HEROES
Meditation by Alan
Maker – 26 July 2012 @ Volmoed
Whatever happened to the hero?
According to the dictionary a hero is a person distinguished
by exceptional courage, nobility, and fortitude. Heroes do not fit any mould.
They come from all walks of life and they fill us with awe and wonder.
I have always had heroes – mostly on the playing fields –
but I have to admit there have been some outside of that, even in politics.
Heroes are not perfect, they are inspirational, driving
those who admire them to achieve greater personal heights. Many of us have
Nelson Mandela as a hero. He is not perfect even in the most liberal definition
of perfection, but he is an inspiration – not to be a politician but to be a
human who can overcome adversity without bearing malice or seeking retribution.
My cricketing hero was Roy McLean. He brought every game
alve. When he walked into bat, capless – never a helmet, they are for
businessmen who have to be at work tomorrow, - a hero hits the ball with his
bat not his head!. He looked up into the blue Durban sky to get his eyes
accustomed to the light, so did every school boy even though they did not come
out of any pavilion.
Watching him make a duck was more exciting than seeing most
cricketers score a hundred. He was electric in the field, swooping on the ball,
picking it up and throwing it back to the wicket keeper’s glove in one
movement.
He was not perfect, he played some stupid and irresponsible
shots. He drank gin and coke whilst the others slurped their juice. We used to
go to his shop in Hooper Lane and buy something of little value, just to be
served by Roy McLean. He treated us always with grace and kindness. He was a
hero.
Jesus of Nazareth has always been a hero figure to me. I
have no patience with the soppy, dreary picture of him we see in so many
paintings and read of in so many poems, or sing of in wimpy hymns.
He was a carpenter, the son of a carpenter, in a day when
there were no electric saws and planes and lathes. Everything had to be done by
hand. He must have been physically strong. He could walk 50 kilometres in the
day and still have the strength to teach and show compassion. When the
disciples felt he was tired and needed some space, they shooed the children
away, but he was angry – he wanted to bless them. He had the strength of
character to be able to call strong men away from their work to follow him. The
corruption of the money-changers made him so angry, he physically upturned
their tables and threw them out, the death of his friend, Lazarus, caused him
to weep, his impending death made him so anxious that his perspiration stood
out on his brow like great drops of blood.
He was comfortable in the company of fisherfolk, tax
collectors, rich Pharisees, Roman centurions, and even prostitutes – one Anglican
commentator wrote he thought Jesus met only with ex-prostitutes, but they only
became ex- after being with him. On the Cross he was not afraid to call out
loud what we have all felt inside, My God, why have you forsaken me! And then
the faith to commend himself to that God.
What I have always found most extraordinary was the loyalty
and faithfulness of those first disciples – of the 11, 10 died horrific deaths,
only John survived into old age – and not one of them let him down, recanted.
They had spent three years with him and could find no fault.
If it were I Jesus was asking as he did Peter at Caesarea
Philippi, “Who do you say I am?” My answer would have to be “You are the
extraordinary man, not the shadowy God-man, the extraordinary man who shows to
all humanity what God is like and what it means to be human.
If God is like Jesus we do not believe in a far off First
Cause, or Unmoved Mover, but and amazing Being who loves, whose mind can be
changed, who can be angry and compassionate, who weeps as Jeremiah tells us at
the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem just as Jesus did over that same city.
Jesus demonstrates a God whose power does not lie in brute strength, but in
weakness.
Look what God does!
God buries God’s message in frail humanity, God often
chooses the younger sibling over the elder, God selects an obscure group of
people to be the bearer of God’s message of harmony to all humanity; The Cross,
not any military or regal symbol, stands at the centre of our faith.
That God created the universe out of love, and placed in
women and men something of the divine so that each one is of supreme value no
matter his or her outer appearances. Each one of us is God’s work of art, and
that does not depend on how we feel when we wake up in the morning, or how the
boss, the client, the civil servant treats us during the day.
It is a matter of God’s grace that always and everywhere we
are God’s works of art. In the words of a song from ‘Hairspray’, we need to
love ourselves from the inside out. That means it is alright to fail. We all do
in some way or another, and frequently – none of us is perfect, but we can be
given a second chance, we can be forgiven, we can start again.
That’s the God we see in Jesus. In him we can discover true
humanity. In a money-grubbing, selfish and intolerant world, he insists real
humanity consists not in worship, prayer and hymn-singing, they play their
part, but only as they lead us to care for the little people of the world, the
widows and orphans, those without civil rights, those who cannot afford medical
care or housing, those who are shunned by others who consider themselves
morally superior.
The giant prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures all make it
clear there is a deep moral content to our faith. Dietrich Bonhoeffer insisted
that Christianity did not add anything to being human, it meant being human. He
called Jesus “the man for others”, and that’s what it means to be human – “to
be for others”.
That is one of the extraordinary aspects of Jesus.
He really did see and treat people as God’s works of art –
Simon saw a woman of questionable morality pour perfume on Jesus, but he saw
someone who had received forgiveness; lepers were labeled unclean, but Jesus,
touching them, healed them; no less unclean were the Roman occupying soldiers,
but Jesus said of one them, he had found no such faith in all Israel. Women and
children were not regarded as fully human, but he brought women into his
closest circle and treated children gently and kindly.
Jesus is a full-bodied hero. We are not called to copy or
imitate him, but to follow him. The Christian life is an heroic one, it is not
a judgmental, moralistic one constantly on the look out for wrongdoing to
condemn, a pasty, milksop existence empty of fun and laughter. We are called to
be heroes. How many of them I have met during my ministry, unsung to be sure,
but heroes nevertheless! – they have faced tragedy with pain and courage; they
have risen early in the morning to make soup, they have traveled miles to
smuggle books and food to Zimbabwe; they have spent hours visiting children in
hospital, they have endured hours of committee meetings to ensure that the old,
the poor, those with Aids, and the children are adequately cared for; they have
diligently packed food in a cold damp basement, they have taken hampers to the
worst parts of town; they have given up part of their Christmas Day to serve
those no-one wants, they have protested against injustice and inhumanity when
it was fashionable to remain silent, they have spent hours in laboratories
trying to find cures for the diseases ravaging the human body; they have blown
the whistle when they have seen bullying, injustice and corruption at work,
they have done much unseen and unheralded and unrecognized to help someone
else.
They have laughed and cried, told jokes, thrown parties, and
even been known to enjoy some wine and whisky, they and too many others to
mention, are heroes even though they never saw themselves as such, in fact,
they saw others, as heroes.
Christian heroism is based on a commitment to Jesus flowing
from dedicated service to God’s extraordinary kingdom, in which the first is
last, the servant is master, and a cup of cold water is given in love, is as
valuable as the most spectacular gesture.
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