Guitar – and Other - Heroes

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
July 11, 2010

Guitar – and Other - Heroes
Luke 21:1-4

I stood in front of the display case in the museum
and looked at the outfit.
It was so elaborate…
too elaborate.
It was too Elvis, too Las Vegas.

It looked uncomfortable,
totally impractical.
How could a rock star wear something like that?

What really struck me though,
wasn’t the look of the outfit;
it was how small it was -
it was clearly made for a man
who was not very tall
and as thin as a flagpole.

I’d seen the outfit more than 30 years before.
The man who wore it was on stage
at Buffalo’s Memorial Auditorium.
Up there, he didn’t look like the 25-year old
skinny guitarist from England that he was.
Up on stage, he looked enormous,
a giant of a man strutting back and forth,
side to side,
left hand flying furiously up and down
the fretboard of his guitar,
his right hand picking, pulling,
bending every string,
as he created great crashing cords,
and piercing solos,
the sound washing over 16,000 rapturous fans,
all of us awestruck by the entire band,
but all of us totally riveted by the man with the guitar:
Jimmy Page,
the guitarist in the legendary rock band
Led Zeppelin.

Page was my first guitar hero.
No one could play the guitar like he could:
electric, acoustic, 12 string, double neck.
He was master of them all.
I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say
that virtually every hard rock band since
has roots in Led Zeppelin.

By the time I graduated from high school, though
my musical tastes had changed and evolved.
I still listened to Led Zeppelin but
Eric Clapton had replaced Page as my guitar hero.
Clapton first came to fame
a few years earlier with the band Cream
but in the early 1970s he fronted his own band
called Derek and the Dominoes.
It wasn’t Zeppelin’s hard rock;
it was somehow cleaner, lighter,
more precise,
less crash, smash, and bang.

By the early 1980s Pat Metheny had moved to the top
of my pantheon of guitar heroes.
He made his guitar sing so sweetly
fusing jazz and rock
with boundless creativity and energy.

All three guitarists are still active -,
Clapton and Page both in their 60s,
Metheny my age.
But I no longer think of them as guitar heroes.
I see them now as just otherwise ordinary men
with extraordinary gifts and skills
they have honed over the decades,
singular artists younger guitarists
now model themselves after.

Of course, I can be my own guitar hero now.
All I need is the video game by that name,
and I can rock on in the privacy of my own family room.

Hero is not a word we normally equate with guitar players,
especially rock guitarists.
Hero is a word we are more inclined to use to describe
someone who has shown valor and bravery
in the face of great danger,
someone who has even faced death:
a soldier in combat,
a police officer pursuing a dangerous criminal,
a firefighter groping through dense smoke
to find a person trapped by flames.

But heroes aren’t only those we pin medals on,
or whose pictures are on the front page of the newspaper.
There are heroes all around us,
men and women, young and old,
all different backgrounds,
quietly living heroic lives,
lives built on courage,
strength,
and most important: selflessness,
a deep caring for the needs of others.

The woman in our story was a hero.
As Jesus points out, the wealthy were doing nothing heroic;
they gave money they could easily afford.
The woman, though,
gave “all she had to live on.”

She was a widow,
which back in Jesus’ day
meant that she had no means of support.
Luke used the word “poor” twice in this short passage,
and tells us she lived in poverty.
And yet her piety, her devotion,
her concern for the needs of others,
was so powerful that even our Lord himself was struck.

In her heroic act, she set an example of selflessness,
faithfulness,
complete trust in God.
She must have known the words of the Psalmist,
“Be strong and let your heart take courage!”
(Psalm 27:14/31:24)

Heroes are strong,
but their real strength is not physical;
their real strength is in their heart.
They are able to look beyond themselves
to the needs of others.
And the more they do,
the stronger their heart becomes.
The great preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick once said,
“the strong heart makes itself felt everywhere,
and lifts up the whole of life and ennobles it.”
(Sermons to Young Men, 64)

This is what heroes do:
through small heroic actions
they “lift up the whole of life
and ennoble it.”

We commissioned heroes a few minutes ago:
the volunteers who will welcome more than 100 children
to our Vacation Bible School starting tomorrow -
all those who will play, laugh, create,
teach, and share joy with every child
they will all act in love,
act selflessly,
act heroically.

Our Middle Schoolers and High Schoolers
who will spend a week of their summer vacation
helping others in the July heat,
who will reach out in friendship
to new faces in new places:
they will all be living heroic lives.

The folks who will wield hammers and saws
in the West Virginia sunshine
for Habitat for Humanity
to help people in a community far from here
have homes that are little more comfortable
a little safer, a little nicer,
to help them have things we take for granted:
they’ll be acting heroically.

And we have other heroes all around us:
knitters,
volunteers in our Nursery and ETC,
those who prepare grace meals,
anyone and everyone who responds to Christ’s call
to reach out beyond themselves,
to give of themselves
to remember our call to serve,
and not be served.

You and I are called to live heroic lives,
heroic lives grounded in Christ,
grounded so we draw strength
and courage from our faith,
remembering Paul’s words:
“I can do all things through him who strengthens me..”
(Philippians 4:13)

Come and find strength at this Table.
Come and find courage in this meal.
For our Lord invites us to come to his Table
to eat this meal he has prepared for us,
a meal that will renew and refresh us in Spirit,
so we can go out and live heroic lives
as disciples of Jesus Christ. 

AMEN