The
Rev. Timothy B. Safford
October
18, 2009
In the movie Gandhi, I like the scene where the Anglican priest, Charles
Andrews, shows up in South Africa to help Gandhi in his first campaign of
non-violent resistance against laws that would terribly repress Indians living
in that country.
As they walk to town, they encounter some young thugs
who spew racial epithets and threaten to throw stones at the white man and
brown man walking together. Father
Andrews says, “Perhaps we should walk another way,” and Gandhi replies, “Have
you read the New Testament?”
“Of course” Father Andrews replies, so Gandhi asks
him, “What do you think Jesus means when he tells his followers that if their
enemy strikes them on the right cheek, to offer then their left?”
“Certainly, Jesus meant this in a metaphorical way,”
Father Andrews says, trying to convince Gandhi not to walk forward toward the
thugs and a certain pummeling.
Gandhi doesn’t think it’s metaphorical; Jesus
understood that we had to show courage in the face of danger. “If we face our enemies with courage,
they will hate us less and respect us more,” he tells Andrews.
By this time, Gandhi has come face to face with the
thugs. He does not waver. Finally, the thugs let them pass, and
Gandhi adds, “You will find that there is room for us all.”
As they walk away, Father Andrews wipes his brow and
says that they were lucky. “I
thought you were a man of God,” Gandhi replies.
“I am,” Andrews states emphatically, “but I am not so
egotistical to think that God plans the day around my dilemmas.”
I think Gandhi made a brilliant observation about
Jesus. Jesus was calling his
followers to be courageous in the face of threats and danger, and such courage
could be transformative.
I hear that same call to courage in the gospel reading
today where disciples James and John come to Jesus and ask him for power and
prestige when he is victorious.
They mistakenly think that Jesus is going to win an earthly
victory. Like Gandhi confronted
the corrupt government of India and the entire British empire, Jesus is going
to go into Jerusalem to confront the corrupt religious establishment and
overthrow the Roman empire and end their occupation of Palestine. I guess they think God is going to rain
down fire and brimstone, destroying all that is evil, and then Jesus can take
the throne of God. James and John
are asking for cabinet positions, of a sort, in his new administration.
Jesus asks them about their courage: “Are you able to
drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized
with?" He is asking them, do
they have the courage to be arrested, beaten, tortured and even killed. They say, “We are able.” As we find out, they are not; they have
not the courage to drink the cup that Jesus will drink.
Jesus called his followers to heroic courage and to
suffer physical harm if need be.
Now,
I don’t want to get too heavy here.
This is not a sermon calling you to martyrdom for your faith; I don’t
want you die as witness to your confidence in Jesus. I think we make a mistake when we think that Jesus, or
Gandhi, or Martin Luther King, who modeled so much of his prophetic ministry on
the teachings of Gandhi, wanted to die.
Surely, they did not. But
they had the courage to stand up to the forces of oppression that wanted to
destroy them. Even with the threat
of pain and death they would not waver in their witness.
The point of this sermon is to awaken in you the
reality that your faith must be measured by your courage. And, are you willing to use that
courage as you live your faith in the world?
Every one here has a life that demands courage in
carrying out the ministry of reconciliation (which is a ministry of confronting
injustice for the sake of righteousness).
If you teach in a public school, and fear for your
personal safety, but believe that teaching is the vocation that God has placed
before you, it takes courage to teach day after day. If your faith convinces you that we need to witness against
violence and the illegal guns that prey on the streets of our city such that
you protest in front of the gun store that sells them, that takes courage. If you need to confront a family member
who is drinking too much, or is addicted to drugs such that their life is being
lost, you will need every ounce of courage that God has placed within you. If you are in relationship that is
stifling you, or abusive to you, it will take courage to confront your partner,
and yourself in this oppression.
Be bold in your faith.
God’s courage is within you.
God will use that courage to bring healing, love and justice.
The faith-filled courage of which I speak, the same
courage that Jesus asked James and John if they had, is a courage that is made
manifest through your physical body.
Showing faith-filled courage is not a spiritual exercise as much as a
physical one.
It is easier to describe examples of this courage in
secular ways. A firefighter,
dressed in heavy gear, with an ax in hand, standing in front of a burning
building where a person is trapped, communicates with her body tremendous
courage. The firefighters who went
into the World Trade Center on September 11th unleashed courage in
those who witnessed their heroic action.
Their courage lifted them above the fear.
