Changed a bunch of this on the fly Sunday. You may want to check out the audio recording instead.
Deuteronomy 31:6 (Common English Bible)
Be strong! Be fearless! Don’t be afraid and don’t be scared
by your enemies, because the Lord your God is the one who marches with you. He
won’t let you down, and he won’t abandon you.
Hebrews 13:5-6 (Common English Bible)
Your way of life should be free from the love of money, and
you should be content with what you have. After all, he has said, I will never
leave you or abandon you. This is why we can confidently say,
The Lord is my helper,
and I won’t be
afraid.
What can people do to me?
What does it mean to have courage?
The dictionary defines courage as: “the quality of mind or
spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain, etc., without
fear; bravery.”
·
I have jumped off a cliff into the ocean
·
I have jumped out of a perfectly good airplane
·
I have helped create a non-profit organization
that raised over $15 million dollars and helped 3,600 families devastated in
flooding caused by Hurricane Ike in 2008
§
In the process, it was the first and only time
in my life that an elected official asked me for a bribe
§
I stood up to union workers in NW Indiana in
order to help more families and was able to convince them to join us and not
fight us
·
I started a church with Nancy, Jessica and a hope
and a prayer
By
our definition above, I certainly did not demonstrate courage --- because
believe me FEAR was a factor in all of them.
On
July 20th, 1969 I was at Camp Edwards in East Troy, Wisconsin when we all
gathered around a transistor radio to listen in as Neil Armstrong took that
first "Giant Leap for Mankind"
Now that took courage --- but again, by our
definition, was it courage?
You could hear the fear in the voices of
Mission Control, and Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong when their computer gave
them a warning signal shortly before landing on the lunar surface.
So
maybe our definition of courage isn’t completely accurate.
In
1953, Paul Tillich wrote: The Courage To Be.
Tillich
was consumed with the existential questions of human existence and more
specifically what is called ontology --- the study of being.
Since
the nineteenth century, belief in God has become more difficult than at any
point in human history.
Tillich
writes:
“Feuerbach explained God away in terms of
the infinite desire of the human heart; Marx explained [God] away in terms of
an ideological attempt to rise above the given reality; Nietzsche as weakness
of the will to live."
Consequently,
we live in an age of unprecedented anxiety he suggests.
Tillich
outlines three types of anxiety and offers three ways to display --- what he
calls --- the courage to be.
Tillich
writes:
We
are struck with the anxiety of fate and
death --- this is the most basic and universal form of anxiety --- for
without God, we cannot be assured that we will continue existing after our
bodily deaths.
It is the recognition of our mortality
We become anxious when we are unsure
whether our actions create a causal damnation which leads to a very real and
quite unavoidable death
We display courage when we cease to rely on
others to tell us what will come of us, (what will happen when we die etc.) and
begin seeking those answers out for ourselves.
Tillich call this the "courage of
confidence"
Second,
we are struck with the anxiety of guilt
and condemnation --- we know that without God there can be no assurance
about the reality of any moral principle and therefore we cannot perform
morally meaningful actions
This anxiety afflicts our moral
self-affirmation.
We as humans are responsible for our moral
being, and when asked by our judge (whomever that may be) what we have made of
ourselves we must answer.
The anxiety is
produced when we realize our being is unsatisfactory.
Tillich writes: "It [Nonbeing]
threatens man's moral self-affirmation, relatively in terms of guilt, absolutely
in terms of condemnation".
We display courage when we first identify
our sin; despair or whatever is causing us guilt or afflicting condemnation.
We then rely on the idea that we are
accepted regardless.
Again Tillich writes:
"The courage to be is the courage to accept oneself as accepted in
spite of being unacceptable".
Third,
we are struck with the anxiety of
emptiness and meaninglessness --- for without God, we cannot be assured
that existence has any real, concrete meaning or purpose.
This Anxiety of Meaninglessness and
Emptiness attacks our being as a whole.
We worry about the loss of an ultimate
concern, goal or purpose.
This anxiety is also brought on by a loss
of spirituality.
We as beings feel the threat of non-being
when we feel we have no place or purpose in the world. "It [Nonbeing]
threatens [one’s] spiritual self-affirmation, relatively in terms of emptiness,
absolutely in terms of meaninglessness".
We display the courage to be when facing
this anxiety by displaying true faith, and by again, self-affirming oneself.
We draw from the "power of being"
which is God for Tillich and use that faith to in turn affirm ourselves and
negate the non-being.
We can find our meaning and purpose through
the "power of being".
Tillich
writes that the ultimate source of the courage to be is the "God above
God," which transcends the theistic idea of God.
Thus
for Tillich, courage is the courage to be YOU whom God has created.
To recognize that God gives us purpose
To recognize that God accepts us
Or
as Krista Tippet described Tillich’s understanding of courage --- courage is
about the way that we live our lives --- every day . . .
On
June 22, 1996, 18-year-old Keshia Thomas attended a counter rally in her home
town of Ann Arbor Michigan
Hundreds
of protesters turned out to tell the white supremacist KKK members that they
were not welcome in their town.
