We Can Be Heroes or Women of Faith in the Post-Biblical era

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We all have spent last couple of weeks following this series +of awesome sermons about remarkable people of faith. I first +thought that my task is the hardest one, to find one exceptional +woman among millions of those who followed Jesus Christ in the +post-Biblical times, but when listening to those sermons, it +feels like I am not alone. Each one of us had a different task to +pick one person from large set of candidates. However, I still +believe that my task might be the most difficult one. Not only +I am one of two preachers with the longest time period to pick +from, but also the position of women was quite different during +the ages than the one of men.

Let’s try to start from this start. I am persuaded that one of the +strongest motivators in our lives is our resistance to pain. We +all have some kind of pain in our life, and our effort to get rid +of that pain may be one of the strongest decisive factors for +us. When the pain reaches sufficient threshold we are willing to +do almost anything to get rid of it, without regards whether what +we are doing is right, Christian, or even legal in many times. We +know how many alcoholics, drug abusers, and even adulterers +claimed that they what they were doing fully knowing it is wrong, +but the pain they were trying to drown out was so strong, they +give in. As Richard Rohr, a famous Franciscan spiritual leader, +once said, “if we don’t transform [our pain], we will transmit +it.”

There are many different types of pain we can encounter in our +lives, but I would like today only about one of them. Feeling of +powerlessness. That feeling when we are facing ours or even more +somebody else pain, and we cannot do anything about it, can lead +many to serious depression, which we could try to oppose by going +into some completely irrational and ungodly places.

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Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat
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something.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that
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you know nothing about.” So the disciples began to say to
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one another, “No one brought him anything to eat, did
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they?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of
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the one who sent me and to complete his work. …”
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(John 4:31-34)
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There is only one antidote against this feeling of hopelessness, +because of course it is always about the lack of hope in the +end, and that is to do something. Think for example about the +current war in Ukraine. For anybody who spent at least a little +bit of time following the current news in the past two years, the +impression is so strong, that it can completely crush our +life. If we know somebody who has some significant links to +the war, and we have some people like this in this church, the +feeling is even stronger.

For somebody the pressure is so high, they gave up their life +and went to volunteer to Ukrainian army. I know about many Czech +volunteers who are participating in some kind of charitable +organizations which are helping people affected by the war in +various ways. And of course, there are also many funds collecting +many for supporting good work to those who suffer. Anybody has an +opportunity to do something, and for your sanity, if this touches +you, I would strongly suggest to do it.

For centuries, for millennia, women never had even an opportunity +to behave to do much, and they had to develop their own strategy +how to deal with the pain of the world as they see it (and many +men, often the most successful ones, learned that lesson as +well).

Which finally leads to one obscure woman I would like to talk +about. Her name was Hannah More and she was living in the end of +the eighteenth and the beginning of nineteenth century in England +(specifically in Clapham). Move your mind to those times, think +about novels by Jane Austen, and that for most women there was no +chance how to achieve independently almost anything. Hannah More +has one advantage above her sisters. She was engaged as was +expected, but her betrothed was postponing the wedding for so +long time (in the end more than five years) that in the end he +decided to break the engagement and he got married to somebody +else. I am not sure whether it was a legal requirement or just +him being a decent man, given that after five years of waiting +Miss More was almost ineligible to get another husband, he +promised to her and paid an annual rent for the rest of her life, +which allowed her to life a decent independent life. She never +married, but used her life for changing her life.

She became one of the founding members of what is now called +The Clapham Sect, group of faithful Christians, members of the +Church of England, who were guided by their faith to change the +society according to their faith. Some of her opinions and goals +are now hard to accept, times changed a lot, but she certainly +achieved a lot. Her biggest personal achievement was founding +of the first systematic school system for girls, she produced +hundreds of pamphlets for education of literate poor, and one of +her less direct achievements that she organized a group of people +supporting William Wilberforce and persuaded him to pick up the +cause of the abolition of slavery.

When looking at her life there are couple of differences which I +think can illustrate what I think is the main lesson we can learn +for our life of everyday heroes.

Get power v. love and help

This is the basic difference in the life situations of man and +woman in history. Well, actually, it is not only about women, +because of course most of men in the past and mostly everybody +today are not in the situation where they could leave everything +and start changing the world.

