I turned on the radio as I was driving home this afternoon.  The soothing sounds of NPR are a constant companion in my little old Civic.  This particular afternoon, Talk of the Nation was broadcasting live from Fort Hood in Texas.  It was the memorial service at the site of a tragic shooting just days ago where 13 people were killed and 43 were wounded.

This seemed like one of those Columbine kind of tragedies, the kind of tragedies that mark time and shape how we remember a decade.  So as I drove home, I sat there listening to the memorial with rapt attention.  I should have seen what happened next coming a mile away.  I get very uneasy around “spiritual” military events.  I find no comfort in the barrage of patriotic military clichés that fill the air at times like these.  I find that all the sloganeering turns my stomach.  The tragedy is used as grounds to hero-worship soldiers and the military.  I find it all so sad.  Thirteen children of God died and we “honor” them by using it as a recruiting tool.

Nowhere was this more blatant and heartbreaking than when GEN. George Casey used a section of the book of Isaiah in his eulogy.

It’s a tradition in one of our special operations units to go to the Book of Isaiah when they’re eulogizing fallen comrades. Proud of their willingness to accept any challenge for this country, at the funeral they read, “Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?’ Then I said, ‘Here am I. Send me.’

This passage conveys a sentiment that applies to every soldier in our Army. It gives voice to a spirit of service that lives in every soldier. It’s a spirit we saw in the 13 soldiers who gave their lives here — men and women who believed in the values and ideals this country stands for and men and women who willingly served those ideals. Newlyweds, single moms, immigrants, teenagers, and 50- somethings — all bound together by the common desire to find meaning in something greater than themselves.”

The passage from Isaiah is a beautiful one, but it is absolutely not about people joining the military.  It is foremost about the holiness of God and the sinfulness of Isaiah and his people.  After being overwhelmed by his vision of God’s holiness Isaiah readily confesses his sin, and the sin of his people.  After an angel burns Isaiah’s lips with a hot coal and takes away his sin, God asks “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”  Isaiah replies, “Here am I. Send me!”

Isaiah is commissioned by God to be a prophet to his people, and he is sent to fight what God seems to be saying is a loosing battle.  The people will hear but they won’t understand, they will see but not perceive, they will have dull ears and will close their eyes and Isaiah is sent it seems, to make their hearts all the more calloused, to give them over to their own wickedness and stupidity all the faster.  Shocked, Isaiah asks God how long this is to be his task.  The answer he receives is that he shall continue until all is desolation and the people of God are but a stump left in the land.

This haunting, mysterious, fierce passage was ripped from it’s holy context and turned into yet another slogan.  What’s worse, in the context Gen. Casey used Isaiah 6:8, it seems to suggest that soldiers are called by something higher than their country, they are called by God.  This offers a blanket of spirituality over the entire military.  Soldiers, it seems are called by God to a holy duty, rather than sent into battle by politicians for a myriad of complicated reasons.

In the face of tragedy it is easier to gloss over the messy reality of war and politics and cover the entire business with a coat of spirituality.  This paint-brushing the truth doesn’t honor the fallen soldiers, and it most certainly does not honor the scriptures from which the verse was torn.