By Doug Redford
On June 6, 1944, on what came to be known as D-Day, Allied troops invaded Normandy as they began their effort to free Europe from Adolf Hitler’s tyranny. This was a courageous but costly effort; according to some estimates, as many as 6,000 American troops gave their lives on D-Day.
On June 6, 1984, President Ronald Reagan visited the location in France where American troops landed and spoke on the 40th anniversary of D-Day. He began his remarks with these words:
We’re here to mark that day in history when the Allied armies joined in battle to reclaim this continent to liberty. For four long years, much of Europe had been under a terrible shadow. Free nations had fallen, Jews cried out in the camps, millions cried out for liberation. Europe was enslaved, and the world prayed for its rescue. Here in Normandy the rescue began. Here the Allies stood and fought against tyranny in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history.
Every Lord’s Day at the time of Communion, we mark a day in history when our Lord Jesus engaged in a battle to reclaim the world to spiritual liberty. For thousands of years, the world had been under a terrible shadow. Millions cried out for liberation. The world was enslaved and crying for a rescue. At the cross, Jesus dismantled Satan’s tyranny in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history. There is no other event in history that comes close to the significance of the cross of Jesus and the impact of what he accomplished there.
Later in his Normandy speech, President Reagan asked the D-Day veterans gathered there these questions:
Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here? We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith and belief; it was loyalty and love.
Why did Jesus do what he did? What impelled him to lay aside his heavenly glory and put on flesh and become one of us? We look at the emblems of Communion—the bread and the juice—and we know the answer. It was loyalty to his Father and it was love—love for lost humanity, love for each and every human being.
Doug Redford has served in the preaching ministry, as an editor of adult Sunday school curriculum, and as a Bible college professor. Currently he is the minister at Highview Christian Church in Cincinnati.
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