Of Saints and Sinners

17.01.10 / Uncategorized / Author: admin / Comments
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These days, when I use the word “saints” in conversation, I’m usually referring to the football team. I grew up in New Orleans, and the Saints will always be my home team. If they beat the Vikings, the Saints will be in the Superbowl for the first time ever.

“Saints” is not just the name of my favorite team, though; it is a word of great religious significance. While it can refer to anyone – we are all both saints and sinners – it is most often used to refer to people we admire for their strong faith, exceptional generosity, and willingness to give up a lot, sometimes even their lives, in order to do what God calls them to do.

I met a saint in church this morning. We had a guest speaker, The Rev. Bob Graetz, who spoke of his experience serving as a white pastor of a black church in Montgomery, Alabama, at the time of the bus boycott. Pastor Graetz lived across the street from Rosa Parks and knew her well. He encouraged his parishioners to participate in the boycott and told them to call him if they needed a ride.

That support led some whites to consider him a traitor to their race, and he received hundreds of threatening letters and phone calls. His house was bombed three times.

Of course, like most saints, Pastor Graetz is a humble man who credits God with giving him the courage to speak up publicly despite the risks. His message was that God has given all of us gifts meant to be used for the common good.

As he spoke, I found myself wondering what I would have done in his shoes. Today, it is easy for me to speak out against racism or the unjust treatment of any other group of people for any reason. I’ve been verbally attacked for my “liberal” views, both in person and in print, but never had to fear for my safety. If speaking out meant risking getting beat up or murdered, and also endangering my family and friends, would I still be so bold? I’d like to think so, but I’m not sure I would.

It’s easy for me to judge those pastors and other Christians from earlier generations who actively supported slavery or segregation, or at least chose to play it safe and not speak out against those practices. I also have a negative view of the Christians in Nazi Germany who either bought into the idea of Aryan superiority or stood by mutely as innocent people were killed by the thousands.

It’s not so easy to admit that there are times, even when all I have to fear is social disapproval or a heated argument, that I choose to keep silent in the face of injustice.

I thank God for people like Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Bob Graetz, and the many others through the years who have fought for what is right, even when they had to risk their lives to do so, and pray that God will give me the courage to do the same.