courage

by Rev.  Mark J.T. Caggiano, January 10, 2010

Isaiah 43:1-7; Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you….Do not fear, for I am with you…Do not fear, for I am with you.” We learn from the scriptures that we may take comfort in the presence of God in our lives. It is there we may find courage.

In the moral realm of virtue, courage is unique. It is the only virtue that is entirely reactive. We can hold our faith dearly regardless of circumstance. We can hope warmly in our hearts in good time as well as bad ones. We can be prudent and temperate and just in our lives on an ongoing basis. And, of course, we can and should always love. But when are we brave, when are we courageous? We are brave and courageous in response to something or someone, whether life’s difficulties or the valley of the shadow of death. Courage is situational.

I was having lunch with a friend this week and he reminded me of a story of final exam bravery. A professor handed out the exam and the students dutifully began writing in their blue books. The question was, “What is courage?” One intrepid soul wrote, “This is courage.” He then handed in the one line answer and left the exam. If I had been the professor, I would have written back to the student, “Actually, that is foolhardy.” And I would have given a commensurate grade, probably beginning with the same letter of the alphabet as foolhardy.

Courage is somewhere on a spectrum of responses. On the lowest end, there is cowardice, where no element of courage stirs us into action. On the highest end, there is recklessness, where the virtues of prudence and temperance have fled from us with their moderating influences and we pursue danger for its own sake. Somewhere in between stands the golden mean of courage.

Aristotle defined courage as a virtue that predisposes a man to meet danger. Whether one calls it bravery or intrepidity, courage is the ability to confront danger or fear, pain or intimidation. It is even the capacity to face uncertainty, to ford out by necessity onto the thin ice of the unknown. I say necessity, because again courageous should not be conflated with foolishness.

Our common usage of the term courage includes instances of physical bravery such as race car driving or skydiving. Courageousness of the body to be certain, these examples are not necessarily instances of courageousness of the soul. Courageousness in this voluntary sense is often a heady mixture of skill, luck and pride. Yet, this type of bravery does not always migrate into other aspects of our lives. A teenager perfectly willing to careen over concrete and asphalt on a skateboard might never think to stand up against peer pressure. Again, courage is situational.

We face danger in different ways, but whether that response is courageous depends much upon the motivation behind the next step. Acting out of ignorance may come off as brave, but is more often foolish. And there is no great virtue in placing yourself needlessly in harm’s way. I recall a few years ago that a hiker went up into the White Mountains with nothing but the clothes on his back and a cell phone. The man got lost and had to be rescued. The hiker risked not only his own life, but the lives of those heroic volunteers. He thought he could bail himself out with a quick call to the park rangers. There was nothing brave in that, nothing virtuous. Conversely, the volunteers showed great courage in risking their lives for someone, even someone reckless with his own life.

During the early stages of World War II, the German army began to cut through the small countries of Western Europe to attack the more strategic countries of France and Norway. In 1940, the Germans attacked the small nation of Denmark. The Danish army could not long last against the German war machine, so the Danes quickly submitted to the invasion, and the country was occupied. This was not the classic picture of bravery, but the Danes had absolutely no chance against the marauding Germans. The response was certainly understandable, and in hindsight rather wise. Their time of bravery would come later.

The Germans methodically took control of the conquered land and its people. The Danes were again unique during the war in that they submitted to the Nazis and were therefore treated better in many ways than other countries. The Danes, however, were not complacent in their occupation. Resistance grew in the country, both armed and through general disobedience.

But what is even more interesting is that most Danes simply ignored the Germans. Imagine the picture of walking past Nazi storm troopers as if they were not there. The Danish King, King Christian X, became a symbol of open resistance to the Nazis, riding his horse through the streets of Copenhagen, unarmed and unguarded. Critically, he was also an outspoken protector of the Jews of Denmark.

The Nazis were of course obsessed with a hatred of Jews. Millions were deported from occupied France and Hungary to concentration camps for the Final Solution. Yet, the Danish government simply refused to cooperate with the Germans on the matter. When asked by his German counterpart about the Jews, the Danish Foreign Minister explained that “There is no Jewish question in Denmark.” The Danes did not capitulate to Nazi anti-Semitism, and the Danish Jews remained safe.

