September 11, 2016 – I Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-10
I Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-10
You are a Hero
Lectionary 24 – September 11, 2016
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
What is it to be a hero?
Look in the mirror and you will know.
Look into your own eyes and tell me you are not heroic, that you have not endured,
or suffered, or lost the things you care most about.
And yet, here you are . . . so you must be a hero.
We all are.
Some more than others, but none of us alone.
A hero isn’t someone who lives above us, keeping us safe.
A hero’s not a God, or an idea.
A hero lives here, on the street, among us, with us.
Always here, but rarely recognized.
Look in the mirror and see yourself for what you truly are.
You’re a hero. (Karen Page in Marvel’s Daredevil, Season 2, Episode 13)
Don’t you love the comics when they come up with stuff like this?
This speech comes from the pen of a character in Marvel’s television show, Daredevil,
based on the comic book of the same name.
Karen Page, a reporter, writes this for her newspaper in the last episode of season 2,
which is on Netlflix right now.
Like I said a few months ago, now that I am the parent of a teenager,
I now am involved in a whole new world: the world of Theo’s friends’ smelly feet,
lots of empty pop cans, uncountable amounts of chip crumbs on the floor,
and superhero movies and television.
And it is all gift, let me tell you.
As I said, superhero comics and their film and TV adaptations are where some of the most
thoughtful reflections on ancient mythic themes are to be found today.
Friendship, loyalty, sacrifice, betrayal, justice, peace, honour, even forgiveness –
these things humans have struggled with for thousands of years now find
a natural place in the realm of the superhero comic book.
In Daredevil, a lawyer named Matt Murdock was blinded a result of
an accident in childhood.
But after the accident he found his other senses were extremely heightened,
to the point that he hears and sees and smells in a way that gives him extreme
knowledge of the world around him – especially of all the crime going on in
his neighbourhood of Hell’s Kitchen in New York City.
With this knowledge – and having naturally been trained in martial arts by a mentor who
sees his gifts – Matt Murdock sets out by night as Daredevil to fight crime and
protect the innocent.
Much of Daredevil is concerned with religious matters.
Matt is a Catholic and ponders how his faith informs or challenges what he does.
He has frequent conversations with his very thoughtful parish priest Father Lantom about
the morality of what he is doing.
He never kills anyone, but he does inflict violence on, intimidate, and threaten those who
harm the innocent – but he does struggle with whether it is more expedient to
just kill the wicked rather than try and reform them.
Should he just write them off?
To put it in terms of the Gospel this morning: who is worth searching out?
And who is worth not bothering about?
When Jesus is questioned by the religious authorities about his eating and drinking with the
the sinful, he tells them a story.
Well, he tells them three stories: about the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son.
We have the first two this morning, and they are well known to us.
A shepherd leaves 99 sheep to search for the lost one until he finds it.
A woman searches all over the house for a lost coin until she finds it.
The lost sheep, the lost coin: they are valuable to the searcher.
The emphasis in the stories is on the heroic nature of the seeker –
not about the repentance or the sinfulness or lack thereof of the coin and the sheep,
but the heroic lengths the searcher goes to in order to find the lost thing.
And we know it is exactly the same in the story of the lost son, or the prodigal son:
the father doesn’t care what the son has done: he longs and waits and
searches the horizon for the return of the son, because no matter what the
son has done, the father loves the son, and always will.
Because love is greater than our lostness.
Love is always greater than our lostness – love is the real hero here.
This week I read the most amazing thing.
I have begun reading something called The Prison Lectionary,
with commentaries on the readings by the incarcerated.
This week I read an essay by a fellow named Matthew Harper.
He was convicted of murder for killing his sister and is currently serving a sentence of 35 years
for that crime.
He is now about halfway through that sentence and he writes about
the insights and revelations he has gained after 17 years of incarceration.
First: people are broken. Prison is simply full of people, and people are not wholly good and
not wholly evil. Simply broken -just broken.
Broken by fear, broken by depression, broken by mental illness, and broken by hurt.
