Flushed with their victory over the invading Philistine army, Israel’s warriors marched home.  At the head of the triumphant column came King Saul and at his side young David, the hero of the day, the slayer of the giant Goliath.  Rushing out from their homes came the grateful citizens.  Lining the roadside they joyously welcomed their conquering heroes.  “Saul hath slain his thousands,” they jubilantly shouted, “and David his ten thousands.”

            That day nothing was too good for the warrior David.  They feasted him, dressed him in fine clothes, and made long, lovely speeches about him.  They made him a captain of the King’s guard and brought him to dwell in the King’s house.  But David’s glory was short-lived.  Soon he was driven forth and became a lonely and despairing man in the land his valor had saved.

            Such is the traditional treatment accorded the returning triumphant warrior.  So it was with us in the last Great War.  The victory parade down Fifth Avenue brought forth a frenzy of enthusiastic shouting and confetti throwing.  For a day nothing was too good for our heroes.  But before the blasts of the brass bands and the acclaim of the orators had died away the bread lines and the lines of the unemployed were forming.

            But this time – this time, when our men come home from war, how shall we receive them?  This is a matter of serious concern for the whole nation, and it is a problem of prime importance for the Church.  How shall we receive home these men who have gone out from our midst in this church?  These men whose stars shine on our flag proudly proclaiming that we claim them. These men deserve and need more from us than praise, a party, and a parade.  How shall we receive them – how are we receiving them – for they are already coming home?

            I think that most of us are aware of the immensity of the problem of receiving wisely and well our returning service men – of helping them make a happy adjustment from military to civilian life.  This tremendous problem has been ably and frequently presented in magazine and newspaper articles and radio talks.  Here, we know, is a task that will tax our best.  As Eric Loveday, Vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, says, “Gearing down to peace life from a Spitfire is going to do bitter things to some men.”  Our soldiers and sailors have been away from home, some of them, for years, and they will not fit easily into the life they left.  In fact, the life they left is no longer with us.  Then there are the wounded, the men who’ve lost a leg, or an arm, or their sight; men who have been deeply hurt in mind or spirit by the war.  For them, life must start anew.  Adjustment to a hastily contracted war-marriage may be trying for many a returning service man, and for the wife who took him so quickly for better or for worse.  Returning service men with these and many more complicated problems will have to try to readjust themselves to a very changed world.  The immensity of this problem of helping our returning service men make a happy readjustment to civilian life we have read about and thought about considerably.  All this is to the good – for the church must face this grave problem to know where the difficulties lie, in order that the church may be ready to receive as the church ought our returning service men.

            Some good general warnings about how not to treat returning veterans have been widely publicized.  There are some things which the church and its people and all others ought not to do when the boys come home.

            The first of these don’ts is: Don’t ask too many questions.  “He might be trying to forget.  The men discharged for emotional reasons may have real hesitation about talking of them, and should not be quizzed.  The home folks (and friends) should take the lead in conversation from the men themselves, and in all cases the conversation should turn to the reassuring and familiar facts of home and home matters.” (Roy Burkhart – Christian Century)

            A second don’t:  Don’t be sympathetic to the extent of sentimentality, encouraging men to become dependant.  An able psychiatrist, who has had experience at the front, says that his observations reveal that battle experience can tend to make men over 25 more infantile and to retard in their growth to maturity those under 25.  So one of the tendencies of battle shocked men upon returning home is to shirk responsibility and to want to be made over and babied.  Hence one of the sorest needs of the returning soldier is to begin to stand on his own feet and take his rightful place as a mature person in a civilian life.  It is a distinct disservice to try to coddle or pamper a hero.  However great our debt to our valiant warriors, and God knows it is that great we could never repay it, let no one of us make the horrible mistake of trying to repay by pampering and destroy the very manhood which has made the soldier great and saved us and our country.

            A third don’t:  Don’t treat the returning veteran as a problem to be solved.  He is a human being.  Navy Chaplain Edgar Handler, in a conference on the church and the men in the armed forces, stated that “the church, and not the men themselves, is the real problem in the ministry to returning veterans.”  He said that “people who worry about the morals of soldiers should know that the soldiers worry about the morals of the folks back home.  The stories of strikes by labor unions who exploit the national emergency for their own advantage have given rise to much anger and bitterness.  Stories of juvenile delinquency – in which they sometimes fear their own sweethearts and wives may be involved – disturb them.”  Don’t treat the returning veteran as a problem – he is not more of a problem than we are ourselves.

            Here are three important don’ts – three generally accepted things we as Christians and as a church must not do in receiving home our service men.

            But when we come to think of the positive side of the question, “How shall we, the church and church people, receive our returning service men?” we find that it is not so much a question of what we shall do, as it is a question of what we shall be.  If ever there was a time when we need to be a vital, healing, helping fellowship as the church of the living Christ that time is now.  It is not enough for the church to be merely a preaching station, a place where people come only for inspiration.  The church must become a social organism, a living community, or the church will not be prepared to receive the returning veteran.  If our church is such a fellowship then we shall possess, through His grace, the power and the insight, as a living community, to receive each returning soldier and sailor with a healing and helping touch, however much each man’s need differs from another.

