Sermon: St. Luke’s / Prescott
The Rev. Mark Moline
Title: “Courage Sermon”
This year, Trinity Sunday falls within Memorial Day week-end. And at first glimpse we seem to have a sort of competition here between this sacred church holy day – Trinity Sunday - and this proud national holiday – Memorial Day. We seem to have a struggle for the focus of our time and attention between faith and patriotism. We don’t want either to be overwhelmed by the other. We don’t want to turn Jesus into a good American, small “d” democrat capitalist because that’s not who he is or has ever been. He is not an American patriotic figure; but then neither do we want to separate our love for our blessed country from our love for God. This morning I would suggest that any perceived conflict here between these two great celebrations is easily remedied by the application of a rather obvious common-denominator called courage. I believe Trinity Sunday is a church celebration of spiritual courage, just as I believe Memorial Day to be a national celebration of patriotic courage and I believe there is an acceptable common ground between the two. Trinity Sunday is all about courage. In our assigned Gospel reading, Christ is quoted from his “Last Supper Discourse” addressing his disciples, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth.” Just wait until the Holy Ghost gets here! In the days immediately following that supper, that is those days before the risen Christ reappeared and breathed on them and proclaimed, “Receive the Spirit;” in those few early days the disciples came across as anything but courageous. They seemed stunned and confused and caught up in the chaos of mysterious events. They denied Christ and went into hiding. They were in fear for their lives. They lacked courage. I do think it’s probably pretty easy for us post-Pentecost believers to look back in dismay at their weakness. They were frightened little people. But after those few days, and with the manifestation of the third person of the Trinity, they radically changed and then came courage. Those same closest followers of Christ became the courageous heroes of the faith, many facing gruesome martyrdom with overwhelming courage. In our second reading St. Paul, who was no stranger to courage in the face of suffering, wrote, “Suffering produces endurance.” It was Socrates who identified “Courage as endurance of the soul.” We discussed this during our Wednesday Evening Bible Study. Most of those present agreed that endurance in the presence of suffering is courage. Paul wrote, “Suffering produces endurance or courage, courage produces character, and character produces hope, and we will not lose hope because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” The Holy Spirit gives courage. Holy Scripture is chocked full of courage. The author of Hebrews reminds us to consider Christ who endured the shame, savagery and brutality of the cross so that we might not grow weary or lose heart or lose courage. On this Trinity Sunday, I believe courage is alive and well in the church. One only has to look around our own parish to see believers living out their Christ-like courage in the face of fearsome life situations. Their courage is contagious. Their courage is nothing less than a manifestation of the Holy Spirit at work in our midst. You want more of the presence of the Holy Spirit in our church community and our worship….I say to you, “Find it in the spirit given courage of our own who suffer so much.” As such we are not celebrating the suffering, we are celebrating courage. The courage of our faith is intact. However, just as we use this church holy day to celebrate the courage of some, we can likewise let it serve as a reminder for us to ever guard against spiritual complacency. By and large, we American Christians have it awfully good, and just as surely as suffering can lead to spiritual courage; comfort, ease and convenience can likewise lead to at least the threat of complacency. I stand today to remind you that we have it awfully good because men and women of great courage have fought and died for our freedom to worship and believe where and when and as we choose. We sometimes take that freedom for granted, even though history has been filled with those who would have liked to take that freedom away. I previously mentioned that I believe there is an acceptable common ground between spiritual courage and patriotic courage. This is that common ground. We find it in the midst of Christ’s great commandment when he said, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s fiends.” It is during this national holiday that we remember those who paid the ultimate price for your freedom to even be here this morning. I’m not sure how it happened, but the elite at Harvard University invited Alexander Solzhenitsyn to be the commencement speaker during their June 1978 ceremony. Perhaps those intellectual elitist simply lost sight of the fact that no one loves freedom like someone who has been denied freedom. Solzhenitsyn, who has been called, “one of the great Christians of the 20th Century,” was in exile in this country after spending years and years in the “Gulag Archipelago” for criticizing a man named Joe Stalin. Now, someone with that kind of courage was not about to pull any punches for fear of being politically incorrect. He didn’t and he received much subsequent criticism for his comments. Never-the-less he said, “A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in these days. The Western world has lost its civil courage. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society.” At another place in his speech he observed, “The west has finally achieved the rights of man, but man’s sense of responsibility to God and society has grown dimmer and dimmer. Must one point out that from ancient times a decline in courage has been considered the first symptom of the end?” Solzhenitsyn concluded his commencement address with words critical of our legalism, secular humanism and western materialism, all focused upon what he perceived as our decline in willpower and courage. As I mentioned earlier, there were critics who could not tolerate his words for they were words of truth. Yet those truthful words of warning haunt me to this very day, especially on this Trinity Sunday and this Memorial Day week-end. Today there are those with great courage within the church, and even as I preach this morning there are young Americans who are fighting and dying to insure our freedom. There are still those out there who would take our freedom away, and I am convinced our Christian faith without spiritual courage is not faith at all; just as I believe our free nation without courage will not long stand. “Rise up ye saints of God! Have done with lesser things, give heart and soul and mind and strength to serve the King of kings. Rise up ye saints of God! His kingdom tarries long: Lord bring the day of truth and love and end this night of wrong. Lift high the cross of Christ! Tread where his feet have trod; and quickened by the Spirit’s power, rise up ye saints of God!”* *Taken from the hymnal
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