PREFACE
Writing this series on Christian heroes has made me think about how the idea of heroism applies to you and me. I think that when we use the word hero, even in the Christian context, we can blur two kinds of people.
The first are those who we admire as heroes because of their supreme ability: those remarkable scientists, doctors, painters, musicians and athletes who let their skills be guided and guarded by God. Great, but the problem is that most of us don’t have that sort of incredible ability.
The second group of heroes, however, are more relevant. They are those who we do not just admire but who inspire us. They are the ordinary people, like us, who have somehow become extraordinary and become heroes.
But what exactly does it mean to be a Christian hero? Among many definitions, the best is one shaped by Christianity: to be a hero is ‘to do something for others that you don’t have to and which you are aware carries the risk or certainty of loss or pain’. It’s a heroism that runs all the way through the New Testament where it is not just taught by Christ – ‘love your enemies’, ‘turn the other cheek’ – but is modelled by him. Take, for instance, Philippians 2:5-8 where Paul writes:
‘In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death – even death on a cross!’
Here we see Christ, the ultimate hero, choosing to come to earth to suffer and die for his people. It should move us all to praise. Yet did you notice the first sentence? ‘Have the same mindset as Christ Jesus.’ In other words, Christ is not simply to be the subject of admiration, but inspiration. We who follow him are to be heroes like him.
Now, I can hear the protest: ‘I’m no hero!’ But no one is born a hero; they become one by repeatedly choosing to do what is heroic.
So how are we to be heroic? Let’s consider that definition:
‘To do something for others that you don’t have to and which you are aware carries the risk or certainty of loss or pain.’
• First, to be heroic is ‘to do something for others’: it involves caring. Christian heroism always has someone or something else as its focus. It is an expression of love, even possibly for those we don’t find lovely. It is to aid someone, to stand up for what is right, or even to save something of value. Sometimes, too, heroism is not so much a matter of doing, but of not doing something. After all, it can be heroic to refuse to take an action that is wrong. Here, of course, Christ sets the ultimate example.
• Second, to be heroic is to do something ‘you don’t have to do’: it involves choosing. Christian heroism is about getting involved. Although it’s always a temptation to tiptoe away from a difficulty or problem, involvement or intervention is essential for heroism. In the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), the Samaritan could easily have ridden on, but instead stopped to get involved. Christ chose to come to save us: ‘For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost’ (Luke 19:10).
• Third, to be heroic is to do something that ‘carries the risk or certainty of loss or pain’: it involves considering. The most praiseworthy heroism always involves a weighing-up of the price involved. That price may be paid in different ways. It may be physical: think of a church-worker in some dangerous area.
It may be psychological: perhaps of an employee who decides to challenge the unethical behaviour of the boss. It may be financial: imagine someone who gives up a well-paid job to work with a church or charity. It may be social: perhaps an individual who, for whatever reason, chooses celibacy or singleness.
There may even be a price in terms of honour: in Jesus’ Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32) the father heroically takes on shame in showing love to the lost son. It’s worth remembering, too, that in this world most heroism goes unremembered. Not everybody gets a medal.
Every Christian should be prepared to be heroic. But it’s a hard command. For all sorts of reasons, many people today are unheroic or – let’s use a polite term – ‘risk averse’. So let me give you four encouragements to heroism.
1 Consider the fact that you’re going to die sometime. Between now and then why not pack in some venture worthy of the life God has given you?
2 Think of what God is calling you to do as an opportunity to be a hero. Do you really want to turn it down?
3 Don’t worry about exactly what you might achieve. God is more concerned about your aspirations than your accomplishments. Remember how Jesus praised the woman in the temple who gave away the tiny amount of money that she had (Mark 12:41-44, Luke 21:1-4).
4 Remember that while this world may not note what you do, God does and will. Better to have his praise in heaven than have any amount of praise on earth.
Ultimately, to be heroic is simply to listen to what Christ commands us to do and then do it. The road to being a hero is to take heroic actions, one step at a time.
MAHALIA JACKSON
Mahalia Jackson was born in 1911 to poor, unmarried parents in New Orleans. The bitter memory of slavery still lingered: all her grandparents had been born slaves.
Although brought up in a church where traditional hymns were sung with formality, Jackson was also introduced to the heart-warming spirituals and the joyful music of the new Pentecostal churches.
After a very limited education and menial jobs, Jackson moved to Chicago during the Great Depression. Recognised as an outstanding singer from childhood, she now began to sing as an increasingly acclaimed soloist. Nevertheless, with her traditional ‘Deep South’ language and music she found herself scorned by many in the increasingly prosperous black community of Chicago who felt that it was time to develop more ‘cultivated’ music and words. Equally, churches felt she had too much enthusiasm, energy and rhythmic movement for many churchgoers.
