I spent part of the morning today looking at film clips of
something I watched live a long time ago. It was May, 1973. My son was about 7
months old, and we lived on a small military base on the South China Sea. Armed Forces TV was broadcasting a very special
event that day from the Air Force base about an hour south of us. Even through
the TV I could feel an edgy excitement as I watched the crowd at the Air Force
base gathered to greet three military flights.
It was the day the first of the prisoners of war who had been held in
Vietnam for varying lengths of time were going to finally touch down,
completing the first leg of their journey home at last.
It seemed to take forever for the plane to taxi down the
runway and finally pull up parallel to the crowd who burst into cheers. The
door opened and the first man walked down the steps to a microphone. He
addressed the crowd and the dignitaries gathered there to honor him and his
fellow soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen. He gave a simple speech, mostly
about how grateful they all were to be free and heading home. The one time his
voice trembled was when he uttered the concluding words, “God bless America!”
There probably wasn’t a dry eye anywhere on the runway, the gallery, or the
audience watching the proceedings.
Twice more the ceremony was repeated, once for each of the
other planes. All in all, there were probably 300+ men tasting their first real
breaths of freedom that day. I can’t say I remember any of them specifically,
but among those being greeted was a thin man, walking with a slight limp and
greying hair. He was John Stanley McCain III, a lieutenant commander and bomber
pilot, who had been shot down over Hanoi in 1967. It was a high point in an
otherwise frustrating and frequently unpopular military conflict.
In 1981 I moved to Arizona.
Within a few years, a new but familiar name came on my screen as a
newly-elected Congressman. After 2 terms, McCain ran for the Senate and won a
seat, which he held for a further 30+ years. He became a household name, and
one of the most frequent words used to describe him was “hero.” This was not
just because he survived 5-1/2 years of captivity. He continued to display
discipline, and love of country over party throughout the rest of his life.
Granted, he had his low moments, times when he made serious mistakes in
judgment that affected many others, but he also wasn’t afraid to acknowledge it
when he was wrong, wasn’t afraid to speak his truth as he saw it, and was not
afraid to extend his hand across partisan borders in order to achieve a greater
good. A man of great faith, he wasn’t afraid to acknowledge that faith as
something that helped him through his life, through the torment of captivity,
and his life since his liberation.
We quite often put people on pedestals and call them heroes,
although not always for the same reason McCain was put on a pedestal for his
heroism in Vietnam and in the US government. We love to build people up only to
enjoy equally tearing them down when a flaw is discovered in their dealings or
their character. Noah, Abraham, David,
Paul, and countless others were put on pedestals and then seemingly knocked
down. We have to have our heroes, but we really don’t want them to be “better”
than we are. We take these people, make saints and idols of them, and then when
we discover their feet of clay, it’s all over but the shouting. We don’t seem
to want to take into consideration that they are people too, just like us. We
want to use their humanity to make us feel better when we too fall down.
Jesus came to earth to be a human pointer to God. As long as
he performed miracles, crowds loved him. Those same miracles, as well as the
messages Jesus brought, irked, irritated, and angered the hierarchy from both
Rome and Jerusalem. The pedestal they knocked him off of was actually a cross
that led to his death. From that day,
Jesus ceased to be a human being and became visibly and actively the Son of God
in his full glory. After that, people
tended to forget his humanity and focus only on his divinity, from the day of
his conception to the day of his resurrection.
It is time to recognize humanity in all people, especially
the ones we look up to and want to emulate. It’s so easy to fall, so easy to
make a mistake that causes the whole tower we have built to crumble like dry
sand.
To remember only Jesus’s divinity is to negate the humanity
that was so necessary to his message. McCain
was very human, clay feet, flaws and all, and with a message that transcended
party lines and bickering.
Perhaps we should remember our own humanity and foibles as
we try to judge others for theirs. That’s something Jesus wanted us to learn
from him. We are all children of God, all of us, no matter what. And we are all
human, subject to failure, but with a loving and supportive God beside us to
help us get up and try again.
Rest in peace, Senator McCain. Thank you for your service
both in the military and in civilian life. Rise in glory to the throne of God
where surely you will be welcomed with “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
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