And, he writes, in that brokenness, if we are not vigilant, if we are not compassionate and loving,
we do evil things.
Second: redemption and forgiveness are expensive.
I have murdered my sister, he writes, and [yet] I am loved and supported by my parents. Their love is a free gift I receive, but loving me has not been free for them. It cost them something. It cost them a lot. They learned that love from God. It is, simply put, divine. This is a God who loves both the victim and the sinner. A God who will reach out to us over and over and over and over again. Not a God of second chances, a God of as many chances as it takes. Forgiveness stands at the gates of hell and proclaims that love is greater. Love is so much greater that we can hardly grasp it.
(Matthew Harper, “17 Years in Prison” at https://prisonlectionary.net/2016/09/02/essay-insights-17-years-in-prison/#more-1809)
Love is heroic.
Love is like the shepherd who searches for as long as it takes to find the one lost sheep.
Love is like the woman who searches for the one lost coin until she finds it.
Love values what is lost.
Love is heroic.
Friends, I have to believe in this God, this God of heroic mercy and heroic compassion.
I have to believe in the God who in Jesus ate with the sinful and loved them.
I have to believe in the God who in Jesus continues to come and eat with us week after week
searching us out in all our failings.
With record numbers of shootings in Chicago this year, I have to believe in this God.
I have to believe in the God whose mercy and compassion flow through Matthew Harper’s
parents to a lost soul who has now been found by love – and who has been changed.
Who now ministers in prison to the fellow lost.
I have to believe in the God who far from condemning Paul and cutting him down for
his violence against the church, confronted him with love and grace and forgiveness –
and changed him.
I have to believe in the heroism of this loving God.
For love believes that everyone has something to offer.
Jesus believed that the people he welcomed and ate and drank with had something to offer –
Just like his blockheaded disciples,
and just like the Romans and religious authorities he died forgiving.
Herbie Hancock I learned this week famously said that
you would not exist if you did not have something to bring to the table of life.
Everyone has something to offer.
That is what God believes about you and that is why God searches you out and loves you.
So you can bring the thing you have to offer to the table of life.
That is why Matthew Harper’s parents searched him out in spite of what he did and
loved him so he can bring the thing he has to offer to the table of life, which is,
as he writes, to hug the unhuggable.
I see God searching you out – and I see you bringing what you have to offer to the table of life.
I see you in your work welcoming the lost.
I see you in your homes searching out the lost.
I see you in this congregation setting a table and welcoming everyone –
in worship, in Sunday School, at food bank, at community meals, at Kids Club.
I see the love of the searching loving God flowing through you – and it is heroic.
You are the heroes.
The temptation when you watch superhero movies and television is to become a
passive observer of an entertainment.
But like Jesus’s parables, these stories have a way of breaking into you and opening
your life and your world up for you.
That is why I am so grateful for Karen Page’s direct address in the season 2 finale of Daredevil
That I quoted to you at the beginning.
It is both a reminder that we are the heroes – that for whatever crazy reason God has
enlisted us in God’s crazy scheme to love bless and heal this whole world and
every person in it – and that this city, this neighbourhood, is worth saving.
What is it to be a hero?
Look in the mirror and you will know.
Look into your own eyes and tell me you are not heroic, that you have not endured,
or suffered, or lost the things you care most about.
And yet, here you are. . . you must be a hero.
We all are.
Some more than others, but none of us alone.
A hero isn’t someone who lives above us, keeping us safe.
A hero’s not a God, or an idea.
A hero lives here, on the street, among us, with us.
Always here, but rarely recognized.
Look in the mirror and see yourself for what you truly are.
You’re a hero.
So come to the table and be found by the one who searches and searches for you in love.
Be fed – and know that you have something to bring to the table of life.
As Matthew Harper writes,
Here we are offered a homecoming, a loving acceptance, and while it is free it is also priceless. What will we do in response? For my part I will minister. I will encourage and cajole, I will teach and listen, laugh and cry, comfort and be comforted. I will hug and be hugged.
Which is to say: I will love.
So together, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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