A Sermon Preached at St. Stephen’s on Oct. 1, 2006, by the Rev. Cork Tarplee

            A minister was teaching the church school class about moral courage.  As an example of moral courage he offered this: “Ten boys were sleeping in a camp cabin and while most of them just hopped into bed, only one of them knelt down to say his prayers.  Now that takes moral courage.” Then the minister challenged the group: “Can any of you give another example of moral courage.” One of the kids replied, “Yes, sir. Moral courage would be like there are ten ministers sleeping in a camp cabin, and only one of them has the courage to hop right into bed without saying his prayers.”

            The kid got it.  Going against the grain to do what you believe in takes courage. Our readings this morning all deal with that kind of courage.  First, the Hebrew scripture recalls Esther who has the courage to blow the whistle on the king’s evil Grand Vizier, Haman, the most powerful man in the government. Then James talks about the courage it takes to pray.  And finally, in the Gospel, Jesus makes two observations about moral courage He urges the disciples to have the courage to embrace the work of outsiders healing in his name, even if those outsiders aren’t official followers of Jesus. And second, he points out that the reverse is true: insiders who harm the “little ones” of the kingdom are despicable.  The bottom line is this: Christians are supposed to be the salt that flavors the world—the courageous people who embrace the good wherever they encounter it.

            It’s a tough order. To live the way the Gospel holds up for us takes a lot of courage.  It takes courage to stand up to bullies. I say this not as a morally fearless character, but as an inveterate avoider of conflict. I was always the kid on the playground whom some stronger kid had to bail out, never the one to stand up to injustice.  Given that background, I’ve developed tremendous respect for those who will, for example, criticize the policies of a powerful administration at the risk of being branded unpatriotic.  Whether it is on the playground or the field of politics—or in the workplace or in church—it takes courage to stand up for what is right.

            It still takes courage to pray. Back in the day of St. James, people seem to have thought that it was weird and probably pointless to pray over someone who was sick.  James said do it anyway.  Times haven’t changed much.  Prayer still seems a little weird and maybe even pointless, something you only do in dire circumstances.  Immediately after the World Trade Center attack, there was a little upsurge in church attendance, but now five years later, it again takes a lot of courage to pray openly. You who are here this morning have, I know, gotten here in the face of a lot of conflicted feelings and maybe a little derision or ribbing from folks back home.

            It takes courage to embrace goodness when it comes wrapped up in strange packages, and it takes courage to care for the weak.  It is not very popular today to defend Islam as a religion of peace, for example.  I imagine that it takes just as much courage to tell an Iraqi mosque that Christianity follows the Prince of Peace. Embracing peacemakers and healers wherever they come from is a challenging thing to do. Caring for the weak and powerless is tough—why should we risk our hard-earned cash or our precious time to care for those who don’t care for us? It takes courage to be tender.

            Courage is not a commodity we can manufacture. It comes as a gift of grace when it comes at all.  That’s why we ask for courage in the closing prayer of our Eucharist.  Now that we’ve been fed by the food of the Holy Spirit and our bodies have been joined to Christ’s body, we pray to be sent out into the playgrounds and the offices, workplaces and homes of our lives, with “courage to love.”  It is a gift of grace we’re asking for, but it helps us be open to courage when we remember that this courage to love is the hallmark that makes us who we are—the saltiness that marks us as special.

            Fred Craddock talks about growing up with a cynical father who—even after Fred became a preacher—thought the church was full of hypocrites.  Fred says he must have heard his dad say a thousand times to his church-going wife—and to any minister who had the misfortune to come calling, “The church doesn’t care about me.  The church wants another name and another pledge.”  Then, as life would have it, Fred’s dad came down with throat cancer.  Fred flew home to find his father in the VA hospital, down to 73 pounds, full of tubes, unable to speak or eat.  But his room was filled with flowers and on the otherwise useless bedside tray was a stack of cards twenty inches deep. Says Fred Craddock: “ All the flowers, very card, every blossom were from persons or groups from the church.  He saw me read a card.  He could not speak, so he took a Kleenex box and wrote on the side of it a line from Shakespeare… ‘In this harsh world, draw your breath in pain to tell my story.’ I said, ‘What is your story, Daddy?’ And he wrote, “I was wrong.”

            Among the many reasons to summon up moral courage in this world, this one also is true:  If you act with the courage to love, folks will know what kind of people you come from, people who in the end really do care about each other.

                                                                    AMEN