urage has been defined by soldiering
from the beginning of civilization. The great epics of every ancient
civilization tell the story of the heroes of a pivotal battle that preserved
the order and made possible the peace and prosperity for a memorial. I was
commissioned to investigate inscriptions this summer, since we are putting an
inscription on our new building, and I was surprised and sobered to remember
just how many memorials in the churches and Cathedrals in Europe, just how many
chapels, just how many prayer alcoves, are dedicated to fallen soldiers from
different battles. People occasionally remark, “what an ironic tribute for
violence to be so glorified in a Church”, and it has some merit, but not much.
On the human side, nobody
glorifies war. They just remember with reverence those around them who were
able to keep their heads, when others were full of panic. They are remembering
the words inscribed Marine War Memorial that depicts the American Soldiers
raising the flag on Iwo Jima, ‘Where Uncommon Valor Was A Common Virtue”.
They are remembering that spirit
of sacrifice, like the battle at Thermopolayae in ancient Greece. One morning,
the Greeks awoke to discover the seas of their shores covered with Persians
beginning an invasion. Taken off guard the whole country would perish if they
didn't have time to organize a defense, putting together an army from the rural
parts of the country. The Persians had to pass through one pass to get over the
mountain and invade the rest of the country. 350 of the best Spartan soldiers
volunteered to man that pass and slow them down so the rest of the country
could organize. Because of the tactical position, they held them off for over a
week, before they were overrun but it was enough time and the Greek nation was
saved. What makes people able to give their lives so that others may live? What
makes them able to overcome their fears and stand strong in the breech?
Of all the Greek virtues, they had the highest regard for courage,
despite the misconception that some of us
have that they were lovers of philosophy and wisdom. In fact, it was Sparta
that triumphed over Athens and the Spartans so admired soldiering that boys
were taken from their families at the youngest age to undergo a rigorous regime
of developing the skills of battle. Discipline was the corrective to the human
penchant for fear. Fear must be stared down and overcome. Discipline and
routine must take the place of the instinct toward flight and trembling.
In the bible courage is not so much a matter of strength as a
matter of the heart. It is holding fast in the
God who will overcome your fears when you cannot rely on your own strength.
Fear is such a regularly recurring reality during the course of
our lives. The bible has many stories
about dealing with it. One of my favorites is the story of the Israelites just
before they enter the Promised Land. The Lord had told them of a 'fair and
broad land', a land 'flowing with milk and honey' and they were enjoined to
posses it. Lo when they arrived at the borders of the Promised Land, fear
overtook them and they decided that rather than simply walk into the land with
their divine deed,… they, they,… well they would form a committee.
Little has changed in 3000 years. The committee met and decided to
send out spies to survey the new territory.
The spies returned ashen, reporting that the land God promised their ancestors
was already occupied by very large, well-organized soldiers, who possessed all
of the weapons for a professional defense. Of the twelve spies that were sent
out to survey the Promised Land, 10 suggested that their puny little tribe
ought to forget entering the Promised Land and bivouac in the desert where at
least they might remain alive. Only Joshua and Caleb believed that the true God
would make good on the promise to transform a rag-tag band of slaves on the run
and make of them a nation with a land of their own.
Here we have a subtly different kind of courage, the courage to
trust in God when there is precious little
reason to trust in your own capacity to succeed. This is the biblical notion of
courage for it is always tied to faith or trust. It is not the religiosity of
the powerful, invoking extra protection for the well prepared. It is standing
true as witness to the revelation of God, a living out of the promise of the
coming kingdom, in spite of the surrounding difficulties which threaten to
immobilize ordinary humans. Let us look at this in its two parts: conscience
and empowerment.
Conscience: In our scripture this morning, Jesus is depicted with
a rather touching realism and humanity. He has
been actively engaged for several years in dialogue, in debate with the
religious and political authorities of his day. He has been teaching, healing,
and living in and amongst the ordinary peasants in Palestine, people that are
on the fringes of society as well as people that are at the center of managing
the social order, and those compromised middle-men that profited from Roman
imperialism while trying to make daily life for Jews bearable. Through all of
that he has been growing more and more concentrated in one thing- to live out
of the will of God. What is it that God wants of us? It is a great question to
ask yourself, “What does God want me to do right now”? As he says in his final
prayer, “Not my will, but Thine.”
