Fifteen words. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends." Memorial Day was made for those words.

In this Memorial Day message, we move through the history of American conflict from the Revolutionary War to Afghanistan, counting the fallen not as a history exercise but as an act of remembrance. The same reason Jesus told his followers to take communion regularly. If we forget what it cost, we lose what they died for. And twenty-two veterans still take their lives every day from wounds no one can see.

But the sermon moves beyond grief toward something larger. Actions ripple through generations when we don't forget them. The death of Lazarus looked like tragedy and became transformation. Oskar Schindler watched from a hillside and saved 1,100 lives. The principle holds across all of it: expect the bad, let go of the bad, let God redeem the bad.