I Can't Not Remember

February 20, 2000

Mark 2:1-12

General George Custer,

Senator McCarthy,

Al Companis and

Elia Kazan.

What do these persons have in common?

Too difficult?

Try these:

Hugh Grant,

Jimmy Swaggart,

Jim Bakker and

Gary Hart.

good guess, but you're wrong!

Sex may be symptomatic of the sin for some of them,

but the real sin was a positively public

and consequential error in judgment.

made an outstanding, newsworthy and notable mistake.

Occasionally, individuals are remembered --

and let's hope that none of us joins this All-Star Tabloid Team --

not for virtuous acts,
but for naughty, nasty or nauseating big blunders.

Like that of Gavrilo Princip, for example.

Here's a guy who,

arguably more than any other individual,

played the starring role in the formation

of world history for the whole of the 20th century

... and yet you've never heard of him.

He's the one person who triggered the whole mess,

whose one action in a split second of time

altered the course of world history,

who singularly fired up an international shooting match

costing millions and millions of lives.

That's quite a load of bad karma.

Princip is the 19-year-old Serbian student

who assassinated Archduke Francis Ferdinand

in Sarajevo in 1914.

This ignited World War I,

which resulted in the Treaty of Versailles,

which further plunged Germany into an economic depression,

and deeply embittered a nondescript Austrian corporal

named Adolf Hitler.

Hitler,

in response,

booted up the great horror of World War II,

a war which ended with the division of Eastern Europe

without regard to

traditional borders,

ethnicity,

language or

religion

which hastened the research and deployment

of atomic weapons resulting in the horrors

of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,

and ended with a divided world and skirmish wars

in such places as Korea and Vietnam...

And also planted seeds of ethnic hostility

that have grown into localized wars and uprisings

in the 50 years since

in locations such as

Hungary, the Middle East, the Eastern bloc

and, of course, Serbia today.

Gavrilo Princip.

One man.

One moment in time.

One mistake.

One BIG mistake.

("Trigger of the Century", Richard Stengel, "Dubious Influences", TIME, June 14, 1999, 217).

Infamous Princip might be considered an anti-hero,

a minor villain whose one bullet made a terrible difference.

How awful it is to be remembered

for a deed done in one moment out of a lifetime.

We all miscalculate and bungle,

but even our mistakes can themselves be outshone

by acts of kindness and compassion.

Think of Rosa Parks.

One woman.

One moment in time.

One heroic act.

Think of the nameless student in Tiananmen Square

who squared off with a tank.

One idea.

One image.

Think of the Englishwoman Emmeline Pankhurst,

whose suffragettes fought for women's vote

at the turn of the last century.

There are others whose names we have forgotten,

whose names we never knew,

whose kindnesses and heroisms

touched and changed our lives.

And yet,

they say there are no heroes anymore.

But they're there.

"Walk down any street and you will find them:

the mothers who work,

the fathers who strive,

the children who overcome.

They aren't larger than life,

but they are larger than their own lives.

Their names aren't famous,

but their virtues are.

Hard work.

Common sense.

An unshakable belief in themselves.
If you're looking for a hero, look around."

(Advertisement of Merrill Lynch, TIME, June 14, 1999, 207).

We may not know their names,

but there are always quiet heroes among us.

Perhaps we number among them.

Think of the friends of the paralytic who,

unable to get their friend in to see Dr. Jesus

because crowds blocked the door,

were able to think outside-of-the-box...

or in this case outside-of-the-house,

to find an unconventional, unorthodox and somewhat deconstructive,

but stunningly successful,

way to get the man in to see Jesus.

They hauled their friend up the outside stairs,

hitched up their skirts,

punched a hole through the adobe-type roof,

digging with their hands

until the breach was gaping enough

to hand the man down to other hands below

to lay the paralytic man on his mat at the feet of Jesus.

That's some trouble to go to for the sake of a friend.

These nameless chums have been immortalized

not for a Warholian 15 minutes of fame,

but for 20 centuries of honor.

One moment.

One simple act of kindness --

all they were after was getting their friend back on his feet...

but it changed his life,

and made everybody who was there that day say,

"We've never seen anything like this!"

