Heroes: Building Their Pedestals and Judging their Defeats

Heroes. These days, they seem to fall as quickly as they rise. And as we explain to our children and grandchildren what performance-enhancing drugs, overdose, adultery, prostitution, or whatever else precipitated the realization that our heroes are all too human, we find ourselves judging them on the basis of the pedestal we created for them. Our heroes are bigger, faster, stronger… they are everything we wish we could be. As we watch them succeed, we place them on pedestals: whether we identify heroes by  how much money they make,  how fast they drive or bike or run or how many touchdowns or home runs they make, or how beautiful they are; it is strange that heroes tend to be identified by things that most other people are not. Little by little, however innocently, as we cheer them on, we place them further and further from where we are, from who we are.

So long as our heroes are far away from who we are, we can point to them, living vicariously through them in their success and judging them in their failure.

The truth is: we like telling stories of success. Our hunger for hope, our desire for something to lift us – if only for a moment – from where we live, leads us to tell only one side of the story: the story of glory, of success, of a kid from nowhere who became the all-American hero. From the time we are children, we gravitate toward heroes who – on the outside – look like us. Our attraction to superheroes seems similar: Clark Kent as Superman, Peter Parker as Spiderman, and Bruce Wayne as Batman… these unassuming and – let’s face it (with the exception of Bruce Wayne) dorky people captivate our imaginations. It gives a kid who got punched in the face or bullied on the bus ride home from school a world of escape, of hope that someday s/he, too, will discover his/her superpower. That s/he will someday be able to look the bullies in the face and know that they may look victorious now, but that s/he will come out on top.

But every superhero has a fatal weakness, a reminder that they are human. How easily we forget, however, that our living heroes are human.

The same is true for our texts for today. Don’t get me wrong: Peter and Paul were – to be sure – great men. Their lives hold sacrifices of which many of us have never dreamed. They lived at the time when the church was learning how to be church, as began navigating its complex identity in the world of Jewish-Palestinian and Greco-Roman cultures. It is so tempting to make them larger than life, telling only one side of the story: the side of their success and their faithfulness. It is easier to tell the stories that seem impossible and far away. The further we can push Peter and Paul from where we are, from who we are, the easier it is to think that we aren’t given the same charge. It is easier to sit and listen to stories about Peter and Paul than to realize that, sometimes, we are drawn into their stories not as observers
, but as participants.

But these men were not just apostles and martyrs. They were all too human.

What we don’t read about Peter this week is that the three-fold denial of Jesus before he died. “Peter, do you love me?” Again and again, “Peter, do you love me more than these?” “Feed my sheep.” Peter, who lied to save his own skin, was sent to feed the people of God. There was no, “Get it together, Peter,” no “do better next time,” no, “what was Good Friday all about, if you love me so much?” There was simply a question and a command: “Do you love me?” “Feed my sheep.” Flaws and all, Peter.

What we don’t read about Paul is the reason he was on the road to Damascus was to send Christians to be tried by the authorities. Paul, who once fervently persecuted Christians, planted churches all along Asia Minor. He wrote countless letters to fledgling churches; he trained missionaries to spread the Gospel and insisted that nothing – save Christ crucified – defines a Christian’s identity. Paul, among others to be sure, preached the Gospel among the Gentiles, writing letters while imprisoned, while ill… anything to ensure that this message with which he had been charged (gifted?) made its way to the outermost reaches of the Roman Empire.

We don’t read Galatians 2:11, in which Paul says, “I opposed him [Peter] to his face.” We don’t read of sharp tongues or quick tempers. We have Peter and Paul, cast as heroes who have been tidied-up and palatable for church conversation. But they weren’t.

The heroes of our faith are messy. I think they always have been. Tamar, Abraham, Hagar, Sarah, Miriam, Moses, Rahab, Ruth, David, Solomon, Jesus, Mary, Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany, Peter, Paul… are complicated characters, to say the least. We do ourselves a huge disservice when we distance ourselves from these people, telling ourselves that God used them because they were more faithful, stronger, had less at stake, or were more free to take risks. We tell ourselves that the world was different then… or whatever excuse we tell ourselves when we know that we are meant to do something in the world but choose not to.

Perhaps it is because we tend to define our heroes as that which we are not. It makes it a lot easier if all of these characters in the Bible are just characters and not real people. Because if God works through real people – through people who look a little more like us than what we are comfortable with – then, when we look in the mirror, we realize it isn’t when we’re adults that we can become heroes and change the world; we realize it isn’t when we’re retired, or when we’ve finished all of our tasks for the day, or when we’ve gotten everything else out of the way. Funny, it doesn’t seem that this was how it happened for any of our heroes of faith. God came to them – Christ met them – as they were on their way, as they were busy doing other things, going about the tasks of life. I doubt many of them saw themselves as heroes; I doubt many of them saw themselves as capable of sharing this message. There they were: sent – flaws and all – to proclaim the good news, to care for the Christian body.

The heroes of our faith have a lot to teach us. Many of them came from nowhere. Many of them weren’t particularly charismatic or compelling. Many of them had complicated backgrounds, complicated personalities. Many of them – at least at first – refused to believe that they had been chosen. None of them set out to be heroes. None of them are perfect. To be honest, our heroes – whether in life, faith, or both – look a lot more like us than what we are comfortable with. But rather than only telling the stories of victory and success, I wonder what it would look like if we also told the stories of struggle and failure. What does it mean that Jesus would still use Peter, after he had denied knowing him? What does it mean that Jesus would use Paul, after he had been an adversary of the “People of the Way”? What does it mean that Jesus would have used any of them? Any of us?

For Peter, for Paul, and for all of us, the cross changes everything. On one side, we hear denial: “I do not know the man,” but on the other: “Lord, you know that I love you.” Jesus didn’t make Peter richer, stronger, faster, braver, or equip him with anything other than the command: “Feed my sheep.” We would hope for a rise to glory, a Peter Parker moment where the disciple Peter rips off his human skin and becomes superhuman, able to hold his tongue and his temper, able to always keep every commandment and understanding the perfect response to every situation. But he didn’t. Instead, he received grace and forgiveness. I think we underestimate the power of these; yet grace and forgiveness make all the difference: they refuse to allow Peter’s denial or Paul’s persecution to tell the whole story. They refuse to allow our denial and our failures to treat our neighbors as ourselves to tell the whole story about us. Instead, grace and forgiveness place us in the world, again and again, with the command each new day: “You are forgiven. Now, feed my sheep. Bind up the wounded. Mourn with those who mourn. Free the oppressed. Set the prisoners free.” Your past does not define you, nor do your faults or failures. Jesus is going to use you anyway in spite of, or maybe because of, the all-too-real reminders that you are human. 

And, maybe – just maybe – you in the mirror each morning, you can squint your eyes and see the little kid who dreamt he or she would someday discover his or her superpower. Perhaps you already have: it is the power to forgive and unbind those around you (indeed, sometimes it seems to require superhuman strength to accomplish these tasks). As you forgive and unbind those around you, you will find that you, too, have been made free to be the superhero you imagined you would be.