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mm. This fall our faculty has been preaching on the topic. Heroes in the bible and we've heard from some of the usual suspects, joseph and jesus , as well as some unusual offerings. Jeff's daughter

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, the Siro phoenician woman and zombies. Don't ask . Mhm. Friends. If we're honest, we must admit that the hero as a cultural meme has fallen on hard times, beginning arguably around the time

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of President Nixon's collapse at Watergate. We have been slowly becoming a culture endured to the heroic aura in the wake of such fallen political figures as, say , Gary Hart Oliver, North Bill Clinton, john

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Edwards or maybe sports heroes such as Pete Rose, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, roger, Clemens Alex , Rodriguez, Michael Vick or our own Lance. Armstrong or maybe religious uh, heroes um such as

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jimmy Swaggart Bishop, Eddie long, jim and tammy faye Bakker. Or more recently, Mark driscoll, we have grown used to the inevitability of human trail T Mhm. And we've grown suspicious of heroes.

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Some of us have even grown cynical insisting that we do not need heroes. Indeed, there is something akin to a religious aversion to heroes. The Buddhists say if you meet the buddha on the road,

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kill him, right? And christians and jews have something like a similar warning of idolatry of making something ultimate that can only be provisional and temporary. But somehow we secretly seem to need our heroes. Every

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few years, we set them up on a pedestal . Our hearts set ablaze by promises of hope and change, only to find our hearts broken by their failure. Oftentimes failure of character, developmental theorist.

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Erick Erickson insists that normal human development includes a stage usually around adolescence, in which we borrow images, concepts and stories from our culture in order to knit together our own sense of identity. It used to

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be a ritual of childhood and I think still is to ask Children who they want to be like when they grow up where I grew up in Jackson Mississippi , a local television station hosted a weekly television program

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in which a local celebrity, Captain bob, a jolly man and a peacoat and a navy cap, showed cartoons and Roy Rogers westerns. Uh And in between in between the shows, he sold soap and

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occasionally told a story with a moral lesson because media thought that was once one of their responsibilities. And once a week he invited local Children who had birthdays to come to the show. It was a local

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ritual. And when I was five or 6, my mother took me and my friends and me for my birthday to the Captain Bob show. And so they serve cake and ice cream off stage. But

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at a certain point the Children were ushered onto rows of aluminum bleachers on stage and when the, when the cameras and lights came back on, captain bob started at one end of the bleachers interviewing the first

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birthday child, asking them such questions as who are your favorite western characters and of course, well over half said Roy Rogers and what do you want to be, Who do you want to be when you

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grow up? And I remember I was sitting on the top row, about six Children in from from the end and he was working his way up from the bottom upwards and from the edges inward. So

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I had plenty of time to think right. Um one x 1, the boys and the girls stated their resolute hopes to be a fireman, a policeman , a cowboy, a sailor, and sometimes occasionally

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an indian chief. Mhm. By the age of six, I've given this a lot of thought um and I'm not settled on a vocation quite yet. That was I thought was fitting to my gifts.

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Uh I didn't know what I was gonna say. And and of course at that age as now I was paralyzed with uh with timidity. And so I didn't know what I was going to say by the

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time he got to me, but I listened closely as other Children stated their preferences and hopes to see if any of them sort of felt right or fit me. Looking back. It was not a great

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strategy. God, it left too much to chance . As captain bob turned his face and his microphone from the girl sitting beside me who was smiling by this time was self delight. He looked me in

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the eyes and he asked, and what do you want to be when you grow up little boy? Now, you know that moment, that feeling when you uh maybe you pop into a fast food restaurant

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, uncertain about exactly what you want. Maybe caught in a daydream and you hear the cashier asking you for your order And suddenly you realize there are 25 people behind you who are starving, waiting for you

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to respond. Um I felt something like that. And of course, in those cases you never order quite what you wanted to order on this day. As I stared into Captain bob's eyes, I somehow

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felt that this was more than a kids show and these questions were more than program filler. I felt that somehow this was a defining moment in my life . I fought my paralysis and the existential ambiguity of

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the moment and I blurted out, Captain bob, I want to be a statesman. Captain bob look confused and said something patronizingly gratuitous, and moved on quickly to the next kid. Looking back Now,

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I'm not sure that Captain bob knew what a statesman was and I'm I'm pretty, I'm pretty sure I didn't, although since then I've attempted revisionist history. Which place is this moment? Somewhere around the Cuban

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missile crisis. Right? Uh, so I'm just saying nevertheless, it was finally a good thing. I think that we grow up asking Children who their heroes are, who they want to be with when

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they grow up, we end up negotiating negotiating our heroes along side our selfhood Roy Rogers and Jack Kennedy , notwithstanding a society without heroes or virtues can only produce young people who are tossed about by winds of

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consumerism or political whim or worse having grown Hungary for meaning, we risk them embracing the negative characteristics of a culture as negative identity, dishonesty, apathy, self absorption or irresponsibility. So, it is a

