I want to tell you about a man, a man I greatly admire.  Which is strange really, because this man had many negative qualities.  He was arrogant and self-centered and almost infantile sometimes in the way he dealt with people.  And this man seems to have had no spiritual life to speak of.  He sometimes referred to himself as an “optimistic agnostic”.  And he was perhaps the most sarcastic man who ever lived.  He had this acerbic wit.  You know what acerbic means, his words just dripped with acid and venom.  So, as I say, this is a man I greatly admire.  The man I’m talking about is, and perhaps you’ve guessed it already, Winston Churchill.  He had many faults, did Sir Winston, but in so many ways, here was a truly great man, the one almost indispensable man for the twentieth century.  There was a letter received in the Post Office that was addressed only to “The greatest man in the world, England”, and it was promptly delivered to Winston Churchill.           

As I say, he had this acerbic wit, which is quoted frequently.  You’ve perhaps heard the story of Churchill and Lady Astor.  These two didn’t like each other very much and they had this running battle of words.  Lady Astor once said, “Mr. Churchill, if I were your wife I would put poison in your tea.”  To which Churchill replied, “Madam, if I were your husband I would drink the tea.”  Churchill was also disagreeable with the famous playwright, George Bernard Shaw.  Shaw once sent Churchill tickets to his new play with this message, “I am enclosing two tickets to opening night of my new play; bring a friend, if you have one.”  Churchill responded with this message, “Cannot possibly attend opening night; will attend on the second night, if there is one.”           

And yet Churchill was a great man.  He had one characteristic especially that we all admire, and that was his courage.  He was undeniably a man of courage, and through his words he had the ability to instill something of this courage in those around him.  He would stand on the roof of the Ministry of War building during the Blitzkrieg as the bombs were falling all over London, and everyone else was running for cover, but there he stood, fully exposed to the danger, but erect, immovable.  His words, his presence, gave hope to the people of England during this desperate time.  It was said during the darkest days of World War II that the only thing standing between England and oblivion was this one stubborn old man.           

Others have had such courage, firefighters, for example, police officers, who go into burning buildings 110 stories high when everyone else is running out of the building.  Those who volunteer for military service overseas.  I was reminded of the rescue crews up in New England in the 19^th century who would row out in their little boats into these tremendous storms in the North Atlantic to rescue those who were shipwrecked.  There’s the story of one young man who had just joined a rescue team and he asked the captain on a particularly treacherous night as they put out to sea in their little boat to try to save people, “Do you suppose it’s possible that we won’t come back?”  To which the captain replied, “We don’t have to come back.  We do have to go out there.”           

Do you remember the New York City “Subway Superhero”, as they called him, from a year ago?  He saved that man unbelievably in the subway.  Do you remember?  A man was having a seizure on the subway platform, and this man fell onto the tracks, just as the train was coming into the station.  So this man, this hero, jumped down onto the tracks, as the train is just right there, and protected this man, covered him with his own body, while the train passed overhead, within inches of hitting him in the head and killing him.           

And then there was this 19-year-old boy named Jeremy Hernandez, who just a month ago was returning on a school bus with a group of children and teenagers, they were returning from an outing to a water park when the bridge they were traveling on in downtown Minneapolis just collapsed.  And this young man Jeremy suddenly became a hero who saved so many of the stunned children and teenagers who were on that bus.           

I have to tell you friends, I’m not sure I have this in me, this kind of courage.  Do you?  I would feel more at home with the courage of this truck driver I heard about who was sitting at the counter in a diner, his tractor-trailer was out in the parking lot.  And it was kind of a tough crowd in that diner, some real roughnecks.  And in walked these three Hell’s Angels types, now I know I have to be careful how I phrase this, but these three really rough guys, their motorcycles were out in the parking lot, and they were obviously looking for trouble.  So they saw this truck driver at the counter, and he must have looked like an easy target, so they went over, and one of the Hells’ Angels grabbed this man’s hamburger and took a bite out of it, and another took his coffee and took a drink, and the third one ground his cigarette butt into this man’s French fries.  Well the truck driver didn’t say a word.  He just got up quietly, walked over to the cashier, paid his bill, and walked out.  One of the Hell’s Angels said to the cashier, “He’s not much of a man, is he?”  And the cashier, who was looking out the window at the parking lot said, “No he’s not.  And he’s not much of a truck driver either apparently, he just ran over three motorcycles out there in the parking lot.”           