And he is wrestling with that, not only because it is so hard to
figure out, but also because once
interiorized it, he realized that it was going to cost him a lot… in this case,
his very life. You didn't have to be a clairvoyant like Sister Cleo to see that
Jesus was in trouble when he entered Jerusalem in 33 a.d., that he was about to
have the last Passover meal of his life. He was popular enough that Romans
considered him a potential threat for insurrection. A number of people around
him had been involved in revolutionary movements. He was stirring up resistance
and critique of the way that the Jews were running the Temple and quite a few
of the priests of the day thought he was more rabble rouser than Spiritual
guide. He was just not Orthodox in his piety or practice. They were more than
ready to give him up.
The scene in our scripture implies that Jesus had been wrestling
with this issue for a long time
internally. He wanted to live out of God's will for his life but he didn't want
to suffer, he didn't want to be tortured, he didn't want to die anymore than
any of the rest of us. And he could see it coming. His friends could see it
coming. Though it is nowhere recorded in scripture, I think it is fair to
assume that people must have warned him about these things and he had rolled
this over in his mind many times as the confrontation drew to a head.
The scene has been a powerful inspiration for generations to come
because, he appears to reach a moment of
resolve. It is like he has taken together all of his anxieties, he has really
envisioned, as we all do in these situations, what is the worst thing that can
happen to me. He has taken that in. He has taken in the brevity of his life,
all of the things he won't get to do, all the things he feels sorry for himself
about. He has worked it through. At the end of the day, he has moved from his
head to his heart, that the most important thing is to live out of your
authentic integrity. And if you are lucky enough to find that, if you are lucky
enough to be able to develop clear convictions, a unified sense of meaning and
purpose, then it becomes clear to you, in the midst of struggle and tension,
that this is the guiding force. This is what God has given you. And you live,
and if need be, you can die, out of your authentic integrity. God will be with
you. At one point in his life, the disciples asked Jesus about dealing with
persecution, trial, public executions and the like. Jesus said, “Do not worry
about what you shall say or what you shall do… for the Spirit will be with you.”
When you live out of your authentic integrity, you will know what to do and you
will have a transcendent sense that what is happening here is much bigger than
just you and you are not alone.
“Sir Thomas More, the scholar, lawyer, ambassador, Lord
Chancellor, and saint. He combined erudition, virtue,
and piety as few have. Sir Thomas More came into conflict with Henry VIII. King
Henry wanted Sir Thomas More to publicly affirm the supremacy of the king over
the church and endorse his divorce of Catherine so that he could marry his
mistress Ann Boleyn. Like most of us, for the longest time, Sir Thomas did all
he could to avoid any conflict and would not publicly condemn the King for what
was plainly scandalous. The king was not satisfied. The King wanted Sir Thomas
to make a public profession, knowing that if a man of such integrity as Sir
Thomas approved his divorce, all of England would follow.
“Sir Thomas' daughter came to him to talk him out of it. 'Father,
say whatever you will in public, for God knows what
you think in private and that is what matters.' Like our family members, she
comes and tells him to do what is expedient and just live.
More replied,
'Daughter, when a man takes an oath, he's holding his very self in his
hands. Like water. And if he opens his fingers, then he needn't hope
to find himself again.' He went on.
"If we lived in a State where virtue was profitable, common sense would
make us good, and greed would make us saintly. And we'd live like animals or
angels in the happy land that needs no heroes. But since in fact we see that
avarice, anger, envy, pride, sloth, lust and stupidity commonly profit far
beyond humility, chastity, fortitude, justice, and thought, we have to choose
to be human at all... we must stand fast a little- even at the risk of becoming
a hero." And he did. More chose to die rather than to lie for to lie would
mean he was less than what God intended for him to be. That is
courage.”[1]
Courage is necessary if we are to become what God intends
for us to be. Courage regularly calls us to dissent from uncritical allegiance
to the regnant political powers in order to stand fast for what God would have
us to become. This is the courage of conscience.
And
Empowerment. God grants us a courage that empowers us to become the disciples
that God would have us become. Jesus says in Matthew 10:26-33 "Have no fear
of those [who will persecute you]... do not fear those who kill the body but
cannot kill the soul; rather fear God... For even the hairs of your head are
numbered and each is valued. So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I will
also acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven."
