Who are your heroes?
Luke 10:1-11,16-20
Bill in Mississippi

Who are your heroes? Who our heroes are is important because they can shape our choices each time we come to a big bend in the road. They can be in our mind and heart when we must decide whether to yield or overrun, whether to win at any cost or to seek reconciliation. I cannot tell you who my heroes were fifty years ago, although I think Superman was included among them. But I can tell you who my heroes are today. They include soldiers who have fallen on a live hand grenade to save others, Lee County Sheriff Harold Ray Presley who pushed a fellow lawman out of the way and took a fatal bullet, saving the life of his colleague. They include Martin Luther King, who went to the streets for others knowing that he was risking his life, and Anwar  Sadat, who went to Jerusalem to attempt to make peace for many and paid for a pioneering olive branch with his blood and his life. And all of these are mere shadows of my greatest hero Jesus Christ, who believed in the power of good and God so much that He allowed others to kill him, with no protest because he knew that violence would not be the last word.

Our heroes are who we want to be. We may never get there but we are aiming in that direction. And that can affect who we are becoming. Remember always that others are watching and when we live according to our ideals based on good heroes we are helping others to consider taking the same path. When we do that we make a difference. Our lives count for something. We may just leave this world a bit better than it was when we got here.

But in order to continue throughout our lives as people of hope, we have to do some real overcoming. We are in fact like lambs in the midst of wolves. Who are your heroes? Who our heroes are is important because they can shape our choices each time we come to a big bend in the road. They can be in our mind and heart when we must decide whether to yield or overrun, whether to win at any cost or to seek reconciliation. I cannot tell you who my heroes were fifty years ago, although I think Superman was included among them. But I can tell you who my heroes are today. They include soldiers who have fallen on a live hand grenade to save others, Lee County Sheriff Harold Ray Presley who pushed a fellow lawman out of the way and took a fatal bullet, saving the life of his colleague. They include Martin Luther King, who went to the streets for others knowing that he was risking his life, and Anwar Sadat, who went to Jerusalem to attempt to make peace for many and paid for a pioneering olive branch with his blood and his life. And all of these are mere shadows of my greatest hero Jesus Christ, who believed in the power of good and God so much that He allowed others to kill him, with no protest because he knew that violence would not be the last word.

Our heroes are who we want to be. We may never get there but we are aiming in that direction. And that can affect who we are becoming. Remember always that others are watching and when we live according to our ideals based on good heroes we are helping others to consider taking the same path. When we do that we make a difference. Our lives count for something. We may just leave this world a bit better than it was when we got here.

But in order to continue throughout our lives as people of hope, we have to do some real overcoming. We are in fact like lambs in the midst of wolves. Lambs in the midst of wolves. Will the lambs become wolf-like? Will we lambs learn to grow a hairy, wary hide so that the wolves cannot victimize and brutalize us? Will life wear us down and take us down to where it is impossible to tell the difference between a lamb and a wolf? That is one of the central questions of our life, your life, my life. God is in our corner, cheering us on to continue as lambs. No matter what anyone else does to us, one of the major purposes of our lives as Christians is to be steadfast in our belief in good, in gentleness, in loving our neighbor. With some notably traumatic exceptions, what life dishes out to us is not in our control, but for most of us how we react to life is. Not what happens to us but how we react is what determines what our spirit is like when we cash in our chips. God’s great glory is a human being who has lived and loved and suffered but who exits to heaven with the purity of hope in his or her breast.

In one of our ancient and enduring prayers we give thanks to God for making the way of the cross to be the way of life… the cross, or crucifixion, or pain, we are saying is the way of life. That is, in order to have life and have it more abundantly, the way God intends us to have it, to have fullness of life, we must be willing to suffer. This does not mean that we are not to enjoy life and love, enjoy parties and achievement and the richness of family. It just means that if we choose (and yes, it is a choice for most of us) to avoid the pain of suffering by closing up our hearts to others, we will not live the fullness of life that God intends. Closing up means giving up on our heroes as our guiding lights. If we do that closing up, then we will have ceased to be lambs and we will have become a wolf, so to speak.

God sends us out to share the good news of love that requires no quid pro quo. God sends us to love our neighbor (even the ones we know real well!) even if our neighbor does not love us. That is the only thing that distinguishes a Christian (or other people of faith and hope) from those who live without hope. Anyone can love those who love them. It is when we walk our road with wolves attacking from time to time but Come to the end of our road still trusting, still reaching out, still believing that people can be good and that even wolves can change, it is then that God rejoices, for He has overcome that within us that puts self first, and He has overcome it with love. And our life has had great purpose because we have been a witness to the power of that love.