And Jesus,

upon having this man lowered into his midst

sees the faith of the four friends and says,

"Your sins are forgiven."

What has your faith done for your friends?

Are we the persistent friends kneeling on the roof,

doing the grubby work of kindness

with callused hands and dirty fingernails?

How will we be remembered --

for our mistakes

or for our quiet heroism and kindnesses?

There were some others to be remembered there that day.

There were teachers of religious law who did the big

"Hmmmmmmph."

And there were the people in the front row,

pushing one another to gawk a look at Jesus

while simultaneously preventing those who need his touch from seeing him,

from even getting close?

So, church, who are we?

Whose company do we keep?

Break into groups...

two questions to talk over...

One positive thing you learned

from the persons who raised you

that you want to continue...

Something you would not repeat

but were glad you learned it...

you are a better person for overcoming it.

some quieted by age now,

hugging one another and standing for photo ops.

Julian Bond, Joseph Lowery, Ron Dellums,

Andrew Young, Dick Gregory, Jesse Jackson,

this is a group that --

these days --

gets together most often at funerals.

But [recently] they gathered at the Capitol

to honor a tiny, frail woman.

44 years and a lifetime ago,

came to symbolize the fight for civil rights.

And perhaps it was only fitting

that even after all the victories,

the move to award the Congressional Gold Medal to Rosa Parks

had still required activism, organizing

and a helpful dose of righteous anger.

Parks, now 86,

spoke little during the ceremony.

that the civil rights movement,

which had been bumping along in fits and starts for years,

finally pushed its way onto the national agenda in 1955.

That was the year Parks refused to yield her seat

to a white man on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama.

That small decision led to a lengthy black boycott of the bus system

and helped propel the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

into the forefront of the movement ....

"It is a celebration of the life of Rosa Parks

receiving this medal while she can still see it,

still feel it, still hold it,"

said Rep. Julia Carson (D-Ind.),

who introduced the legislation to award Parks the medal ....

When she got to Congress in 1997,

Carson thought Parks had already received the Congressional Gold Medal,

and said yesterday that the award was long overdue.

"I think it is overdue," he said,

"and I can offer no explanation for it.

When Carson introduced the legislation in February to honor Parks,

the bill had about 40 co-sponsors,

mostly members of the Congressional Black Caucus.

But the campaign gained momentum

after Carson wrote to the nationally syndicated Tom Joyner Morning Show,

which airs locally on WHUR-FM,

and enlisted the help of commentator and BET Tonight host Tavis Smiley.

The bill wound up with 329 cosponsors.

I'm always with everybody.

so let me try to explain.

Remember in the first Superman movie

where the missile is going to blow up the house of Valerie Perrine's mother

at the same time the earthquake is about to swallow up Lois?

Superman had to let Lois get killed

because he couldn't be in two places at once.

Well, on my worst day,

I'm better than Superman.

[Living Jesus: Learning the Heart of the Gospel]

is that I spend a whole chapter

talking about the character of interpersonal learning.

another person is opposed to learning things

or learning facts?

in learning persons?

in the pattern of learning

that my wife and I have gone through over 20 years.

but it requires patience and creative fidelity

and perseverance and so forth ....

For Christians,

it's not simply a romantic notion,

but is quite serious and literally true

that when somebody walks through my door

and I receive them and listen to them,

I am learning about Jesus.

So I try to take that perspective

and then read the New Testament out of the perspective

of the various witnesses to Jesus in the New Testament.

can name between five and eight people

who've significantly shaped their lives --

people who came into their lives at different times

and made important contributions,

according to Howard Hendricks, professor at Dallas Theological Seminary.

Mentoring may seem like a one-on-one relationship on the surface,

but it's actually part of a web of mentoring connections,

with protégés having several mentors throughout their lives

and also becoming mentors to others.

when mentors pass along wisdom to their protégés,

who pass it on to their protégés,

and so on down the line. ...

Encourage multiple mentoring relationships in your church,

and provide opportunities for people of all ages

to interact and form teaching relationships.

[Earlier, she was] traveling in Haiti with a group

distributing eyeglasses and medicine.

