SERMON ‘Feel the fear, and do it anyway’
Let’s pray:
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts
be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
An old black and white photo:
The scene is a shipyard.
The city: Berlin.
The year: 1936.
A crowd of workers pack together on the dock,
clad in overalls and some in suits.
It’s the launch of a new naval training vessel,
and the occasion has brought
with it a special guest.
The workers are standing,
all looking in the same direction –
towards the front, and their right.
Their faces are filled with joy and elation
as they cheer the object of their attention –
a man, who is off-camera.
But, given what they’re doing,
the identity of their special guest is clear:
for, each worker has a hand outstretched in the NAZI salute:
Hitler is visiting, and they’re thrilled
to receive him.
...But stop.
On the back of your service sheet is the photo,
which I’d invite you to have a look at...
In the midst of the crowd
you might notice something unusual.
Each worker has a hand
outstretched in the NAZI salute
Each worker...bar one.
In a sea of salutes, stands a lone man,
arms firmly crossed against his chest.
In the upper middle of the photograph,
August Landmesser makes what is a
lone, quiet act of protest amidst the crowd.
He is the quiet conscience of the picture –
a witness, demonstrating that not everyone
is toeing the line of Chancellor Hitler and his National Socialist party.
Landmesser, had, in 1931, joined the party.
Like many others around him, it was a pragmatic decision,
in the hope of landing a job in the Depression and
post-war time of economic meltdown in Germany.
But pragmatism gave way to matters of the heart:
August met Irma.
They were engaged in 1935.
But they were forbidden to marry.
You see, Irma was Jewish and the government had been busily bringing in
a swathe of racial laws.
Non-Jews could not marry Jews.
Although Irma and August were two little people
caught up in a greater political machine, they didn't let it stop them.
Their hearts were very much committed to one another:
faithfully, and firmly, they stood together as a couple despite horrendous pressures.
In 1937, a year after the photograph at the shipyard,
August was arrested for ‘dishonouring the race’.
Acquitted, he and Irma very publicly continued their relationship.
August was arrested again in 1938, and sent to a concentration camp
for 2 and a half years, and was later conscripted into a
penal army regiment to fight in the war.
Irma was held by the Gestapo, spent time in several camps,
before finally arriving at Buchenwald.
Neither survived.
The photo, however, does:
It stands as a testament to utter courage –
the courage to look squarely into the face of a regime,
and challenge a system of power that was corrupt;
and in their so doing,
to act as a community conscience.
Our gospel reading this morning is about types of power –
systems of governance, if you like –
and of courage:
of One who looked each type of power squarely in the face
and chose a different way – a different kind of power.
At the beginning of our passage in Luke,
we see religious power embodied in the form of some Pharisees.
Whether for good or for ill, they come to Jesus
to warn him off doing what he was doing – teaching and healing;
to warn him to leave the area.
And here’s another layer of power:
these representatives of the religious establishment w
warn Jesus that the local political establishment is after him,
for Herod, son of Herod, is seeking to kill him – just as he’d killed John the Baptist.
But we know that Jesus is leaving the area –
he’s passing through, and, although he is ministering to people as he travels,
his face is firmly turned towards Jerusalem...
where he’ll encounter first-hand the other power player in this story –
for Jerusalem is under a different jurisdiction;
the province of Judea is directly under Roman rule, with Pontius Pilate as it’s prefect.
So, we have several layers of power here in this passage,
and it would seem that, in a couple of cases at least,
they’re beginning to get a little bit twitchy about this wandering rabbi.
It’s not a coincidence that the verse immediately
preceding our gospel text has Jesus saying:
‘there are those who are last who will be first, and first who will be last.’
Such words are guaranteed to stir up the powerful to action –
such words are guaranteed to move those in power - those who are used to being ‘first’
to do all in their power to make sure they remain in poll position,
to keep their power and to ensure that those who are ‘last’
stay right where they are – at the bottom.
And here’s the thing:
with his words, and in the manner in which he lives out his life and calling,
Jesus is challenging the default understanding of power.
