At last, the rain came in.
All morning we’d been watching the sky. From inside the passenger deck of the ferry that had brought us over from mainland Orkney, we could make out the distant patches of sky where the low lying clouds gathered and darkened into rain squalls. But for all its ominous gusting, the wind that was whipping the sides of the boat only carried ocean spray.
I exchanged meaningful glances with Cary.
“Well,” she said, with a wry grin “this is why we brought raingear.”
Driving off the ferry and along the island’s single road, we topped ridges that gave us sudden wide vista’s of the sea and surrounding islands. It was all clouds, mist and rain. The low hills, dark green with the rain, hunched like tired old men.
But we were still dry.
Only now, when Alan parked the van on the verge of the road – just when we were about to get out and walk… the rain drove in against us.
Alan wore a knowing smirk. He kept the van idling and flipped on the intermittent wipers.
No one said anything, but we were all thinking the same thing:
“We’re going out in that?”
“We’ll give it a couple minutes,” Alan said.
**
The passage from the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans that Rikki just read for us, begins with this phrase:
“We who are strong…”
“We. who. are. strong…”
With these words, the Apostle Paul makes a rather matter-of-fact assumption – he takes it for granted that the people to whom he is writing share something with him.
Strength.
We who are strong.
Paul may be thinking something like this: When a group of strong people gather together, they create a community of strength.
A community of strength.
Or perhaps Paul is speaking in a kind of aspirational way – perhaps he hopes to inspire a community of people to want to be strong by gathering them into his strength:
We who are strong.
Reading beyond the first phrase, we begin to understand the kind of strength that Paul is speaking of.
He is not giving us advice on how to do Yoga, or how to lift weights.
He’s not talking about physical strength.
We who are strong [he says] ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Each of us should please our neighbors for their good, to build them up.
This strength that Paul is describing, may be a kinda of internal strength, but it does not stay inside – it is a strength that moves outwards. It is not enough to be strong for one’s own sake. The kind of strength that Paul is talking about is a strength that is expressed in the world as a social good.
Strength, here, is shown when we join together to “bear with the failings of the weak…”
when we “please our neighbors for their good, to build them up.”
This strength that Paul is creating community around, is a moral strength – a strength of intention and action.
**
“Okay!” Alan said. “Let’s go!”
The rain had let up. There were six of us – seven if you counted Alan.
“Everyone all set with your raingear?” he asked.
We answered with a chorus of grunts, composed ourselves for a moment, and with a barely audible sigh of resignation, the nearest of us slid open the van door.
The question “Are we really going out in that?” had been decidedly answered.
A farm gate swung out into the open pasture. We opened it, and set off down a road – really just two ruts worn into the grass by the passage of farm equipment. A hedge and an ancient stone wall accompanied the farm road on its descent to the wind-ruffled sea.
Pulling my hat over my ears, I fought off the surprisingly persuasive internal voice that was saying:
“This is no place for the likes of you. Just be a good little boy and stay indoors!”
But wasn’t this why we had come? We signed up for a walking tour, and, by God, we were going to walk!
Today, the rain was not saying “stay indoors.” Today the rain was saying: “Go ahead! Get wet!”
**
Isabel Wilkerson, the renowned author and Pulitzer prize winning journalist, begins her book Caste with an analysis of a famous photograph.
The photograph, which I have included in today’s bulletin, depicts a crowd of shipyard workers immortalized in the act of giving the Nazi Salute. It was taken on June 13th, 1936, when Adolf Hitler himself addressed the crowd to celebrate the launching of a new ship. The photograph itself would have little significance were it not for one individual standing in the middle. Unlike every other person in the picture, this man’s arms are tightly folded.
The photograph illustrates two things. The first thing is that with his simple act the man, who has been identified as August Landmesser, offers us a definition of what moral courage looks like. Though there may have been others people present who did not fully agree with Hitler’s racist ambitions, Landmesser was the only one whose moral convictions were strong enough to lead him to contradict the force of the majority.
The second thing that the photograph shows us, is a definition of what mob mentality looks like. Whether it is a lynch mob, the salem witch trials, the red scare, riots and looters, people are capable of doing things as a group, that they would not be likely to do if they were by themselves.
This is because the individual’s moral compass can be seriously undermined – if not utterly destroyed – when the individual sees that immoral acts have been normalized and deemed acceptable by the majority .
Nazi Germany is history’s most horrifying example of mob mentality. The systematic murder of six million Jews could not have happened if the German people had not either agreed to take part in the holocaust, or look the other way.
When it got to the point that huge crowds were doing the Nazi salute, and it was a radical act of moral strength to refrain from doing so – when the power of the mob was that strong – the importance of individual morality was dangerously undermined, and all manner of horrible crimes were made possible.
**
Alan led us through the rain to a number of fascinating neolithic sites that day. Some of them were indoors, and he was artful enough to get out of the worst of the rain.
But the wind never let up.
By late afternoon, we’d put a few miles between us and the waiting van. The shoreline offered up many beautiful geological formations created by thousands of years of wind and rain.
To make it back to the van, we had to walk diagonally up the hill, against the wind.
We set off.
I remember that walk.
I remember the pasture’s hummocky, uneven ground. I remember the unrelenting wind whipping and snapping at the hood of my rain jacket. I remember watching the feet of the person in front of me. I remember pausing to inspect the skull of a sheep, bone white against the green grass. But most of all I remember the rhythm of that walk.
I was tired, but I felt strong.
Something about the steady rhythm established by the group gave me a sense that I could keep going and going.
It was an unusual and wonderful feeling – this feeling of being tired, but feeling strong.
**
This morning we celebrate the first Sunday of Advent.
During the four Sundays of Advent we anticipate the birth of our savior Jesus Christ, which we will celebrate on Christmas morning.
When we light our Advent candles we honor four essential characteristics of our human condition. Hope, Joy, Peace, and Love.
This morning, we lit the candle of hope.
And as we light the candle of hope, I consider the aspirational words of the Apostle Paul, when he invites us into a community of strength.
We who are strong
he says.
This morning, I submit to you that we can place our hope in strength.
We can place our hope in the power of moral courage.
Because while it is true that mobs of people are capable of the worst kinds of atrocities…
It is equally true that communities, formed around moral strength, are capable of the highest form of Godliness.
We who are strong
means strength together
So even if we are tired…
Even if we are facing a headwind
Even if the rain is falling…
Still,
when we are together
we are strong
and we have hope.
Amen.