While the group was on the road,

some people swarmed the truck,

and when the robbers failed to get what they wanted,

they shattered the van's windows with rocks.

That experience did not prevent Pam from going to Macedonia

to help the Kosovar refugees.

with Doctors of the World,

she arranged for coverage at her job

as an emergency room physician in Cleveland.

she was working in the Senokos Camp in Macedonia.

are thoughtful, caring, generous.

We'll even stop to help a fellow driver

stranded by a roadside breakdown,

or give spare change to a stranger.

a wall separates each of us from the world outside,

and from others who have taken refuge

in their own private sanctuaries.

that's the very soul of democratic citizenship? ...

Certainly we need to decide for ourselves

whether particular causes are wise or foolish.

that our individual involvement is worthwhile,

that what we might do in the public sphere

will not be in vain.

As the Ethiopian proverb says,

"He who conceals his disease cannot be cured."

We need to understand our cultural diseases --

callousness, short-sightedness, denial --

and learn what it will take to heal

our society and our souls.

that we can do nothing to affect the future

our children and grandchildren will inherit?

to work powerfully for change?

this disease is God's vengeance,

but I believe it was sent

to teach people how to love and understand

and have compassion for each other.

love, selflessness and human understanding

from the people I have met

in this great adventure in the world of AIDS

than I ever did in the

cutthroat, competitive world

in which I spent my life.

Elia Kazan will always be the Whittaker Chambers of Hollywood --

minus Alger Hiss, of course,

because the director never seemed to come up with the big score,

never gave the House Committee on Un-American Activities [HUAC]

the mole who fed Mosfilm, say,

Darryl Zanuck's secret formula for box office success. ...

Kazan says ...

that he had become convinced that the Soviet Union

was a monolithic evil empire

that had started the Korean War

and was operating a dangerous and subversive network

of clandestine cells.

that he informed to protect his movie career,

because he named only people who were already known,

it was no big deal.

as an afterthought,

that "they, of course, suffered some from it."

Although it's true that

he could have done much more damage than he did,

the point worth emphasizing is that

Kazan's big score,

the Alger Hiss he delivered to HUAC,

was himself.

the "naming" ritual

was not intended to expose new Reds and fellow travelers;

it was a way of legitimizing HUAC

and its enterprise.

based on his artistic achievements

and his participation in the social struggles of the '30s.

incomprehensible today

after decades of Cold War rhetoric

have driven a wedge between the two.

it would have constituted a stinging rebuke,

encouraging others to do the same.

he not only jumped the wrong way,

he went the extra mile,

groveling before Parnell Thomas and Richard Nixon, et al. --

no William Empson they --

in his textual explications of pictures like Viva Zapata!,

intended to demonstrate that they were actually blows against communism.

concerns about his Hollywood career

were never far from his mind ....

As Orson Welles is famously supposed to have said,

"Kazan traded his soul for a swimming pool."

developing fearsome competitors.

have written a book on the training practices that set the corps apart.

Semper Fi: Business Leadership the Marine Corps Way (AMACOM, 1998).

Share war stories.

One boot-camp course uses

"warrior stations,"

each of which is built around

a heroic feat performed by a Marine.

Each station displays a photograph of the Marine

plus an inscription about his deed,

and every team must re-enact the same feat.

Afterward, every recruit knows that

he belongs to a unique group.

bad things happen fast.

good things happen slowly.

That's not universally true, of course,

but it's true enough to wonder if there is a structural explanation.

One is simple:

Construction usually requires sequential elements of assembly,

whereas destruction can be done all at once.

Another explanation is embodied

in all the folk wisdom about

the carelessness of haste.

Early researchers in artificial intelligence

came across yet another explanation,

a phenomenon they called hill climbing.

where the higher you get,

the greater the advantage.

because they pay attention

only to the slope of the ground under their feet,

climb quickly to the immediate hilltop,

and get stuck there.

to the distant peaks

and toil through many ups and downs

on the long trek to the heights.

for success in his life,

Albert Einstein gave the following:

"If a is success in life,

the formula is,

a = x + y + z,

x being work and
y being play."

"And what is z?"

he was asked.

"z," he said,

"is keeping your mouth shut."