We’ll build a land where we bind up the broken

We’ll build a land where the captives go free

Where the oil of gladness dissolves all mourning

Oh, we’ll build a promised land that can be.

Those forward-looking, optimistic lyrics and the positive, upbeat melody in that major key…

It is a message of confident progress toward Beloved Community.

This is the liberal religious message, the Social Gospel message, the message of Mandela and Dr. King…the message that is deep in the DNA of this congregation and of our faith.

We’ll build a land. We’ll get it done. The promised land may not be right around the corner…but we’ve been to the mountaintop…we’ve seen the promised land…and we’ll get there…together.

So hopeful. So confident.

But, just to be clear, those confident phrases…”we’ll build a land where we bind up the broken”…those confident phrases were written more than 3000 years ago…by the Prophet Isaiah…3000 years…that’s a long time to wait for the coming of the kingdom.

Where like oaks of righteousness, stand her people…

Her people. Our people. Us.

Like oaks of righteousness.  Solid in our commitments. Confident…with an easy courage supported by signs of success.

We’ll Build a Land. Oh, yes.

During the successful progressive advocacy for marriage equality, our faith and this congregation heard and sang that hymn over and over.

The hopeful message of that song was easy to believe. We were on a roll.

I think that song is more of a test, today.

Did you find yourself wondering what justified that confidence as you listened to the choir? Was it a little harder for you to give yourself to that music?

It was for me. It is for me.

Given the state of the world and the state of many of our lives, confidence and hope can be hard to find…

In these days, I think it is courage that we need to cultivate, rather than hope. It is not at all clear that the way forward points toward Beloved Community. There is a great deal hanging in the balance and there is good reason for the fear that many of us feel.

What we can cultivate is courage.

Courage is not the absence of fear. It is not fearlessness.

Courage is following the call of your convictions when the outcome is not clear.

Not allowing the presence of fear to immobilize us.

In some cases, there is a judgment…a judgment that something else…some value…some person that we love…is more important and more compelling than the fear we feel.

Last week, when I asked our Board of Trustees to describe a time when they had been courageous or felt courageous…many of them spoke of times when fear had been with them, when fear had been justified…when there was some danger for them.

They spoke of speaking or acting according to their principles…anyway. They spoke of the decision to be authentic, truthful about who they were. They spoke about leaning into their vulnerabilities and drawing strength from them.

One Board member said the Cowardly Lion was one of his favorite characters. You remember the Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz…Bert Lahr’s face and voice will be forever associated with that character…if you’ve never seen the original movie version…it’s worth a watch…if only for Judy Garland…and Bert Lahr.

The cowardly lion yearns to have courage…but he’s terrified.

Yet he makes decision after decision that requires him to act despite his fear. He goes right into the witch’s castle to save Dorothy. He goes right up to the Wizard to demand his badge of courage. Even though he is terrified.

It takes the support of his friends…there’s that.

But he does not allow his fear to immobilize him.

There have been times in my own life when other people have described me as courageous. I remember being described that way when I visited the refugee camps in Darfur during the genocide. There was some danger involved. To get to the camps we travelled roads where there were ambushes almost every week. And I remember being a little afraid…at least I thought about the danger. We travelled under a UN flag…but still.

There was no feeling of being courageous. It was just something that I was called to do…to be sitting in that jeep, bouncing over those rutted roads in that sad and dangerous country… to highlight that genocide so that we could call for its end.

It was just something that I needed to do. Being there was an embodied response. For those of us in that jeep, it was living out our convictions. ..with our bodies.

Jeremy Cronin is another South African poet and activist. He’s been a cabinet minister and a leader of the African National Congress. He spent 7 years in the Pretoria prison during South Africa’s fight for freedom.

The English translation, from the Swahili, of his most famous poem is: A Person is a Person Because of Other People.

“By holding my mirror out of the window

I see clear to the end of the passage.

There’s a person down there.

A Prisoner polishing a doorhandle.

In the mirror I see him see

My face in the mirror,

I see the fingertips of his free hand

Bunch together, as if to make

An object the size of a badge

Which travels up to his forehead

The place of an imaginary cap.

                   (This means: A warder, [a guard])

Two fingers are extended in a vee

And wiggle like two antennae.

                    (He’s being watched)

A finger of his free hand makes a watch-hand’s arc

On the wrist of his polishing arm without

Disrupting the slow-slow rhythm of his work.