The Beginning of a Musical Career
Running a beauty salon during the week, Jackson began to sing professionally at weekends. She sang in secular theatres and bars with jazz or blues bands, but she made the decision – sacrificial at the time – that she would only sing gospel and only where God’s music was appropriate and appreciated.
Jackson grew up in a ‘shotgun house’ in New Orleans, similar to this one.
In the 1930s Jackson began singing widely across the northern USA but her listeners remained within the black community. She began making records with Decca but came under pressure from both the record company and her husband to record secular music. Again, she refused, a decision that ended her contract with Decca and contributed to the break-up of her marriage.
Jackson had, by now, developed her own individual style. Naturally gifted, she would take a song and, throwing her heart and soul into it, improvise on it with her majestic, wide-ranging voice. She would spontaneously – and unpredictably – switch between a soft or loud tone and even shout or chant as words and phrases were stretched and repeated.
A National Figure
It has been said that in her singing, accompanied as it was with emotive gestures and movements, Jackson imitated the mannerisms of African-American preachers. In fact, for Jackson, who believed that God spoke through her when she sang, her singing was preaching. Her powerful voice and stage presence often had an extraordinary impact on audiences and many of her concerts ended with tears and prayers.
New Orleans, Louisiana.
Jackson believed that God spoke through her when she sang.
Jackson continued singing throughout the war years and found a new company to record her, but she remained largely unknown outside her African-American community. After the war, however, she was ‘discovered’ by white Americans and soon became a national figure. Her record sales soared but, again pressured to broaden her repertoire into ballads and classical songs, she continued to stand firm.
Throughout the 1950s Jackson became a considerable celebrity. She had her own television show – a first amongst African-Americans – and was a popular singer at concerts and church conventions. She sang at the White House and Carnegie Hall. Soon internationally known, she had a sell-out tour of Europe.
A National Influencer
For all her success and acceptance, Jackson never forgot the continuing problems that black people faced and refused to attend venues where segregation persisted.
Jackson with Martin Luther King.
She became a great friend of Martin Luther King in 1956 and sang in his support at rallies. Now wealthy, Jackson used her money to support the education of disadvantaged black people.
In the 1960s, with her fame now global, her health began to trouble her. She married again but her husband proved unfaithful and that marriage broke up. She maintained her commitment to gospel music as a medium of Christian communication and disapproved of the rise of secular offshoots of gospel music, such as soul and rhythm and blues.
Mahalia Jackson died in 1972. She had sold 22 million records in her career and had become ‘the most influential black woman in the United States’.
Jackson had a stunning vocal ability and a sheer intensity to her singing, but there was more to Jackson than her voice. Let me draw your attention to three virtues that make her a hero for me.
• First, Jackson was a woman of fidelity. Throughout her career she saw her singing as an expression of her own faith; she kept the ‘gospel’ in gospel music and stayed a preacher in song. She guarded her witness wisely by drawing lines around what and where she performed.
She sang, she said, for one reason only: to ‘make a joyful noise unto the Lord’.
Jackson’s album The Power and the Glory
Jackson and Mavis Staples at the Harlem Cultural Festival, 1969.
• Second, Jackson was a woman of integrity. Although Jackson moved out of poverty and the ‘Deep South’ to mix with the famous, educated and the wealthy, she never pretended to be anything other than what she was: an African-American woman from the poorest background. She was never ashamed of her past. There was, too, an uncompromising integrity to what she sang. One of the risks of being a performer is of pretence taking over. It never did with Jackson: her songs were always from her heart.
• Finally, Jackson was a woman of liberty. There was a sturdy independence to Jackson’s life and art. Throughout her life she faced pressures to become something that she wasn’t. She refused to yield and would sing a song exactly how, as she would have said, the Lord told her. Her grandparents had been in physical slavery; she would not yield to artistic slavery. She lived out that great paradox of the Christian life that only in accepting Christ’s lordship do we find freedom. Jackson said,
‘I sing God’s music because it makes me feel free. It gives me hope.’
I’ll say amen to that!
Mahalia Jackson Theater for the Performing Arts, Louis Armstrong Park, New Orleans.
BILLY GRAHAM
Billy Graham was a man who towered over 20th-century Christianity and, may I say, I had the wonderful privilege of meeting him.
Graham was born in 1918 in North Carolina and received Christ at the age of 16. After being educated in several Christian colleges he began to lead ever larger evangelistic rallies, first across the States but, after the Second World War, across the world.
A God-Given Gift
In eighty-one years of ministry Billy Graham reached billions of people, either in the rallies or through radio and television broadcasts. He never really retired as an evangelist but continued into the 21st century, dying in 2018, just short of his centenary.