Where does this courage come from? It is imputed to us by the
power of the Holy Spirit because one man had the courage to face Calvary and
die. It is imputed to us because one woman (Mary) had the courage to hear the
word of the Lord, and step out in faith, and live and give birth. This courage
comes from the other side of the grave. It comes from the resurrection. The
final word is life, and not death; the final word is not hate, it is love; the
final word is not grave, it is God.
I remind us of this,
in all simplicity and all of its profundity because of the daily courage we
simply have to manifest. I couldn't sleep the other night and I was up from 2-4,
flipping channels on the T.V.- Larry King, Chris Matthews, CNBC, every talk
show, every news show, over and over the same film clips, all talking about the
sniper in suburban Washington. This bizarre tragedy has morphed into a media
driven event and, like it or not, our collective fear is being fed media
steroids, so that a new monster is being birthed in our midst. I called my
brother, who lives on Capitol Hill in Washington the, next morning. My nephews
tell me that their sports events have been canceled, many schools are canceling
classes. Rational precaution has begun to degenerate into immobilizing
paralysis. It is not healthy.
I asked my brother if he was
afraid pumping gas. He reminded me he lived in a town where a plane has flown
into the Potomac river by accident, a plane has flown into the Pentagon on
purpose, and that there are lots of things that can happen, lots of things that
he could fret over every day, and that what strikes him is the ordinary courage
of people who wake up every day and deal with much bigger demons in their own
lives.
And he is right. It takes courage to face terminal
illness and keep the hope alive, the vigor and zest for living. I think of a
father whose young daughter has had multiple cancers. This young girl had
bravely gone through chemo, radiation, surgeries- she got better, the cancer
came back in different places- more chemo, more radiation. It went away, and
then it came back again- they got one of those tests that indicated the
preliminary presence and all the adults in the family were just devastated… they
didn't say anything to the little girl but she could pick up on the mood of the
family.
Her father goes to tuck her in bed that night and
she is anxious and worried. She finally says to her Dad, “Daddy am I going to
die?” A long pause and he says to her, “Honey, I'm doing all that I can.”
Courage is getting up every day and living his life, standing strong for others.
It takes courage to live alone after fifty years of
marriage. It takes courage to tend after loved ones who are sick for months and
years on end. It takes courage to pick up the pieces of your life after a
divorce and keep open to the possibility that you might find real intimacy in
another relationship after you have been burned. It takes courage to get out of
bed and go on and choose life when depression has squeezed out every bit of
light and every bit of hope in your being, and all your body wants to do is veg
out.
It takes courage to wake up each day at mid-life and
keep looking for work when the market for your skill set has dramatically shrunk
right around you, and you have to keep believing in yourself when others don't
return your calls, and the money is tight, and you may have to reinvent yourself
and find a new script that you never wanted to have to live.
It takes courage to go on when sin has destroyed your life, your
family relationships, your reputation. It takes courage to go on when you find
yourself in a work world that honors no virtue and rewards evil more than good.
These come at us every day.
Courage is a grace from God
that allows us to become what God would have us to be.
“On
the front of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, the virtue of courage is a
woman holding a shield with a lion emblazoned on the front. Underneath, there is
a portrait of the vice of cowardice. It shows a man running from a rabbit. We
all know that courage is much more than facing up to a rabbit, but courage is
that which empowers us to be truly human, and not less.
“In the Wizard of Oz, the lion was in search of his courage.
Nothing seems more pathetic than a lion without courage. It is like an eagle
without wings. Courage is what keeps us able to meet the tests and be truly
human. As Samuel Johnson said, 'Unless a man has courage, he has no security for
preserving any other'.
“Courage produces heroes. There are
heroes in battle like Audie Murphy, a hero in thought like Galileo, a hero in
compassion like Mother Teresa, a hero for justice like Martin Luther King, a
hero in morality like Albert Schweitzer. In each of these cases it was courage
which was necessary to hold fast to wisdom, justice, temperance, faith, hope,
and
love.”[2]
The good news of the gospel is that God will grant you the
courage that you need to endure the test which is before you this day, every
day. If you turn daily to God, there is a power of courage that descends from on
high, that upbuilds you and transforms you from the temptation to be less than
human and fills you with the courage to proceed in faith, to proceed with quiet
strength through the valley of death, the valley of guilt, the valley of
anxiety. God will grant you the courage you need.
Amen.
