached or Bible Studies I have led going back to 1975. In 1997 I did start putting all my sermon notes in a computer file, but before that it was all written out and none of that has survived. Thursday morning a young medical tech came into the room I was in and introduced herself. “I know you. You are the preacher there in Urbana.” We talked and she did what she needed to do and then I left.

          I thought about it after I left. I don’t really like being called ‘the preacher.’ I consider myself a pastor, first and foremost. But, I have preached only the Lord knows how many sermons. I have spoken on college campuses and at conferences. Even my final degree, my doctorate, was on homiletics, which is the planning, preparation and presentation of a sermon. Since coming to Indiana my health has gotten worse and worse and it seems I can be a pastor less and less. Maybe I should just start thinking of myself as ‘the preacher there in Urbana.’

          I mulled this over on my trip back from Huntington. If the last 46 years has been all about preaching, I should have a few sermons that stick out in my mind. I thought about it and thought about it. Nothing. Honestly, by the time I get home from church on Sunday, my mind is working on next week. Preaching does not come easy or natural for me. It takes effort. I know people who can step into the pulpit and let it fly. I cannot do that. I have changed my sermon from the chair to the pulpit, and it has been fine because the Holy Spirit was either giving me something or was playing a joke on me. Either way, He is in charge.

          I realized as my preaching efforts were drawing a blank, I had pastoring moments flooding my mind. People say I have a story for everything. That seems true. Hundreds of experiences, most good and some bad, but all have a story. I may be relegated to just preaching now, at least for a while, but I will always consider myself a pastor.

          And as I thought about that and as the news of the day kept intruding, a connection was made. I thought about Elvis.

          No, not that Elvis.

          I liked Elvis. He was always getting into trouble. A little bitty guy with an attitude. He had been born in Puerto Rico and brought to the mainland when he was about five. We had a thriving Hispanic community in Geneva, Ohio and his father and mother and sister settled there. Not long after arrival, his mother and father began to have problems and it ended in divorce. Eventually, Elvis’s mother, Sara, met Danilo, a really fine man, and they got married. But the dye had seemingly been cast for Elvis. He developed that attitude. As he grew older (and I am only talking fourth and fifth grade) he adopted the ‘swagger’ you often associate with Hispanic young men. Several times, his mother came into my office in tears because she was at her wits end. And Danilo struggled more than she did. He knew his stepson was headed down a dark path. Elvis was always getting into trouble at school and in the community. Something had to turn the boy around.

          For whatever reason, Elvis always seemed to respect me. That is another Hispanic trait. Always respect the priest. Obviously, I was not a priest, but it still applied. I did the Youth there, as well, and I always kept Elvis close. Partly because I wanted him to know he was important to me and partly because I did not want to turn him loose around the girls. In time, Elvis came to Christ. He still got in trouble, though. He was 17 and a new Christian and Satan did not want to let him go. But he was mellowing.

          After school, Elvis opted to join the Marines. I would not have thought he was tall enough, but he got in. There was a big going away party and Elvis was in full swagger. But as my wife and I were leaving he came running up to me and gave me a hug. He thanked me. I told him to be careful and keep his head down. We laughed and he went back to his party.

          As I said earlier, I left that church at the end of 2006. Sara kept me informed of what Elvis was up to and involved in. Then the bad news came. He was deployed to Afghanistan. I was no longer his pastor, or even Sara’s pastor, but I still cared for that boy.

          The church called a new pastor, a man who was eventually fired for inappropriate advances toward the young girls. But before that, he made it very clear he did not want me in his church. Even if we were having a funeral there that I was involved in, he did not want me there. (There is some basis for this. When a minister leaves a church, they are not to interfere with the congregation. There is much more to it than that, but I did understand him not wanting me there. But it bordered on hate with him.) Elvis was off in Afghanistan for 18 months. When he returned to the States, he had leave time and his folks wanted to have a welcome home party. Sara told me it would mean a lot to him if I went and it wouldn’t be at the church, So, I said I would pop in.

          When I got there it seemed like the going away party, only Elvis was in uniform. I intended to shake his hand, tell him he had been prayed for every day, thank him for his service and then leave. The pastor of the church was already seething that I was even there. Not that anyone cared about that. The inappropriate behavior accusations were starting to surface. I caught Elvis’s eye and started toward him, but he pushed through the crowd to me.

          “Pastor, we gotta talk.” “OK, Elvis, we can get together in the next few days…..” “NO! Right now!” And he grabbed my arm and dragged me to a small maintenance closet in the party center.

          Once the door was closed, I looked at the young Marine. He was trembling, tears stained his face, he could barely talk. I turned a couple of buckets over and we sat. “Elvis, what is going on?”

          “Pastor, I (sobbing now, then he got hold of himself) I killed people! I KILLED PEOPLE! OH, GOD, I KILLED PEOPLE!” He went on to tell me of the first firefight. The Taliban were going to kill him and his squad. He hadn’t fired his gun yet. Not really scared, but the idea of killing someone was holding him back. Then his buddy, next to him, screamed and fell back, blood spurting from his chest. And Elvis began pulling the trigger. He saw the enemy fall that he shot. He kept shooting, even when he started to vomit.

          Those weren’t the only people he killed, either. You see, the Taliban wants to kill. They want to die in combat. It all gets them points with Allah. Meanwhile, our kids don’t want to kill. They want to be with their girlfriend or boyfriend at the carnival, or working in a field or a factory. They want to play with their mutt Scooter. But they kill. They kill to save the lives of their buddies or their own lives. Some think in the big picture and they fight to keep terrorists from ravaging our civilians in cowardly attacks here in this country. But mostly, in those firefights, they just want to live through it. And then after, maybe in a mop closet, sitting on a bucket, you share your broken heart with someone you know will feel for you and who will understand your anguish.

          Our country has decided to cut and run, to leave people behind to be butchered. In my opinion, after 9/11 we should have gone in done what we needed to do, left an air force and special ops to keep the fanatics in line, and we should have gotten out. Those people do not want democracy. But regardless of what I think, to do all we have done in the last 20 years, and then just leave? I find that so hard to believe. But it is happening.

          And in doing this awful thing, we are making the sacrifices of so many, like Elvis, worthless. And yes, Elvis came home and now lives in Florida, but he sacrificed. All of them who came home, sacrificed. Parts of their very souls are still over there in the desert sands.

          Twenty years have passed since September 11, 2001. It seems our government has forgotten. But Elvis and his mates have not. I will never forget those building crashing down. Most of us will never forget. Nor should we forget.