What can I tell you about courage?
I missed the Viet Nam draft by a few years and was never called to go into a battlefield and face enemy fire like some of you have. Or on the flip side, I did not have to wrestle with declaring myself a conscientious objector, going before a hostile board to get approval, and then face charges of cowardice and lack of patriotism from neighbors and friends, as some I have known have faced.
What can I tell you about courage? I, who never have been a first responder, never entered a home where someone is threatening another with a gun, or never entered a building on fire as some of you have? As we once again remembered 9-11 this past week, will any of us ever forget that image of firefighters going up the stairs of the World Trade Center tower while everyone else was fleeing down those steps?
What can I tell you about courage? I who never marched in non-violent protest in the face of armed vigilantes, policemen, water cannons, and dogs like Civil Rights protesters of my youth in Birmingham and Selma?
What can I tell you about courage? I who have never gone into surgery where doctors are uncertain whether I will survive?
What can someone like I tell you about courage?
I can tell you precious little about courage – but the scriptures tell us a lot.
Open the Bible and read through the pages and you will a great succession of God’s people who showed courage in the midst of mobs and persecution, poverty and enemy forces: Moses and Joshua, Deborah and Elijah, Ruth and Esther, the prophets, Mary and Joseph, the disciples, Peter and Paul and all those nameless believers in Acts who defied governors, faced angry mobs, were chained in prison, suffered mocking and even being stoned or crucified.
How did they do it? What is this courage?
The word in scripture means “bold heart” or “strength of will.” These people had a heart bold enough, a will strong enough to do what God wanted them to do. Even though doing it was very difficult. Even in the face of danger or pain. That is courage.
Where did that bold heart come from? The scriptures we just heard tell us. From Joshua: “Be strong and courageous; do not be frightened or dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” These people we encounter in the Bible took that to mean everywhere – in front of raging mobs or in a royal court, in the face of a hostile enemy or ravaging hunger.
Where can we find the strength of will we need? From the promise of Paul in his letter to the Romans: “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” No, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all of creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
In these promises lie the root of all courage: that God is with us whatever comes and wherever we go: whether it be a battlefield or overseas mission field; whether it be a school lunchroom or locker room, an office cubicle or courtroom; whether we find ourselves in a doctor’s office or marriage counselor’s office, on a hospital gurney or beside a grave, or even in the depths of despair.
God is there. Courage comes from trusting these promises.
Courage is an act of will, the choice to do what is right. As C.S. Lewis once put it, “courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.” In other words, courage is being loving or forgiving, gentle or patient, when that is hard to do.
But courage is not just an act of human will. Even more, courage is a divine gift, something more than what we can muster alone. Courage is one of the gifts that God wants to give us. Read the stories of these heroes in the Bible. Time after time they ask for help. The Psalms are one plea for help after another. In the Garden of Gethsemane and on the cross, Jesus himself asked for help.
It is not that the people of God have no fear. It is that because of God’s presence – and because of God’s promises – that they have a faith and hope that overcomes their fear. The nameless Christians of Acts and the early church “were not born courageous; they became courageous” through the power of the Holy Spirit… the power of God… God’s own strength…in them.”[1]
What can I tell you about courage? Precious little.
But there are thousands, millions of nameless Christians who through the years have chosen to do what was right – even when it was hard. They may not merit an entry in Wikipedia or become famous on Youtube, but they have been living examples of what it looks like to rely on the Holy Spirit to help them. They have shown us courage in action because they lived trusting that God would not fail or forsake them. The Scripture has taught me about courage; but even more, there has been a whole host of the communion of saints who have taught me about courage with their lives
There was Dori. Kerry and I got to know her during a volunteer-in-mission year we spent in a poor neighborhood in Indianapolis after I finished law school and Kerry finished seminary. Kerry and she were about the same age but their circumstances could not be more different. Kerry, like I, was a child of privilege and had finished graduate school. She was a child of poverty and had not finished high school. Kerry and I were happily married with no children yet; Dori had an alcoholic husband and one child, with one child on the way.
As Kerry reflected on it later, “I was a trained minister, she was a wise woman of faith; I had goals, Dori had dreams. Dori wanted some day to finish high school and then college, and become a teacher. I couldn’t help but feel Dori’s life was a dead-end street; Dori didn’t. More than anyone I have known, Doi lived trusting in God’s promise that He would never leave her alone, and she drew strength from it. When the refrigerator was empty and she didn’t know if her husband would bring home the paycheck that week, she held on until help came. When she did not know where the money for the heating bill would come from, she held on until help came – one time it was in an envelope with just the right amount of money slipped under her door. When she feared for her children’s safety, she drew strength to leave the mess she was in and made her way alone.” Kerry then concluded her memory of Dori with these words: “Ernest Hemingway once called courage, ‘grace under pressure.’ Dori showed me what that looks like.”[2]
Jeff was a lawyer in a church we served in Richmond. He taught Sunday School, served in a key mission ministry of the church, and was a generous steward of his considerable financial resources, always responding to the needs of others. To no one’s surprise, he was elected a Deacon.