            When we talk of the early New Testament Christians we are fond of speaking of their individual power and greatness: of Peter’s boldness in preaching at Pentecost, of Paul’s personal courage and power.  But when we read the New Testament closely, especially the Book of Acts, we are impressed with the power and greatness of the Christian community – we are struck with the wondrous things God did with, and through, that little fellowship of believers – that communion of saints.  As Dr. Visser t’Hooft says, “The New Testament knows nothing of unattached Christians.”  The new Testament Church was the community of the Spirit, and this was the source of its power.  “The Spirit of the living Christ, the Holy Spirit was the source and dynamic of all victorious Christian living, and its finest fruits were love and joy and peace.  The Spirit was the power by which the church lived and the source of its togetherness.” (Archibald Hunter – Message of the N.T.)

            That bizarre story of the deception of Ananias and Sappharia and their tragic end is illustrative, in a negative sort of way, of the power resident in that primitive Christian Community.  To go against it was to be blasted.

            Evidence of the positive power permeating that fellowship for good, for healing, for enlightening, and for saving men, runs through all the New Testament.  This Christian fellowship is spoken of as “the men who turned the world upside down” for Christ.  Such was its power.  We also read that “with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ and great grace was upon them all.”  Such was the healing influence of the early Christian community that the sick who were laid in the passing shadow of their fair company found their health restored.

            The New Testament ideal for the Church of Jesus Christ is a Spirit filled fellowship – a living, loving, community of believers.  And this is the sort of fellowship the church must be if we are to receive our returning service men with healing and help.  When we think of receiving our men home, as a church and as Christians, our task is not so much a matter of doing this or that, as it is a matter of being a real Christian fellowship.  If we become such a communion of saints, we shall be used of God to heal and help the varying needs of men according to the need of each.

            Yet the forming of such a fellowship is no simple human achievement.  We cannot say, “Here now, let us go to and love one another as we should and have a genuine Christian fellowship.”  For the Christian fellowship, the communion of saints is a creation of the spirit of God.  But we can open our hearts and lives to God’s spirit so that we may be filled with all the fullness of God, and so by His power be welded into a living, loving Christian community.

            Dr. Roy A. Burkhart gives testimony to the sustaining and healing power which a real, vital Christian fellowship today can exert upon the broken life of a returning service man.  A young soldier from Columbus, Ohio, who had never belonged to a church, went out to New Guinea and there, in battle, lost his leg.  While in the battle zone hospital under treatment, he met a fellow-townsman who was a member of Dr. Burkhart’s church.  This man urged the crippled soldier to look up his church upon returning home.  Dr. Burkhart writes: ‘“I shall never forget the first Sunday he was with us.  As he passed me at the door at the close of the service, I saw something of the damage to his body, and shaken condition of his nerves, and the panic in his eyes.  We went that week to his home and kept in touch with him.  For three months he never missed a Sunday at church.  One day he said to me: ‘Your church helped me get hold of myself.  I’m sleeping now without drugs.  I’ve found peace.  I’m at ease.  I have something in the way of a faith that I never had before.’ And he added, ‘I believe, with it all, I love America more than anyone who never left these shores!”’

            Yes, as the Church of the living God today thinks upon the serious, soul-stirring business of “How shall we receive our returning service men?” the answer to her question is to be found, not in doing this or that, but first of all in being a vital Christian fellowship.

            Yet, it follows as the night the day that such a Spirit-filled Christian community will be doing certain definite things of necessity, because it is what it is, to receive and get ready to receive its returning men.  For one thing, a vital Christian fellowship will be constantly giving every possible manifestation of love and regard for its members in the armed forces now.  Someone will say, “Granted that the Christian community is just what our returning men need for their healing and help when they come back home, how are you going to get them to come into that fellowship and give the church a chance?  The church which is a true, living fellowship will be constantly offering up its prayers for its men, writing to them, and showing them every thoughtful kindness.  When they get back, if their church is a real New Testament church and has followed them through the thick of all their travails, their church will be one of the first places they will want to come.

            And again, the true Christian fellowship will receive its returning soldiers with few questions and much listening.  In the thick of battle God has said many things to these men of ours which the church at home must hear.  From their perspective of many months and thousands of miles away, they have looked back upon home and church and seen much of our common life in a new light.  Many of our choicest men who could have supplied the youth and leadership, the vision and energy for the rebuilding of our world will not come back.  We lesser people who will be left must face the startling problems of the world without them.  We must not deny ourselves the counsel and the courage our returning men will bring.  The Spirit-filled church will listen to what the Spirit saith to the church through those who have gone through this testing fire.

            And finally, the church which is a vital Christian community will be active and aggressive in the Church’s ancient program of Christian witness and Christian service.  The returning soldier is above everything else a man with a cause.  He went forth to fight, to suffer, and if need be, to die, for a cause.  He is a man who has dedicated the most precious years of his life to what he believed is a sacred cause.  A weak, apathetic, polite society will have no appeal for him.  But a group of militant crusaders, enlisted for life service in a thrilling, demanding cause – Ah that will capture his interest and win his allegiance.

            When our men come home from war, how ready shall we be to receive them?