                   (Later. Maybe, later we can speak)

Hey! Wat maak jy daar? [What are you doing?]

• a voice from around the corner

No[thing]. Just polishing, baas [boss].

He turns his back to me, now watch

His free hand, the talkative one,

Slips quietly behind

• strength brother, it says

in my mirror,

                   A black fist.”

Strength, brother. We are in this together. Even this silent language of signs is enough to provide support and remind them that it is the courage of their convictions, and the depth of their relationship and their love that will see them through.

The courage of our convictions and our love that can see us through.

Isn’t courage often less an individual virtue and more a collective practice in service of the community, often more a question of authenticity and faithfulness to a vision that is shared…

Often collective commitment, supporting shared values and common hopes rather than a solo performance.

I think one of the ways this church works is to provide a collective accountability and community support for the courage we are called to embody in our lives.

We do not promise success here. What we promise here is support.

And although we have been schooled to think of courage in that optimistic, forward thinking “We’ll Build a Land” kind of model, I do not believe that courage, at least the courageous acts that inspire me…I do not think they grow only out of commitment to a vision.

I believe they grow out of our grief. Dr. King had to start with race, because that was the pain that he knew. He had to begin with the pain and the grief that he knew…in his body…before he could extend his compassion to others. Before he could speak about Viet Nam…he had to speak about Birmingham.

There is a famous saying that all theology begins in biography. It begins in what we know.

And I believe that courage is like that as well. It begins in what we know. Some knowing of the costs of cowardice.

Courage begins not with our triumphs…but with our grief…our hurts…our disappointments…our broken-heartedness.

Because who needs courage…or theology…or the church for that matter…when everything is going great? There is a role for the church then too…but still…

We have 3000 years of disappointments that we have not fully grieved, collectively.

And there is so much in our individual stories that remains ungrieved as well.

Therapist Francis Weller tells this story:

“I remember one man I worked with who struggled with depression and addiction. He was married and had children but felt separate from his family. He also carried a degree of shame that made it difficult for him to make friends or let his wife get close. He told me that his parents had divorced when he was young, and that he had rarely seen his father after that….

[During one of our session] the man reflexively placed a hand on his chest, and I suggested that he pause and notice what was happening there. He said he felt a tightness. I asked him to listen to that tightness…After few moments he told me that he saw a young boy in the woods playing hide-and-seek and no one had come to find him.

He couldn’t remember if this was a real memory or not, but there was truth in it. No one had come to look for him in his time of sorrow, and he had been hiding ever since.”

We all have so much to grieve, so much to confess…

And that truth does not mean we are weak. That truth does not prevent us from being strong.

Perhaps the greatest gift we can give one another is support as we are present to our broken hearts.

Not to try to make the grief or the fear go away, but to help transform it into a source of strength and courage…

Support to make courage a collective practice…

Support from this community that shows us who we are and who we can be.

And support to help us all extend our compassion because we know that those around us have strength that can grow out of their broken hearts as well.

We’ll build a land. Yes. But our “Yes” needs to come from a place that knows both our individual pain and our failures as a people. Our “yes” needs not only to acknowledge our grief but grow out of that grief, with an urgency born of our pain and our rage.

Because courage…that word…ends with rage. Cou-rage.

The words of Alice Walker:

While love is unfashionable,

Let us live unfashionably…

Let us be poor in all but truth

And courage…handed down

By the old spirits….

While love is dangerous,

Let us walk bareheaded

Beside the great river

Let us gather blossoms

Under fire.

Together we can support our authentic selves, grief and fear and courage and all…and discover that we can still sing “We’ll Build a Land.”

And still mean it.

Prayer:

Will you pray with me now?

Spirit of Life. God our uncertain and sometimes courageous hearts. Spirit of Love.

In these days, when hope is hard to find

And harder to keep,

Help us remember

That we are not called to be fearless

But to face our fears.

Help us remember that we are not

The first to yearn for Beloved Community

And will not be the last.

Help us remember that we are not

The first and will not be the last

Who struggle to get to “yes.”

Help us remember that this community

Is with us as we navigate these days

And hold ourselves open to love.

Help us remember that the truth of our lives

Can fuel our courage and our commitment

That the truth of our lives can point us

To the “yes” we need to find.

May it be so. Amen

Topics: Courage