It was the 1990s and the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church adopted an amendment to the Book of Order that prevented ordination of not only gay and lesbian clergy, but also elders and deacons. Jeff was in a quandary because he was gay. Friends who knew this advised him not to resign from the deacons, because the church wouldn’t ask, so he didn’t have to tell. But Jeff felt that he no longer could hide who he was. He felt God was calling him to take a stand – and so he resigned in a letter to Session. In doing so, he prompted a congregation to wrestle with an issue that they would probably have preferred to ignore. And not all at once, but eventually, that congregation would take up his side.
I think of Gordon, a retired army colonel who was also a member of the congregation in Richmond. A veteran of World War II and the Korean conflict, Gordon had seen many a battle. But near the end of his life, he faced he most difficult battle of his life: his adult son was murdered in a random act of violence in Atlanta, leaving a wife and children behind. Gordon struggled in his soul to avoid spiraling into hatred and bitterness. He could have let that anger have the last word, but he had the courage to take on a new battle and pray for the power to forgive that murderer. That was a long journey, but Gordon believed that God was with him, even in the midst of incomparable grief, and that God would help him find the strength to keep on living. And eventually find peace.
I think of Nola, who our congregation in Pottstown got to know when we got the call from a shelter for victims of domestic violence. They had a woman who had a two year-old daughter and had just given birth to triplets. Could church members help out by rocking and helping to feed those triplets? That woman was Nola. It turned out that she was not only a victim of abuse; her husband had also abandoned her to return to their native Nigeria where he had a secret second family. Going back to Nigeria was not a good option for Nola because her husband was well connected and could avoid supporting her and might even take the children away from her. But to stay in this country, she was undocumented. How could she and her children survive?
With the congregation’s help, and with a lot of courage, she stayed. She moved out of the shelter into a tiny apartment with those four children and a fifth child, a son who had been staying with Nola’s sister in Nigeria. She had the courage to live undocumented and eke out a living buying things cheaply over here and then having her sister sell them in Nigeria – since she could not hold a paying job legally. She had the courage to send her four youngest children to the Hershey School when the triplets were 3 because they could get an opportunity that they couldn’t get at home. She made that commute back and forth to the Hershey School with church member’s help to see her children regularly. Her oldest son was not eligible for the Hershey School because he was not a U.S. citizen. But the church helped to be extra family for him, even raising the money to pay for his college educaton.
Nola joined the church. She sang in the choir. She eagerly made a financial contribution each week from her very meager resources, although she was disappointed that we American Christians did not provide an opportunity each week to dance down the aisle to make an offering, as her Nigerian church had. Several cars of church members traveled to the immigration court when she got a stay from deportation and they celebrated with her when she got her green card and permanent legal status. Her five children? All college graduates. One is studying to be an astrophysicist and one just graduated from the University of Chicago Law School.
Nola’s example shows something else about courage. Courage comes when we ask God for the gift of courage and stand on the promise that God will be with us, no matter where we go and no matter what we face. But it is easier to find that courage when we have brothers and sisters, siblings in the faith, standing with us.
I remember Nancy. A seemingly timid but faithful soul. She was facing serious surgery and was scared. But to her great surprise as she was rolled on her hospital gurney to a waiting area outside of the operating room, she found herself beside a friend also on a gurney facing surgery, also scared, and also a sister in the faith. What did they do? They reached out and held each other’s hands and prayed together the words of Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” And later, “even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for Thou art with me.”
Friends, someone has written that “life will always provide us with opportunities for courage or cowardice.” There will be new schools, new jobs, new bosses, new college roommates. This week, even this day, life will provide us with opportunities to do what God wants us to do, or not. Will we speak out when cruel stereotypes are used about another or will we condone them? Will we face the truth of struggles with our marriage or with our health, and get help? Or not? Will we share generously with others or clutch tightly to what we have? Will we work towards forgiveness or let our anger seethe?
Sometimes we may be called to face angry mobs or enter the lion’s den, or to land on the shores of Normandy. But more often than not, our courage will be tested in the rounds of ordinary life. We are not called to seek out danger; we are called to be courageous where we are, and with whatever we face. We are called to live with a bold heart doing what God wants us to do.
We are called to remember that because of the Holy Spirit given to us in Jesus Christ, we need never, never, never do it alone.
[1] From a sermon by Rev. Kerry Pidcock-Lester, preached at First Presbyterian Church, Pottstown on Sept. 27, 1998.
[2] Ibid.