Similarly, both Gandhi and Dr. King were able to risk
their personal safety because Jesus risked his. Because Gandhi was willing to be beaten and jailed to
protest an unjust law, thousands did the same. Because Dr. King would risk his life, others would face the
dogs of fire hoses of those who wanted to stop the march toward civil rights.
And, in their courage, the convinced their followers
to not use violence to respond to violence. This they learned from the courage of Jesus as he went to
Jerusalem to confront the evils of earthly empire. In fighting injustice in South Africa, Gandhi said, “I am
too prepared to die, but there is no cause for which I am prepared to
kill.”
How do we have our own bodies communicate the courage
our faith bestows? Again, I am not
interested in your or my martyrdom, but I am certain that we must be courageous
in the living of our faith.
You have heard me say before that when asked by a
person on the street for money, I rarely give it. However, I try not to walk by the person, ignoring him, pretending
that he doesn’t exist. Often, I
stop and speak with the person, trying to love the dignity within him that is
also within me, the dignity given by God.
Sometimes, this becomes uncomfortable; when I don’t give money, a person
might be upset, vocally violent and close to physical violence. I try not to cower, but love, as I
would wish to be loved if I were in the same position.
What I have discovered is how many people take notice
that I do this. Passersby,
merchants, even police officers, have commented that I have changed how they
deal with homeless folks. I am not
looking for kudos here; not much courage is involved, really. Still, it takes courage to not have a
person who really is a nuisance to me become a brother or sister in Christ.
So, how will you communicate through your body the
courage your faith bestows? For
Christ’s sake, how will you show it?
In the gospel today, Jesus tells us that our bodies
most powerfully communicate our faith when we serve another person. “Whoever wishes to become great among
you must be your servant.” Again,
this is about our physical bodies, and to serve, often, courage is needed.
Many years ago, the homeless ministry of which I was
part held a dinner honoring a beloved volunteer, Ann, who was moving away. For years, before the computer became a
fund-raising tool, she had kept the name of every donor on an index card, and
meticulously filed and updated the cards, keeping them in a distinctive box,
known as the “box of life,” because out of this box came the resources that got
people off of the street.
For the dinner, an identical box was prepared, and
filled with blank cards. The box
was cleverly poised on the podium where accolades for this beloved volunteer
were spoken. When she came forward
to receive her plaque, right on cue the box was accidentally knocked to the
floor, and the fake index cards spewed everywhere.
Some people gasped; some, realizing it was a gag,
laughed uproariously. To this day,
I don’t know if Ann knew if it were a joke or not, but in that moment, she
preached a sermon that I will never forget.
She knelt down on the floor, in front of a table of
homeless guests that she was giving her time to serve, and she began to pick up
the cards, one by one, and put them back into the box. What an act of courage. After a few moments, realizing that the
cards were blank, she returned to her seat, leaving the plaque on the podium.
Her importance could not be expressed in a
plaque. Her greatness was seen
when she reached for those cards, and the arrogance of those who thought it
would be funny to knock her ministry to the floor was exposed.
This is what I want you to do this week as a spiritual
exercise. Find a situation and
person to serve, and I mean really serve.
Maybe it won’t take much courage to cook the dinner and clean up after
if you usually are the one served, but see what you experience in changing
roles. It would take courage, I
suspect, to tell the custodian at your business that you are going to haul the
trash and clean the bathrooms for a week so that he or she can get some other
projects done. It would take
tremendous courage to meet the physical needs of a homeless person on the
street by washing them, or feeding them, or by transporting them.
We are a people beholden to our roles in family,
society and workplace, and intent in keeping all the boundaries that protect us
in those roles. I have no
criticism of that.
But, possibly, the great act of courage is to give up
those roles and step into a role of radical service. Jesus did this.
God incarnate, yet he, in the words of scripture, “emptied himself,” to
be a servant to humankind. Gandhi
could’ve done well as a lawyer, but he stepped from that role to be a
servant. Dr. King had opportunity
to step out of leadership in the civil rights struggle over and over again and
become one of the most respected and successful figures in any African American
community—the preacher. Instead,
he died violently preparing to speak to a gathering of garbage workers
struggling for respect. In his
briefcase was a can of deviled ham, and a bank book for an account overdrawn.
I admit that I don’t have much
courage. But if I see you show
your courage, and step out of your roles, and serve others who might otherwise
serve you, I might get a little more.