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The Rev. Frank Logue
Do Not Fear Revelation 7:13-17 & Luke 12:4-12
On Tuesday, Professor Liviu Librescu blocked the door to his Virginia Tech classroom with his body. Student Alec Calhoun told a newspaper reporter, “I thought I was going to die…I hung out on the ledge. The professor was trying to hold the door closed. I was the last one out that was not wounded.”
Other students told of how when the gunman did break through the doorway, Librescu, a 76-year old Holocaust survivor, threw himself in front of the attacker. Another student said, “He was killed, but thanks to him his students lived.”
This act of selflessness on the part of the professor has been much reported, along with similar selfless acts by others. In the deep darkness of every human tragedy one finds these flickers of light. Reporters know that this is always so and they search for the light in the midst of the darkness.
An airliner crashes into the Potomac River on a snowy night and a pedestrian jumps into the water, pulls people to safety and dies in the effort. As the towers of the World Trade Center fall, they take with them the lives of firefighters, policemen and paramedics who ran into harm’s way to save others. A gunman takes over an Amish school and a 13-year old girl tells the killer to kill her first, hoping to buy time for her classmates.
A rabbi friend told me once that had there not been a man like Oskar Schindler who saved Jews from death in the Holocaust, then we would have invented him. But the rabbi knew and said that we never had to invent men like Schindler, or Maximilian Kolb, the Catholic priest who offered to die in the place of another man, or the many other stories of Holocaust heroism. And now to these stories, we add professor Liviu Librescu and the others who acted selflessly in the face of death.
I recall these acts on this night as we are on the even of the Feast of Saint Alphege of Canterbury, another who belongs to this list of selfless saints. Alphege is thought to have been born of a noble family in Weston near Bath around the year 953. At an early age, he joined the monastery of Deerhurst in Gloucestershire. Later, he moved to Glastonbury, where he became Prior. After serving in that post for some time, he sought a more solitary life and lived as an anchorite near the hot springs in Bath. In 984 he was named Bishop of Winchester.
At that time, England suffered from near constant raids from Vikings. The monarch of the time is now remembered as King Aethelred the Unready. His plan of defense was to bribe the Vikings, which only made them want to return for more bribes. Alphege had a different plan.
In 994, King Olaf of Norway attacked London. Alphege went out to consult with the Norwegian king, who was a baptized Christian, but not yet confirmed. Alphege brokered a peace deal in which he confirmed Olaf and persuaded King Aethelred to adopt hOlaf as his son. Olaf promised to stop his attacks against England and held to that oath.
For 22 years, Alphege served as the Bishop of Winchester before being named Archbishop of Canterbury in 1005. Two years later Danish ships began steady attacks on England. Canterbury fell to the Danes in 1011 as they sacked the city and burned the cathedral. The Danes took many captives, including monks and nuns, to sell as slaves or to ransom back to England. Among the captives was Archbishop Alphege.
A payment of 84,000 pounds was agreed upon, but Alphege refused to have the 3,000 pounds paid for his ransom. He said that the money would come from the poor and he refused to allow the neediest of England to suffer so that he could go free.
The Danes were angered at this loss of income and at a drunken party, they began to in the words of the ancient Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, “overwhelmed him with bones and horns of oxen,” mortally wounding him. According to some accounts, a Dane named Thrum who had converted to Christianity while held prisoner took pity on Alphege and dealt a death blow with an ax to end the archbishop’s suffering.
Alphege died out of a sense of justice, refusing to not to do the right thing even when his refusal meant death. He became a national hero. He was, in his own time and place, seen as a light shining in the darkness. Against the fear and uncertainty in the wake of the fall of Canterbury, the solemn stand of the archbishop who would not let the poor bear the cost of his ransom, was viewed as a stand for divine justice in a world turned against God.
In our reading from Luke’s Gospel, Jesus says,
“I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that can do nothing more. But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him! Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten in God's sight. But even the hairs of your head are all counted. Do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.”
Do not be afraid Jesus says, even in the face of death. And it is amazing how often in human history there are those who act on his words. Not out of some studied sense of right and wrong, for there is often no time for that. I don’t doubt that those who acted to save lives at risk of their own often had no time to think, but only reacted out of the core of their being.
And so in this Christian sermon based on readings for an Anglican Archbishop, I extol the courage of a Jew who died so that his students might live. But I find that this sort of bravery must come from an internal sense of putting others ahead of oneself. And this is not merely a Judeo-Christian idea. I think this idea of selflessness as a virtue is one that is such a constant because it is part of the image and likeness of God imprinted on the human soul. And when one acts selflessly it is Christ-like because he or she is acting on that image of God inscribed on the human heart.
As for making sense out of the tragedies that lead to such heroism, we know that wherever evil seeks to overcome good, there will be these rays of light shining in the darkness. And beyond that, we know that there is a deeper justice. God’s justice will sort out this fallen world in time, but not until all have a chance to respond to God.
In our reading this evening from Revelation tells us,
For this reason they are before the throne of God, and worship him day and night within his temple, and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them. They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.
On a week like this, we give thanks for the acts of heroism which work like rays of light to pierce the darkness and we pray for the day when God will wipe every tear from our eyes.
Amen.
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