Still the primary of our society, even when we are not +considering violent solutions, is to achieve some amount of +power, and then use it for changing the world. One of two +video-clips I hoped to run during this sermon, but then I decided +to cut them because they were too long, was from the first part +of the Lord of the Rings, where Boromir asks to take the evil +ring of the Dark Lord Sauron to defend his country against the +same evil. I am not saying that all politics is always evil, we +need more Christians and other people of good will in politics to +get out of the marasm we currently find ourselves, but it worries +me how much we rely on this one way how to change things, and how +complicated and dangerous it is.

I am thinking about a Christian non-profit organization which +used to work among young girls who were pregnant. They were +organizing adoptions and care for pregnant girls trying to +persuade them not to go with abortion. They used to have +thos posters “Are you in a bad situation? We will help!” +everywhere. Even though they were expressly Christian and +opposing the mainstream attitude towards pregnancy and sexuality, +they were quite respected and I believe they actually helped many +girls in difficult situation.

I don’t know what happened, perhaps they considered their +previous work too small, or something, but they changed their +complete strategy, turned towards politics, and the results +are in my opinion complete disaster. Head of the organization +made couple of some rather unfortunate statements, some of them +sound quite homophobic, they started publish position papers, +which were including some unverifiable statements and some really +bad statistics and bad science. Once respectable organization is +now a joke, and many people I asked about them told me that it is +just another proove that “those Christians” are only after power +and money. Jews have term “Chillul hashem” (desecrating the name +of the God), which I am afraid applies here.

Take over v. Link, encourage

Masculine tendency is to conquer, take over, defeat enemies. +Another video I wanted to show was from a good Christian film +“Amazing Grace” from 2006 about William Wilberforce, and how +exactly Hannah More helped liberating slaves of the British +Empire. Instead of fighting to get herself to the front, she +linked together people who might be interested, and introduced +them to William Wilberforce, who as MP then struggled with the +future direction of his life after his conversion to Jesus. Given +her previous experience with publishing books for the wide +population, she helped to publish the autobiography by freed +black slave, “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah +Equiano” (1789), which was the first testimony about the horrible +life of slaves on the British plantations in Caribbean and which +helped to turn the public opinion about the slavery in Britain. +Till this day she is known for her other endeavours and her role +in the abolition of slavery is usually mostly ignored.

Is it more important to help or to be famous?

Radical change and destruction v. Improving / do what’s possible

I didn’t want to get much into details about Miss More’s efforts, +because some of them are now rather controversial. For example, +education of girls was in her time so controversial idea, that +for some time she was teaching just reading, not writing. We are +in time of the French Revolution, and under the influence of +Edmund Burke’s “Reflections on the Revolution in France”, she +decided to oppose the influence of the revolutionary propaganda +by publishing hundreds of short stories for poor literate +Englishmen (and Englishwomen, if she already managed to teach +them reading) how they should be content with their life. Most of +these books are now mostly ridiculous, but they illustrate her +deep distrust to anything radical and revolutionary, even though +many considered her to be revolutionary.

It relates to me with another tendency which I could see on many +people who actually changed for better, and that is relentless +focus on their goal and willing to let go everything else. One of +the reasons why Martin Luther in changing the world was exactly +this keeping focus on changing the Church and letting everything +else to go. Many people then and later were angry with him for +not opposing and perhaps even encouraging bloody suppression +of the German Peasants’ War by the German nobility. Looking +from the other side, it was the only possible way how to keep +establishment supporting changes in the Church, and that was the +one thing he felt to be called to.

To summarize, what are the lessons we can bring from observing +life of our today’s heroine, Miss Hannah Moore?

One thing I don’t know about Miss Moore is her prayer life, +but of course, when talking about looking at the needs in the +current society, a prayer is the first thing which should be +on our minds. If our food is to do the will of the one who +sent us, we should better be certain that he actually send us +to resolve the issue we see, and that it is not only our +attempt to glorify ourselves or to sooth our conscience.
Do you want to help or do you want to change the world? The +latter quite often end in some kind of disaster.
Is your central focus you helping or are you willing remain +unknown and link together and encourage other people who may +in the end be famous for something you started?
Are you focused on your thing and you are willing to let other +things go if they jeopardise your thing?
Are you persuaded that “small work” (“práce drobná”, the +phrase of the first Czechoslovak president Tomáš Garrigue +Masaryk) is more fruitful and blessed than revolution and +destruction?