IMAGE OF THE INVISIBLE
November 21, 2004
Texts – Jeremiah 23: 1-6
Colossians 1: 11-20
Who are your heroes? Do you still have any?
A recent survey of high school students asked that question. The most popular response was “I don’t have any.” Those who did admit to having someone they admired wrote mainly of rock stars and celebrities.
How would you answer? Who are your heroes?
The World Almanac asked that of two thousand eighth graders. Most answered like their high school peers – “None.” A few named movie stars and rock artists. Although half of those polled were girls, only five women appeared on their lists — all were actresses, models or pop singers. There was not a single scientist or author or social leader in the bunch.
What about you? Who are your heroes . . . the people you admire and want to be like? Is it hard for you to answer as well?
Not so long ago many would have quickly thought of Charles Lindbergh and Winston Churchill; Florence Nightingale and Sojourner Truth and Helen Keller and Jane Addams would have also come to mind. They were all larger than life, weren’t they? They seemed to tower over their time, inspiring the hearts of young and old. Not so now.
The absence of heroes in our day may say more about us than it does about their scarcity. There is a spirit of egalitarianism today which goes far beyond our forebears’ insistence on equality before the law. Now we’re supposed to see everyone as essentially equal in virtue, courage, and accomplishment. It’s a kind of leveling down; we worry about elevating the extraordinary among us for applause and adulation.
I love the story about the confirmation hearings which were held for a federal judgeship. One of the senators commented that the candidate’s record was absolutely mediocre. “Why should that disqualify him?” one of his colleagues asked, and then added – “There are a lot of mediocre people out there who deserve representation just as much as the brilliant.”
Isn’t that just like us? And don’t we secretly enjoy it when someone in the public eye falls? I wonder sometimes why we almost instinctively assume the worst motives in every politician? Why are businesspeople so often regarded cynically as nothing but greedy? Why are so many of those who are publicly identified with noble causes almost immediately called into question? Why all this cynicism, this inability to idealize, to hold on a pedestal?
The answer may not be that there are no more Lindbergh’s and Churchill’s around. It may be, rather, that in a self‑indulgent consumer society, heroes are uncomfortable creatures to have around. They remind us of what we might yet be. A hero, by definition, is someone who achieves beyond the average, who stretches beyond the normal. A hero is someone who suggests by his or her very existence that I have not yet arrived . . . that I have not yet become all that I could be.
“Societies need role models more than anything else,” one man says. “They need people they can look up to and emulate. A nation that does not reward and respect real accomplishment . . . is weakening its own moral fiber and preparing for its own collapse.” He has a point.
The fact of the matter is that we all need heroes, people who exemplify our ideals and shape our goals. They embody our deepest feelings about what we can become; they model the kind of person we seek to be.
Sigmund Freud called this “an ego ideal.” We need, he suggested, to idealize captivating figures or else we lose a sense of identity, hope and direction for our own lives.
Ever think of Jesus as a hero? That is the way this old book presents him, and it is the way countless generations before us have viewed him. He is the one hero to whom we are invited to look and idealize above all others. He represents a vision of what we may be and should long to become, whose person should fascinate and captivate us amidst all the trials and troubles of life. Does that sound strange? Can you imagine telling someone that Jesus is your hero?
In this old story that is what he is. He comes to us as a real human being whom we are to admire, to emulate, to follow, to struggle to be like, whose mind and spirit we are to covet, whose life is to be the model for our lives.
“Come, follow me,” he said to the wise and simple of his time. “You will do greater deeds than I have done,” he said to his friends the night before he died. “Have this same mind, attitude, spirit in you which was in him,” writes the Apostle Paul to Corinth. “Let us keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, who leads us in our faith and brings it to perfection . . .” writes the author of the Letter to the Hebrews.
Is Jesus even remotely a hero in these early days of the 21st Century? Do we live grounded in our admiration of him and his way, determined before we die to come as close as we can to his mind and spirit? I wonder.
For many, he has become a kind of supernatural figure of marvelous powers and divine beneficence who at the same time bears no relationship to life in this real world. It seldom occurs to most people that his way of dealing with the hurts and trials of this very human life, his spirit and attitude as he relates to others, his courage and hope in the face of an uncertain and unknown future, represents a real possibility for all of us as we seek his way, his truth, his life. Somehow we have failed to make him real, attractive and captivating to the intelligent mature involved adult of our day, not to mention the young whose surroundings are so devoid of heroic figures. With every new generation, we need, as the apostle Paul puts it, to learn Jesus. Jesus as the hero who invites us to imagine ourselves becoming like him.
Heroes, I say again, are models of real life. They are motivation and inspiration. We draw strength and life from them. By their lives they say to us, “You can do it, too. You can rise above the common, the ordinary and reach for a life that is rich and noble and Jesus‑ like. You can. You too can be a hero.”
I said at the beginning that heroes seem to have disappeared from our culture today, but that’s not quite true. They may not be there in the headlines or on the world stage anymore. But they are there to be found if you look for them. You may even be one of them. Has it ever occurred to you that someone is looking to you for guidance and inspiration, model and motivation; looking to you to lift and encourage, guide and inspire by your quiet leadership, your gentle hope, your patient ways?
I can say without hesitation that that is true of every one of you who is parenting today. For better or worse, our children do look up to us. They do idolize us. How many times have you been to a wedding or even a funeral and they’ve played Bette Midler’s version of “Wind Beneath My Wings”? I know I lost count a long time ago.
“Did you ever know that you’re my hero,
and everything I would like to be.
I can fly higher than an eagle,
‘Cause you are the wind beneath my wings.”
Aren’t there people like that in your life? And aren’t you a person like that in someone’s life? Sure you are. We all are.
Thursday we’ll gather around our family tables. As you give thanks, I bid you remember the women and men who’ve been the wind beneath your wings. If by chance one or two of them happen to be seated there with you, why not find a way to tell them? It could be as simple as saying “I give thanks for you.”
Finally, this — When you get tired of all the posturing that goes on in this world . . . when the hypocrisy and duplicity of those in the public spot light finally gets to you and you want to just turn your back on it all and say “I quit!” . . . think about the man in whose name we gather week in and week out. He is still here, you know. Oh no, not in an obvious or public way, calling attention to himself and demanding that everybody acknowledge and bow down to him. That wasn’t his way two thousand years ago; why on earth would anyone think he’d act that way now? But he is still here . . . Still with us . . . Still working in the same way he worked back then. Reaching out to the poor and the hungry. Quietly touching the sick and the needy. Gently directing the lost and the lonely. He is the wind beneath all of our wings. He is the spirit enlivening all of our lives. Let him be your hero — your model and inspiration. You’ll never find a better one, nor a truer friend.