Now that’s more my speed, that’s more my kind of courage, kind of subtle, yet playful.  I just don’t think I have this other stuff in me.  But what is courage anyway?  What is the quality of a hero that we’re really looking for?  Is it possible for you and me ever to be a hero?  Is it possible for someone really rather ordinary to be a hero?           

I heard about a man by the name of Clark who, when he was young, some years ago, went with his father to the circus.  They stood in line to buy tickets, and there was a family of eight just ahead of them, the parents were holding hands and excited, the six children, all under the age of twelve, were jabbering on about all the things they were going to see and do at the circus.  When they reached the counter to buy tickets, the attendant asked how many tickets they wanted, and the father of this family proudly said that they wanted two adult tickets and six for the children.  And so the attendant quoted the price of those eight tickets, and the man’s jaw just dropped.  He leaned a little closer and asked, “How much did you say it was?”  And the attendant again quoted the same price.  It was obvious this man didn’t have the money.           

Well remember that Clark and his father were standing right behind this family and it was right then that Clark saw his father do something that he would never forgot.  He said his father put his hand in his pocket, pulled out a twenty-dollar bill; this was back when a twenty could buy you something, and dropped it on the ground.  He then tapped the father of the family of eight on the shoulder and said, “Excuse me sir, didn’t this twenty-dollar bill just fall out of your pocket?”  Well this man couldn’t quite believe it.  He looked into Clark’s father’s eyes and knew what was going on.  He took the twenty and shook his hand and with a tear streaming down his cheek said, “Thank you sir, thank you.  This really means a lot to me and my family.”  Well Clark and his father went back to their car and drove home.  They didn’t go to the circus that day; they didn’t have the money now.  But it didn’t matter.  They had done something much more important.           

Now to me, this man, Clark’s father, is something of a hero.  Here is a man who is compassionate and generous, and who seems to still be growing in his understanding of compassion, still learning, still seeking, still looking for new ways to express his compassion and his concern for people.           

In fact, I want to propose this idea.  I read somewhere once that the quality that is the most important for a hero is the ability to learn from life, the ability to learn, the ability to grow and develop and mature.  Someone put it this way, a hero is one who is educated by all things; no matter what happens you can learn from it and grow from it.  It was said of the poet Goethe that everything nourished him, everything nourished him.           

Now you might think that this is kind of an odd quality to single out for a hero.  But think of this, to be open and willing to change and grow, to determine that you are not necessarily going to be the same person in a year or two that you are today, because you are going to allow God to come into your life and work on you and develop you and take you over and take you where he will, no matter where it might lead.  There’s something daring in this, isn’t there, heroic?  To intentionally choose this path, to have this desire to learn and understand and know.           

A recent historian has written that Abraham Lincoln was perhaps the least experienced and most poorly prepared person ever to sit in the White House.  And yet he became arguably our greatest President.  And the reason is, this historian claims, that he had this enormous capacity for growth, he had this enormous capacity to mature, to learn and grow from his mistakes and failures.           

Someone told me once a long time ago, “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing poorly.”  If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing poorly.  Now usually you hear, “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.”  But I like this other way better, I think, if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing poorly.  If it’s worth doing, it’s worth taking the risk, in other words, it’s worth making mistakes, and it’s worth failing possibly, if to fail means that you absorb something new and learn and grow.            ‘

Frank Lloyd Wright, the architect, was once asked what his greatest work was, what building that he had designed was his greatest work, and his answer was that his greatest work was his next work, his next work.  He wasn’t resting on his laurels.  He wasn’t finished yet with his life.  My greatest work, he said, is my next work, the one I’m thinking about now, what I am about to do.           

Churchill never said it better, I don’t think, he never said it better.  Jesus did though, Jesus did.  Jesus said, in his parable on what our lives might mean, on how heroic we might become, on how we might grow and develop and mature, he said this, “Some seed fell on good soil, on fertile soil, on soil that was ready to receive it.  And it came up and grew and produced a crop, multiplying thirty times, and sixty, and even a hundred times what it once was.”