We can be heroes
Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Acts 17:22-31, Psalm 66:7-end, 1Peter 3:13-end, John 14:15-21
I’m not really one for heroes. The Financial Times, in a moment of nostalgia, has started a section on fantasy dinner parties, where their writers think of who from history they might invite and where and what they might eat. Something to discuss, over Sunday lunch, if it’s not too depressing, and if you can remember any restaurants outside Dominoes. But I would struggle on who to bring. Most religious figures would be pretty heavy going. Most musicians too decadent. Most intellectuals too dull. Perhaps I’d invite the original St Margaret, and see if she really did get eaten by a dragon.
Nevertheless, there are those moments in history where people have shown such courage that you can’t but be moved. Having served with 2PARA, I immediately think of the battalion on the bridge at Arnhem, completely surrounded and under continuous fire from all directions. Their last radio transmission, which didn’t reach the British, but the Germans intercepted: “Out of ammunition. God save the king.” The last speech of Martin Luther King, where he seemed to predict his own assassination the following day, and passed the mission to others to complete without regret, can’t help but send a shiver down the spine.
But the most moving story I know is Maximilian Kolbe. Kolbe, a Polish Roman Catholic priest, by coincidence is now the patron saint of amateur radio broadcasters, so especially relevant for us today. Ora pro nobis Max. [If you’ve been home schooling Latin this week you’ll know that means ‘pray for us’] Kolbe’s story is extraordinary. At the start of World War 2 he organised a temporary hospital in his monastery. He refused to sign the NAZI document which would have given him the rights of a German citizen. His monastery gave shelter to, among others, 2000 Jews; he published anti-NAZI publications and eventually landed himself in Auschwitz. After a prisoner escaped, to deter others the deputy camp commander chose 10 men to execute by starvation. When one of the selected men cried out ‘My wife! My children!’, Kolbe elected to take his place. Kolbe outlived the other nine and was murdered after 2 weeks by lethal injection. The man he saved survived the war and lived till 1995 aged 93. It’s a grim story. I only tell it because it tells us something about love.
The prevailing ethics of our day is what philosophers call ‘emotivism’. That means that when people make moral claims they’re simply expressing their opinion. Your view on eating meat, capital punishment, abortion, nuclear weapons, the environment, is really just a lifestyle choice. We can chat about it but ultimately it’s opinion and yes Americans want to have guns and the French think adultery is okay but really, people are just different and that’s alright. Think of it as psychology. You’d never expect a psychologist to say – ‘that was wrong’. Or ‘don’t you think that’s a bit selfish?… you mustn’t do that!’ The psychologist is amoral – importantly not immoral – although there are some pretty #metoo stories about Freud and Jung – but psychology bypasses morality. No judgement here.
Any time I say anything controversial, Rhiannon likes to add ‘in your opinion’. But she’s a millennial and they’re the worst. The most striking thing about millennials is that they feel very strongly – they’re anti-trump, feminist, vegan, pro-choice eco-warriors, but they don’t have an account of truth. Just very strong opinions.
And perhaps the thing that most gives away society’s emotivism is that we’re looking for leaders with strong personality; honesty and integrity are less important than someone who puts their position loudly and clearly. It accompanies all those reality TV shows where we’re told the most important thing is to be true to yourself, to believe in yourself, to live your life; you are exactly where you need to be; you are the most important person in your life; it’s your truth; here are four hundred-and-thirty-two personality tests on buzzfeed that will help you think more about yourself. Which Harry Potter spin off minor character’s familiar are you? Like, follow, subscribe.
Love in this context means following your feelings. We can measure love by how authentic it is; how it leads to self-fulfilment. How are we growing? How has this love helped me become the person I’m meant to be? Today, loving means being the best possible you helping someone else be the best version of them. It’s not a terrible vision of human fulfilment.
An older view of love, captured by the words ‘charity’ and ‘altruism’, is of a detached love. To love we need to put all emotion to one side. Love is not about self-fulfilment. It’s about seeing the situation objectively. What can I do here which will have the best possible effect? If I were a neutral observer, what would I choose to happen? Disinterested action to produce the greatest benefit to the greatest number. It was very a la mode in the nineteenth century with all those up-tight Victorian gentlemen. If you’re not home-schooling French – a la mode means ‘in fashion’.
You will have some idea of where your own ethics sit, if you think of any story of a hero you’ve found inspiring: Did you think – wow that’s the perfect expression of what he was about? So authentic! I feel inspired. Or did you think – wow, she had no regard for herself there but simply cracked on in the circumstances at great personal cost. I think that’s incredible.
The Christian view of love is not either of these. Love is not a feeling – it’s not finding your true self. It’s not an abstract calculation – a rational evaluation of the best-case scenario.
I want you to think about the expression: ‘in him we live and move and have our being.’ This isn’t self-fulfilment. It’s in him, not in ourselves. Our being is in another. Love is being for another. And so it’s not about feelings. Our feelings are about ourselves. Love is about another.
But we’re also not trying to be abstract. Trying not to care in order to be objective. To be rational. This starts from care. If I don’t care for another, my being will not be in another. The rational approach is still self-centred, just ignoring its feelings. We are asked to live and move and have our being in him.
And who is him? It’s Christ. But as Jesus makes clear, he is the least of our brothers and sisters. He is the stranger, the widow, the orphan. He is the wounded man at the side of the road; He is the hungry, the naked, the imprisoned. Christ is in each person we meet.We have followed Christ, if we are able to approach each person each day – thinking ‘in her and in him I live and move and have my being’. If I can truly be for that other person.
And if this seems more like humanism than Christianity to you, consider the doctrine of the Trinity. It’s God giving everything into the hands of the Son. Then Jesus, the Son, giving everything for creation in return to the Father. And the Church came to see this self-giving, as the Spirit. The God-with-us that helps us live for others. The love given by which the Father lives in the Son, and by which the Son lives and breathes and has his being in the Father.
All this may sound very abstract. But God is not some great Father figure watching over us like a judgemental Victorian gentleman. God is love. But that doesn’t mean he’s a feeling, or impartial; God is the act of living and moving and being for another.
When Maximilian Kolbe chose to give his life for another, he didn’t do it because he liked him or felt strongly about him. He didn’t choose starvation out of self-fulfilment. He didn’t do because it was the rational thing to do. He did it because he understood that his life was in this man’s life, and he was so able to find himself in others That he was able to let go of himself. That is extraordinary. That is the perfection of love. We begin simply by trying more and more to understand, empathise and care for the people we meet on the way. This is the simple heroism that our world needs; and may even get us invited to more dinner parties – at least fantasy ones. And so may we learn to live and move and have our being in Him, who loved us enough to give his life to show the world that God is love. Amen.