After some frustration on this issue, the Germans decided towards the end of the war that it was time to round up the Jews of Denmark. An order authorizing the deportation of the Jews to concentration camps was signed by Hitler and was scheduled to begin on October 1st, the start of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah. However, things again did not go as planned. The Danes hid the Jews in their homes, on their farms and in their basements. Copies of the Torah, the Jewish holy scriptures, were hidden in the crypt of Trinity Church in Copenhagen. The hospitals used ambulances to ferry the Jews to the coast as every available boat afloat secretly carried the refugees across the straits to safety in Sweden.

More than 7,000 Jews reached safety that October, 99 percent of the Danish population. Only 481 Jews were captured by the Nazis. Under local pressure, they were sent to a camp in Denmark, not to the harsh and deadly camps in Germany or Poland. The Danish government closely monitored the treatment of the Jews and demanded inspections by the Red Cross. The Danish people sent hundreds of care packages to the camp for the Jews. Most of the Danish Jews lived to see the end of the war. The Danish Jews also returned to their homes to find that their neighbors had taken care of their houses, their gardens and even their pets. Not only did the Jews of Denmark survive, so did their community. They did so through the courage of the people of Denmark.

Courage clearly can arise in the relationships between communities. It can also manifest within a community. John the Baptist began a new movement within Judaism, one later reflected in many ways in the ministry of Jesus. We frequently hear of Jesus contending with the Pharisees and the scribes, disputing the need for complicated and costly Temple rituals and resisting dogmatic pronouncements of the Pharisees. Jesus was by definition never a Christian, a term coined long after the crucifixion. He was a Jew, standing up to the highest Jewish and Roman authorities on behalf of his fellow Jews. He died for that courage.

To describe Jesus as brave is a monumental understatement. He was religiously courageous facing off against church leaders. He was physically courageous standing up to Roman questioning and torture. And he did so without raising a hand in violence, without the standard manifestations of physical bravery we think of when faced with threats to our personal safety. He was courageous as well as loving all the way to the cross.

Christianity has grown into a global religion, but it began as a small sect of Jews trying to shake off centuries of orthodoxy. It was a radical movement away from conservative practices. Ironically, over time, Roman Christianity became as inflexible as the religion of the Pharisees and scribes. Orthodox Christianity moved in one dogmatic direction, Roman Catholicism moved in another, albeit on parallel tracks. The Protestant Reformation tried to revisit many of the granite truths of Catholicism, only to inscribe newer rules onto similarly unyielding stone.

Each step to confront orthodoxy was courageous in its own way. Even as the losing heretics burned in Rome and Geneva, London and Salem, the examples stood out to strengthen the resolve of others. But often with success comes rigidity – we succeeded therefore we are right. And with rigidity, the virtue of courage slips away. While there is nothing inherently courageous about pursuing something new, there is bravery in defending something in which you believe. This is the difference between following a fashion and following a conviction.

I mention this because we gather in a religious community, and like every such community it must be vigilant of its convictions and thoughtful in its actions. Unitarianism is a religious reaction. When the idea of an indivisible yet somehow distinct trinity of beings was developed, it was a theory. It became enshrined as doctrine and everyone was required to follow its exacting formula. When the scriptures were written down, in many cases they seemed metaphorical and even contradictory in certain places. Yet, biblical inerrancy became a fundamental aspect of many Christian denominations. In these theological and scriptural disputes, Unitarians stood against this fortress of dogma with the arrows of reason.

Just as Baptists and Quakers were driven from Puritan New England, Unitarians were persecuted in Poland and England and, even for a time, in Boston. It took courage to fight 19th century slavery and 20th century segregation. It took courage to reform prisons and hospitals. It took courage to advocate for women’s suffrage and even to push for temperance, even though that was a relatively short-lived battle. When we stand firm for our religious convictions against criticism and calumny, it is brave and noble and true. But, that was then.

