On Veterans Day, our congregation and young people gathered to honor those who have served. Our guest was retired Navy chaplain Rear Admiral Donald Muchow, a Lutheran pastor who spent about 33 years in uniform and finished his career as the Navy’s Chief of Chaplains. He opened by thanking everyone in the room, students and veterans alike, and made a point of including the families: “Especially those spouses and family members who have been in support of all who have supported those in uniform.”

For part of his career, the Admiral’s office sat in the Navy Annex, just above the Pentagon. One window looked out on Arlington Cemetery. The other looked out on the Capitol, the White House and the Washington Monument. “It was a rare morning when I wouldn’t, for a moment, say a prayer over both windows and that which I saw through there,” he said.

He also drew a laugh with a story from 1967, the day he signed up for full-time service. A recruiter greeted him with a coffee mug and said, “Here, Chaplain.” When he politely explained that he had never drunk coffee, the recruiter replied, “Well, then the Air Force is around the corner.” Thirty years later, he stepped off a plane at North Island in San Diego for an inspection tour of Coast Guard installations, and the warrant officer waiting for him asked, “Are you drinking coffee yet, Chaplain?”

The Admiral then walked the students through the history of the day. It began with the armistice that ended World War I, signed at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918. Congress recognized Armistice Day in 1926 and made it a nationwide observance in 1938. After World War II and the Korean War, President Eisenhower renamed it Veterans Day so it would honor everyone who had served.

He was careful to explain how it differs from Memorial Day, which remembers those who died in service, those “who’ve laid out their blood on the altar of freedom, so that you and I could sit at a table like this, free from fear, free from enemy shells or bombs, and free to also worship in a sanctuary like this. That’s no small thing, believe me.” Veterans Day, by contrast, honors everyone who has worn the uniform, “all the way back to 1775,” along with those serving today.

Why honor veterans? The Admiral offered three good reasons. The first was self-sacrifice, and he pointed to Christ as the example. “Our Lord Jesus set the example, right? He died in our place.” Veterans, he said, belong to a community people count on. “You don’t let people down. You do your best to try to fulfill the commitments that you’ve made.” Many have given far more. “They’ve given their life. They’ve given their limbs. They’ve given their minds at times for your sake and mine that we can be free at this moment in our history.”

The second reason was self-discipline. He recalled an admiral’s commencement speech at the University of Texas at Austin that urged graduates to start each day by making the bed, so every day begins with a success. Veterans carry that habit of finishing the assigned task “even in the face of an enemy, even in the face of hardship.” He compared it to firefighters running toward a fire, and to the police on 9/11 who “ran to the horror of that moment. They didn’t run the other direction.” That same discipline means owning your mistakes. “We all know that God is the only perfect one. But get over it, admit it, and move on. Veterans do that.”

The third reason was accountability. Veterans, the Admiral said, are the people who get things done. Because they can be trusted, they bring trust to the communities they live in. And a veteran always wants to leave things better than they found them.

He closed with a story about a teacher who removed every desk and chair from her classroom one morning. Period after period, students came in and sat against the walls, and the empty room drew enough attention that cameras showed up to find out what was going on. In the last period of the day, she asked her students whether they knew why they had no desks. Then she opened the door, and 27 veterans in uniform walked in carrying the desks and chairs.

She told the students they hadn’t earned what they had. “You’ve received what others have done to make that schoolhouse where you’re sitting and working at a desk happen. Now it’s your job as a student to be a worthy student because of what they have done to make it possible.”

It was a fitting charge for all of us. To every veteran in our congregation and school family, and to the families who stood with you, thank you.