At
one point during the event, a man with a SS tattoo and wearing a t-shirt
emblazoned with a Confederate flag ended up on the protesters' side of the
fence and a small group began to chase him. He was quickly knocked to the
ground and people began kicking and hitting him.
As
people began to shout, "Kill the Nazi," 18-year-old Keshia, fearing
that mob mentality had taken over, decided to act.
She
threw herself on top of the man she had come to protest, protecting him from
the blows, and told the crowd that you "can't beat goodness into a
person."
In
discussing her motivation for this courageous act after the event, she stated,
"Someone had to step out of the pack
and say, 'this isn't right'... I knew what it was like to be hurt. The many
times that that happened, I wish someone would have stood up for me... violence
is violence - nobody deserves to be hurt, especially not for an idea."
Several
months after the event, a young man came up to Keshia to say thanks, telling
her that the man she had protected was his father.
For
Keshia, learning that he had a son brought even greater significance to her
heroic act. As she observed,
"For the most part, people who hurt...
they come from hurt. It is a cycle. Let's say they had killed him or hurt him
really bad. How does the son feel? Does he carry on the violence?"
Mark
Brunner, was a student photographer that day and took the now famous
photograph, added that what was so remarkable was who Keshia Thomas saved:
"She put herself at physical risk to
protect someone who, in my opinion, would not have done the same for her. Who
does that in this world?"
COURAGE!
Last
Monday evening, a dear friend was invited to sit in front of a camera and tell
his story.
To
tell why, despite being gay, he had not left the church or the God he loves.
That
is courage.
I
have never stood up like Keshia did and risked my life, or even really risked
my livelihood for someone else.
Throughout
the Bible, God promises, not only the Israelites --- but all of us --- that we would
never be abandoned.
How
in the midst of the Holocaust someone like Eva Kor kept her faith --- I have no
idea.
I have never been challenged like that
But Keshia and Eva demonstrated amazing
courage
Not the courage to jump out of an airplane --- but the courage to live
their life fully --- every day
Each
morning I read Richard Rohr's daily devotion that comes by email.
The
focus has been on prophets lately.
Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran Pastor who was executed by the Nazi's in 1945
at Flossenburg prison camp --- shortly before it was liberated, once wrote:
We live by responding to the word of God .
. . since this word is addressed to our entire life, the response, too, can
only be an entire one; it must be given with our entire life as it is realized
in all our several actions.
Following
Christ is a matter of engagement in this world, Bonhoeffer writes:
“living unreservedly in life’s duties,
problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing we
throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own
sufferings, but those of God in the world . . . That, I think is faith, that is
metanoia.” (transformation)
Bonhoeffer
like Tillich, came to understand that courage is about the work we do.
How we live every day
So
how do we live courageous lives?
General
Tom Jones shared with me a wonderful quick read called: The 10 Second Rule, written by Clare De Graaf
The
simple premise of the book is that throughout the day, most of us have
impressions that we are to do something --- and we are reasonably certain that it
is Jesus that wants us to do it.
It
could be an impression to either do something good for someone or it could be a
warning about not doing something that would not be honoring to God.
While
we can feel the nudge from Jesus, it is amazing how often we almost
simultaneously sense another voice whispering: “You don’t have time to do that
– helping that person could get messy – you can’t afford to help them right now
– it’s okay, one more time won’t kill you – send it, you’ve been wronged!”
And
when we listen to that other voice, the moment of opportunity passes (often to
our relief).
DeGraaf
writes:
Because I knew that almost every decision
to obey would cost me something – time, money, embarrassment, inconvenience, or
a momentary pleasure denied . . . By choosing not to obey Jesus, I could avoid
all of that! As a result, I found myself settling for good enough almost daily
– which is kryptonite for any would-be followers of Jesus!
He
explains how he learned a simple rule that helped him break that cycle.
He
called it: The 10 Second Rule:
“Just do the next thing you’re reasonably
certain Jesus wants you to do.”
(and do it immediately before you change
your mind!)
The
question remains --- how do we know exactly what Jesus wants us to do!
Most
of us have never actually heard God speak.
But,
the more we fall in love with Jesus, through prayer and study --- the more
confident we can become in responding to the opportunities that DAILY come our
way.
Sure,
we can never be 100% certain.
But
I would suggest that the need for certainty is often the enemy of doing what
God wants us to do!
Let’s
just say this impression wasn’t from God.
So what?
You’ve still done something good for another human or kept yourself from
something harmful. How can that not be the will of God?
This
simple rule gives you a place to begin following Jesus, right now – today ---
maybe even for the first time.
It’s
following Jesus made simple and being led by Jesus, moment by moment, day by
day (or even in just the next 10 seconds!).
Jesus
said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their
cross daily and follow me.” Luke 9:23.
Simply
put, it’s trusting Jesus enough to say “no” to what we want, and “yes” to what Jesus
wants.
If
you want to know what courage is --- it is saying YES, when the opportunity
presents itself later today.
Courage
isn’t about BIG, heroic deeds --- it’s not about jumping out of an airplane, or
even walking on the moon --- courage is about recognizing that you are a child
of God, and as God’s child, you can make a difference every moment of every day
in how you live.
I
invite you to live courageously!
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