Herod is referred to as a ‘fox’.
And I suspect that there are those of you who've kept chickens,
who know first-hand just how utterly destructive a fox can be.
A fox almost seems to make a sport of killing everything in sight...just because it can.
Similarly, Herod, like his father,
seemed to take delight in killing –
to hold the power of life and death in his hands,
to use his power to instil fear;
to take what he wanted whenever he wanted it.
He was a weak, corrupt, puppet king, using what little power he had,
to serve his own ends, and to prop up his particular insecurities.
He used his power to bring advantage to himself and his cronies,
rather than to serve all of his subjects.
In modern terms, he was all about favouring the one percent.
For everyone else, the 99%,
Herod’s power brought only hardship, misery, occasional imprisonment, and death.
In calling Herod ‘that fox’, Jesus was calling out the abysmal leadership that Herod displayed.
And, the message Jesus gives to the Pharisees to take to Herod,
is one that demonstrates a different understanding of power and of kingdom:
in contrast to Herod, Jesus, through his ministry of teaching and healing,
is bringing life, and hope, and liberation –
a kingdom in which those on the edges are brought into the centre...
in fact, a kingdom of the least, the marginalised – the ones who are powerless.
A kingdom where, unlike the favoured few of Herod’s,
all are beloved and protected.
In contrast to ‘that fox’ Herod,
Jesus puts himself on the side of the vulnerable, the oppressed:
he portrays himself as a ‘mother hen’ –
but this mother hen is ready to gather up his people under his wings;
to love, to care for and to tend them.
In Jesus’ way of looking at the world –
while the fox may seem the more powerful, it doesn’t win;
ultimately, the chicken does for this is the topsy-turvy kingdom of God –
where real power is seen as vulnerability –
to be real,
to be authentic...is an immensely powerful thing.
And it’s what gives us the strength to turn our faces toward Jerusalem -
or, our equivalents of Jerusalem -
it’s what helps us to take on systems of power single-handedly,
by using the power of love and of sacrifice.
To be prepared to be vulnerable is to have courage by the bucket-load.
And it’s what we’re called to.
As we walk the road to Jerusalem, each of us is faced with choices –
each of us, no matter what we may think – has some small modicum of power.
How we live our lives can affect the lives of others, for the better, or for the worse.
We may never be faced with the kind of near-impossible situation
that August Landmesser found himself in...
we may never face institutions of power in the same manner that Jesus had to...
But... how do we use our power wisely and well,
and with courage to further God’s kingdom,
to show God’s mercy and justice,
and to demonstrate God’s love for the least, the most vulnerable?
Some of us may very well challenge corrupt institutions –
governments and organisations – that choose to mis-use their power ...
we may find ourselves writing or speaking to political representatives
asking just why there’s been such a marked rise in poverty in the UK,
and a rise in food banks...
or we might use our power to challenge the ‘powers that be’
concerning the high proportion of homeless veterans,
given the sacrifices they’ve made in serving the country...
we might choose to use our power by boycotting multi-national companies
as a challenge to unethical business practices – the use of child labour, for example.
Alongside that, we might choose to source out more local food,
and items that we need – as a way to help our local economy,
and as a way to help the environment.
At a different level, we may choose to use the power we have to be kinder to one another...
perhaps to visit that neighbour in our village that nobody really bothers to talk to
because he or she is deemed to be a wee bit odd...
or we might use the power of our imaginations to walk a while
in someone else’s shoes, rather than to criticise them without thinking –
for none of us really know what burdens others may be carrying:
in this, how do we use the power we have,
in our small corner, to help share one another’s burdens?
To walk the road to Jerusalem is hard, for it involves sacrifice,
moving from our comfort zones.
At times, it’s about feeling the fear and doing it anyway.
But, we can take courage –
for the One who calls us, protects us, holds us close –
gathers us up...
and it is in his love, that we find the courage to continue
walking with him, and where we also, oddly, find our joy. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Hi - thanks for visiting.
We're always happy to receive comments, however,
we do moderate them to avoid spam.