How are we courageous now? What battles are being fought today? Christianity as a moral check to worldly fixation was beneficial – Christian self-satisfaction with stale piety was not. When we point to 19th century moral crusades with Unitarian pride, recall that those were times of struggle. Courage is bred out of adversity, not typically under comfort or even success. Courage contends with difficulty, it raises its voice. If something is popular, it is not brave to shout our approval. Yet, it is not merely zeroing in on the negative or worshipping what is contrary. There is a difference between being courageous and being a pain in the neck. Courage requires conviction to do the right and moral thing regardless of consequence.

We at First Church describe ourselves as Unitarian in a Christian tradition. This self-definition requires constant and courageous thought. If we are Unitarian, we must understand what it means to be a Unitarian. If we are Christian, we must understand what it means to be a Christian. If we seek to be both Unitarian and Christian, we must determine what if any differences exist between these two labels and what if any unique aspects arise through the melding of these two identities.

I sometimes hear from colleagues of a desire to go back to some mythic golden era in which our churches were one way or another. Some lament the drifting away from historic Christianity; others dread the reintroduction of spiritual sounding language. We sift through our rosy memories of history and lift up that which we liked and push away the discussion and debate and even dissension that led to various decisions. I assure you there were heated discussions over a century ago to understand the meaning of Unitarianism in the wider context of a Christian community. I recently read through a sermon about sacraments from a minister in 1909 in which the particular and at times peculiar nature of Unitarian belief was discussed. He spoke in Christian terminology, but it was a recognizable and reasonable discussion of the importance of the people of God, not the mere symbols and rituals adopted by a particular representative of God.

Frederick May Eliot, a former President of the American Unitarian Association, once remarked that the purpose of a religious service is not to bring about a change in the mind or attitude of God, but to bring about a change in the thoughts and desires of the worshippers. “We go to church for the sake of our souls – that we may derive courage and hope and renewed inspiration.” This courage arises from being safe within a community of loving people. Courage within that community allows us to examine and explore the meaning of belief, tradition and current practices. It is not inherently brave to change, nor is it inherently wise to stay the same. The courage of Unitarians arises from the constant willingness to examine ourselves to understand the reason for our thoughts and actions. This is not meant to be tedious navel gazing, but a thoughtful reflection on what it means to be a Unitarian.

What might this mean? Someone might ask, “Are we Christians?” “Are we followers of Jesus?” “Are we Unitarians?” Is there a difference? We need to have the courage to understand our convictions as well as to defend them. The interesting aspect of this discussion is that it is brave to defend our traditions and to question them. There is no doctrinal monopoly on courage.

After the service today, I will be giving a talk about whether Unitarians have sacraments. A sacrament may be defined in many ways, but one definition is a religious ritual which imparts sanctity upon its participants. When Unitarians gather to discuss their beliefs, when they do so with love and courtesy and vigor, it is a most holy thing. It is sacred, because it brings us closer to understanding our lives together - and our relationship with God, the universe and everything. Courage is just one of the seven virtues Christians consider important, but it is often the most important virtue keeping us true to our Unitarian heritage. We must have the courage to say no, we must have the courage to say yes, and we must have the courage to dig deeply within ourselves to understand the difference between these answers.

Courage provides us the strength and energy to move forward when it is hard to do so. It provides us the stability to stand firmly on our beliefs. We as a church community must build a place in which such strength, energy and stability can be fostered. We must have the courage to listen, even when we do not agree. This internal courage will give us the depth of virtue we need to be courageous beyond these four walls. From the Boston Unitarian churches sprung many of the reformers of America. From this fertile ground grew people who could think beyond the ordinary, to open themselves up to new possibilities.

With the help of their fellow Unitarians, they learned to think and to hope, to stand firmly against the forces of close-mindedness and oppressive dogma. They looked back to the example of one man who stood against the power of Rome and who gave his life rather than casting away his beliefs. It is at the very least Christian to look back upon the life of Jesus and to be in awe of his courage. But he had good counsel and good companionship, as we understand from the scriptures:

“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you….Do not fear, for I am with you…Do not fear, for I am with you.”

So ends the sermon.