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worthwhile project to explore Biblical heroes to inform our own pastoral identities and those of our parishioners. But where do we look in the bible for our heroes? Those drawn to uh steven Seagal or tom Clancy esque

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adventure action adventures. Will love moses who challenged and defeated pharaoh in the Egyptian army by means of plagues , a slithering staff and a strategic retreat right through the red seat. After all the world needs more

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action heroes. People like martin Luther King who will stand toe to toe with those in power in the name of freedom and justice. And we have a few of those on our campus, in our community

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. Those drawn to Macgyver like ingenuity will like Jacob who was defined from birth as the PSA planter. The one who schemes his way out of the wound . First the one who in collusion with his mother

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, tricked his brother to trade his birthright for some stew and then don for to trick his father into giving him a blessing. Or if you like ingenuity , maybe you like Sarah a powerful and wily woman

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who talked to Abraham into having a child with her servant Hagar. Or you might appreciate the cunning Siro phoenician woman who convinced jesus to extend the offer of grace beyond the Children of Israel. The church needs

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ingenuity. We need people like say brian McLaren or Shane Claiborne who are ingeniously negotiating our traditional vision of church to include such things as mission allow and communal living, ingenious heroes. What's not to like?

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Those who identify, say with a Rudy like underdog figure, may gravitate to David, who in his youth threw off Saul's armor and slew Goliath and then apparently vanquished waves of Philistines. Or if you like

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underdogs, maybe you like the teenage mary who became the mother of God. The church needs some humble servant leaders who lead from a position of humility. People like Oscar Romero or Dorothy Day, who among

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us doesn't root for the underdog, or maybe there's some of us who like instead surprising irony and will appreciate uh mary of luke 10 fame who gave caring attention to jesus while Martha hustled about cleaning and preparing

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food. I can see the first hearers of the story at jesus telling, preparing to lionize Martha for her industry, when unexpectedly Jesus embraces a more subtle virtue. Or maybe if you like irony, you

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will like Peter who argued with the sons of zebra , t for position at the table, or who cut off mouth, who's here in the garden of gas Simoni, or who denies jesus three times in

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his hour of death, but who becomes the rock upon which jesus builds the church? Now, that's ironic, after all, who doesn't like irony, Who doesn't like it when mild mannered clark Kent turns

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into superman. So in the bible we find justification for all sorts of heroes to action adventure, the wily genius, the underdog and the ironic hero. According to joseph Campbell, the hero has 1000 faces

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. But as I read the bible, looking for the most prominent hero, I could not escape the impression that we're asking the wrong question and perhaps the best thing we can do is reject the premise of

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the question, I want to claim what I have come to think of as the louis Donaldson privilege. You know, the situation in which Professor Donaldson has asked a question which he promptly sets aside and answers

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the question that he wants to answer, but which if you're if you're paying close attention, has bearing on the first question, which is all to say , I do not think the narrative arc of the

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scripture asserts a single overarching hero moses. Heroism gives way to David's David's Heroism gives away to the prophets . The prophets. Heroism gives way to jesus. And if we're paying close attention, we may notice

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that while jesus always remains central, he significantly gives way to the church in the power of the spirit . Yet if heroism has fallen on hard times, the church has suffered similarly. Month after month,

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we hear of church scandals, Catholics face the shame of priests who are pedophiles, mainline Protestants. Uh , for many years have enjoyed a role at the center of public life, only defined that we embraced

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a great many things that we should not have embraced . We have cozied up to wealth and power, we have not heard the cries of the least and lost those unnamed in the margins. Pentecostals are scandalized

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by pastors who become sexual predators. Even the emergent church is not immune as we learn that some pastors abuse the power of their office. Recent Pew Research reveals that 72% of the public think religion is losing

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its influence in American life. This is up 5% points from 2010 many nights. I I suspect like you, I am dismayed by friends on facebook and blogs who disparage and distance themselves from the church,

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but I understand them understand their reasons. The failure to appreciate the significance of the church is not only a failure of students or professionals, but is also reflected in the academic gills. I'm thinking of a

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religious education meeting I recently attended, which seemed somehow indistinguishable from a social work conference. So, in our zeal to change the world too often we jump ahead to saving the world by unmediated political means,

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by organizing electoral and grassroots politics. And I believe these practices certainly reflect the mission of God in the larger world, but they sometimes miss the point. The church does not have a social policy. The

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church is a social policy. The church is not an incidental medium for communicating the gospel or enacting justice . It is the very means by which the world will be redeemed. So, let's remind ourselves briefly

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how important the churches by reviewing paul's vision for the church, symbols of Paul's worldview are symbols of jesus christ. They speak of the practice of baptism and the Lord's supper. But the main symbol for paul

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is the united community, ju greek slave free male female in christ the one people of Abraham for the world. When you look at Pauling theology among the books that crowd the bookstore shelves. Ecclesial Ology comes

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almost as an afterthought and some of those uh volumes . And then maybe somewhere in the midst of the thin articulation of the doctrine of the church is something about the unity of the church. But I insist

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this is a projection onto paul of Western protestant thinking . When we read paul in his own terms, the community of christ in christ By the Spirit, the one community is central. Now, I love

