November 16th ~ By Your Endurance You Will Gain Your Soul

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Malachi 4:1-2a

Psalm 98

2 Thessalonians 3:6-13

Luke 21:5-19

Sermon by Pastor Joel

This week, I learned the story of Jesse L. Brown and Tom Hudner. Jesse was the first African-American aviator to complete the United States Navy's basic flight-training program, and he flew in the Korean War. Tom was the wealthy Irish-American guy who became his wingman. While flying over North Korea, Jesse’s plane took a bullet and crashed on a mountaintop. Instead of abandoning him, Tom crash-landed his plane nearby to save Jesse. Unfortunately, by the time they could be rescued, Jesse had died from his injuries.

I learned this story because, by chance, I happened to stumble across a movie on Remembrance Day. The movie had already started, so I missed the back story. But Tom Hudner’s act seemed so selfless, I had to google to make sure this wasn’t Hollywood fiction. And sure enough, the story was true. Jesse had overcome racism to achieve something no one else had done before him. And Tom did crash his plan, and risked the chance never to get home again, to try to save him.

Now, I know Remembrance Day has passed, freeing up all the stores to haul out the Christmas decorations – so why tell this story now? When I read the second lesson, I knew why I wanted to put it in the sermon. These verses from 2 Thessalonians are about a group of people who stop working and stop trying. They believe Jesus is about to return, so they decide to sit down and wait. And yet, they are chastised for doing so, and we are reminded: “Brothers and sisters, do not be weary in doing what is right.”

The second lesson isn’t about laziness; it’s about complacency. And complacency, I’d argue, its much worse than laziness. People, I have found, often don’t act out of laziness, but rather because they have been told for so long that they can’t do something, that they stop trying. Perhaps anxiety paralyzes them, and they are just too afraid they will fail.

But complacency – well that’s people’s being lazy who have the skills and ability and privilege to work for what is right. When we recognize an old problem but assume it can’t be fixed with a new solution, that’s complacency. When we see someone more vulnerable and don’t work to change ourselves or our community or our country to help them, that’s complacency. And it also seems to me that if we honour Canadian soldiers – and men like Jesse and Tom – for only one Sunday service or one hour at a war memorial, well, that’s also complacency.

Tom and Jesse were the opposite of complacent. At that time, segregation still existed in much of the country, but the Civil Rights Movement was growing quickly, empowering some to fight for their rights, turning others into violent thugs and murderers to stop those rights from coming to pass. Indeed, Tom and Jesse lived in a time like that described in our gospel – a time when people were rising up against people, and neighbors against neighbors. When the foundations of a society based on discrimination and oppression were being shaken and rattled, like an earthquake created by people working and fighting for change. And just as in the gospel, people working on the side of change were thrown into prison, persecuted, and beaten. They were betrayed by relatives and friends who stood on the other side; and some of them, as the gospel also warns, were tragically murdered.

In this world, Tom wasn’t even supposed to be Jesse’s friend, let alone risk his life for him. And yet neither sat around waiting for the world to correct itself, for others to fight for change, for the gospel to magically gets things done. They didn’t know how the war would end, or what direction their communities would take, but they went to work. The consequences of their labour were significant; enough to win them both medals and to be portrayed as heroes in a movie decades later. At the end of that movie you learned that the Brown and Hudner families remained lifelong friends. And if that is all their work had accomplished – an unusual friendship in defiance of racism – that would have been enough. Because our work doesn’t need to produce medals and movies; it just has to be an example of what is right in a world once terribly wrong.

Jesus doesn’t mince words; there’s nothing gentle about the image he is painting. He’s saying that the work is hard and the risk is large. But have no fear he says, no hair on your head will be harmed. By your endurance you will gain your souls.”

“By your endurance you will gain your souls.” What a great line that is. What an important message from Jesus. Because, “the hair on your head” phrase, is really a metaphor; Jesus was not promising that the disciples would be saved every time they got into trouble, every time they faced an angry mob. No, the real promise is the next line: “by your endurance you will gain your souls.” What restores the centre of our very being? We already know. Doing what’s right by our families and the next generation. Leaving the world a little better than we found it. Being remembered by those who follow after us.

Now, let’s not forget. We don’t have to work. Our relationship with the gospel – and God – is not transactional, as Martin Luther recently reminded us. But Jesse and Tom didn’t have to enlist; they volunteered to wear the uniform. Tom didn’t have to try to save Jesse – in fact, he broke the rules to do so. And no one made the Browns and Hudners remain friends, they chose that path together.

So, let us not be complacent, in the lazy ways of the relatively privileged. Let us be active. Let us get to work. Incidentally, if you’d like to watch it, the movie about Jesse Brown and Tom Judner is called Devotion. Which is fitting, because isn’t devotion the opposite of complacency? What is devotion but the work of persevering, of loving what is imperfect, of standing firm and trying to help, or not getting distracted and wandering away from the place we need to be. Let this be us: persevering, loving, and steady -- disciples of devotion.  Amen