Graham’s childhood home, originally on Park Road, Charlotte, North Carolina, is now located within the grounds of the Billy Graham Library.
BILLY GRAHAM
When Billy Graham made that concluding appeal at his meetings, people just seemed compelled to get up out of their seats and go to the front to receive Christ.
The truth is that Graham was a man with a God-given gift for proclamation evangelism and through whom God’s Spirit worked powerfully.
To think Billy Graham was simply an evangelist is to limit his significance and influence. At a personal level, he had a great deal of influence on me. It was, however, his significance nationally and globally that was particularly important.
Faith and Reason
Graham began his ministry at a time when Christianity in the States and elsewhere fell into two warring camps: a rigid fundamentalism where faith overruled reason, and a sceptical liberalism where reason overruled faith. Graham, rooted in prayer and the Bible, set out a gentler and more profitable way in which faith and reason stood together. Here his influence spread through two of his creative initiatives.
The first was Christianity Today, a magazine that became one of the most widely read Christian publications.
The second was that, aided by his near contemporary and good friend John Stott, Graham founded the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization (the ‘Lausanne Movement’), which for nearly 50 years has encouraged and equipped evangelical leaders across the world. Today, the fact that evangelicalism is a dominant force in global Christianity, owes much to Billy Graham.
73,500 people attend the final evening of Mission ‘89 at Wembley Stadium, London. Three of these meetings were televised with audiences ranging from 22-30 million per television programme.
Graham preached at local churches whilst he attended Florida Bible Institute in the late 1930s.
We may well find Billy Graham, with all his achievements, rather daunting as a hero. Yet it’s worth bearing in mind that he was given many gifts over and above that of being an evangelist.
He had the looks, build and manner that could have brought him success in cinema or politics. He had that gift of being able to identify talent, something that allowed him to build up his very effective Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, with its dedicated team of excellent administrators, publicists and musicians. And last – but definitely not least –Graham was gifted with Ruth, who, as his wife, wisely, patiently and graciously supported him for over 60 years.
Now, if Graham was given gifts, he was also given opportunities. He lived when technology permitted meetings on a scale hitherto impossible; car ownership allowed thousands to easily attend rallies; the wave of American culture and influence which swept the world also opened closed doors. The challenging fact is that Graham made the most of both the gifts and the opportunities he was given.
Graham with his wife, Ruth.
Graham preaches at Madison Square Garden, New York City, 1957.
The key to Billy Graham was his faith. Let me draw your attention to three aspects.
• First, Graham was a man who stood firm on his faith. Every account of his life talks of the spiritual crisis he faced in 1949 when he had doubts as to whether God had indeed spoken in Scripture. Graham faced the challenge head on and resolved that he would stake his ministry on the Bible being trustworthy and reliable. Although Graham’s beliefs broadened with time, he always held to the confident certainty that the Bible held God’s Word for all humanity.
• Second, Graham was a man who was steered by his faith. Many Christians believe in the authority of Scripture but somehow don’t let it affect their lives. Graham did, and prayerfully let God’s Word guide him. His ministry showed frequent occasions when, faced with pressures and challenges, he made the right decision, often against the advice of others. So, when everybody said it was impossible to conduct evangelistic campaigns in the communist world, that’s what Graham decided to do – and that’s what he did.
Yet if Graham was guided by his faith he was also guarded. Despite living under an intense media spotlight, no charge of scandal befell him. While others sadly and spectacularly fell to the temptations of money, sex and power, Graham didn’t. In part, this was due to his wisdom in taking precautions, but ultimately it was due to his humble dependence on God for guidance.
Graham sits next to President John F. Kennedy at a prayer breakfast.
• Finally, Graham was a man who stood out for his faith. At a time when Christians in the West were becoming increasingly reticent in proclaiming their belief, Graham clearly shared the gospel in what he said. Yet, almost as important, Graham witnessed to Christ by who he was. There was a transparent honesty and consistency in his life: this was a man who didn’t just preach the gospel; he lived it.
Graham made mistakes. He later admitted that he should have been quicker in promoting racial equality and slower to accept the friendship of dishonest politicians. Yet his life shone with a gleaming integrity that won him widespread admiration and respect. Even those who disliked Graham’s gospel could not dislike the man.
Billy Graham was a man who served God faithfully in his long life and he continues to challenge our world today. To those who do not know Christ, he still proclaims God’s offer of hope in the gospel. To those of us who do know Christ, he remains an inspiration to proclaim our faith confidently and boldly.
Graham died in February 2018. Pictured, the military carrying his casket during a ceremony at the U.S. Capitol, Washington, D.C.
Graham is honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
‘When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost; when character is lost, all is lost.’