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like all Protestants, the doctrine of justification by faith , but it is only found in romans and Galatians and scattering other glimmers. But the unity of the church is everywhere in paul Galatians 23 and four,

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he's arguing for the unity of the church in chapter two. The first great statement about justification is all all about. In christ jews and gentiles sit together at the same table. The unity is not incidental

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. It is the thing he is arguing. First , Corinthians, again and again, paul asked, is christ divided, perish the thought, you are all one. So he builds up using this in

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that argument, finally arriving at chapter 12 and his vision of the body of christ, the one body with many members, and in case you wonder how that could happen in chapter 13, he writes the

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majestic poem on agape love afterward, exploring what that looks like in worship and the danger of chaos, because God is not a god of chaos, but of order and unity. All of this rooted in

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the gospel that speaks of the new creation, in the kingdom of God in and through jesus resurrection in Philippians, Paul asked, how will you fulfill the public demand to live a life worthy of the Gospel

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? If there's any consolation, if there's any affection , if there's any sharing in the spirit, make my joy complete by being of one accord, being of the same love, being a full of love

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and one mind. Have you ever tried this? It's tough enough in small groups of two and 3 uh, in seminary classrooms, But when we try to expand this notion to 2030, to larger congregations

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, uh, and inter-denominational, uh, you know , conflict, it was not any easier in the first century, but don't imagine that because it was hard that it is insignificant. Rather have this mind

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among you that you have in christ, jesus who , although he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God, a thing to be grasped. God emptied himself in the form of

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a servant. Therefore do all things without grumbling or questioning. So you may be without blemish in a dark world in which you shine like lights. The unity of the church is assigned to the world that

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there is a different way of being human. Ephesians . 2 11 through 21. The unity of jew and gentile in Christ is the direct out flowing of that exposition in chapter two through the manifold witness of

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the church. The wisdom of God may be made known to the powers and Principalities. It is the fact of a new family that tells caesar that he doesn't run things anymore that instead jesus christ does so

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long as we collude in disunity, the powers can fold their arms and watch us having our little fun because they are still running the show when there is one body and one spirit, one hope, one

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Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and father of all who was over all and through all and in all then something new has happened. The gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.

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Ephesians four, let's not forget of course the mystery of marriage, The coming together of male and female jew and gentile symbolizes the coming together of heaven and earth Romans 14 and 15. I suspect many of

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you in this room have like I have tried to teach romans in some class or another uh and and I end up spending most of my time uh somehow on the exposition of chapters one through eight, leaving

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little time for nine through 11 when actually 14 and 15 is about the hard one unity of the church with one heart and one voice glorifying the Lord In jesus christ. The climax comes in these chapters,

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the root of jesse rises to rule the nations and in him the nations will hope. Now this the letter to this is a letter to romans, right ? The city that rules the nation's jesus christ now

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rules the nations. And in him the nations will hope he's articulating a new ecclesia ology. You are the temple, the new temple, corporately and individually , and the colossians, one christ is in you

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the hope of glory, not as individuals, but as uh corporate lee as well. God intends to flood the whole cosmos with God's glory. This is anticipated in the small groups that gather in half a

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dozen Members in Colosseum and maybe 15 in Philippine, maybe a few dozen in Corinth meeting and worship christ in you, the living temple a sign of what is to come as glory feels the earth as the

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waters cover the sea. So unity doesn't simply mean agreeing with each other's doctrine or politics. It also involves providing childcare to married couples so they may work out their conflict, or it involves making sure that

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every single child or adolescent has at least five adults in their lives who know and love them. It means congregation should become laboratories for exploring racial justice. Of course, all of this presents enormous challenges to

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a culture that prefers to bowl alone among people who spend dozens of hours each week on the internet to avoid meeting their next door neighbors, identifying and embracing practices that can knit together, worshipping congregations into unified

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communities that bear fulsome witness to God's glory is one of the most important challenges for us who will be ministers. Yet if paul is to believed, paul is to be believed, the unity of the church

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is at the heart of the Gospel. It's not incidental to it. When I was a child, I thought the church was where I went each week to think really, really hard about God. Sometime

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later, the church became for me, a family that nurtured me and noticed and named my gifts. Much later I came to understand that my sensibilities about the life of faith didn't simply pass to me through

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concepts and ideas, but in the physical rhythms of worship and the culture of hospitality is seeking justice. Prayer, simplicity, the creative acts of joy, even when, when the preaching was bad as it

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is sometimes known to be in methodist churches, right ? The simple act of passing the peace, singing together, breaking bread and praying together, taught me something about the mystery of God, alive in the

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world and in the church and in my old age , I have come to know that the Church is the means by which God is redeeming the whole world , a medium through which God's glory seeks to shine

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. And finally, the Church is the hero. That makes sense of all other heroes of the bible as action heroes, ingenious heroes, ironic heroes and underdogs are caught up in something larger than themselves.

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The church, these little band of believers, is a sign of what is to come as glory fills the earth as the waters cover the sea. To