The image remains strong and vibrant in my mind, after all these years: the image of my father, marching. Y’left, y’right, y’left. One-two-three-four. Marching.
No, my dad was not in the army; he wasn’t even a veteran, having been born a little too early for the First World War and a little too late for the second one. And no, it wasn’t a protest march or a union march or a striker’s march. He never did any of those things. But my father did march.
His marching was all done around the first floor of our house, whenever one of his favorite musical programs would come on the radio. It was called the "Band of America", and it was an hour of march music played, as the announcer declaimed it, and this will tell you how far back this story goes ... played in 48 states, under 48 stars, by 48 men, the Band of America.
Now whenever that program would come on, my father would undergo a transformation. He would leap to his feet, striding throughout the house, pushing an imaginary trombone slide or tweedling a piccolo seen only in his dreams. His own experience with real band instruments had been limited to a brief job at an instrument factory in Elkhart, Indiana, and to a couple of years ownership of a clarinet, long since pawned for cash during the great depression. Never mind; when the Band of America played, it was left-right-Ieft, from the living room through the bedroom, into the hall and around the back bedroom, out into the hall again and with a furtive side-trip into the kitchen, where my mother was attending to her chores and shaking her head at her silly, childish men. Yes, men, because once he would begin my brother and I were never far behind, with our own small, clumsy steps and our own pretend instruments.
Back out into the dining room and over toward the radio again, where we would flop down, laughing and puffing our faces out if the tuba or the sousaphone came on, and whacking the edge of the table for a good percussion section. What a great time we had, being marching men, militant men!
Men love to be militant. It’s part of our mythology, isn’t it, that men march and fight and lead the way. It’s part of our way of looking at things that men are leaders more than followers, that men have courage and determination, that men are mountains of responsibility. Militant men.
I
But some things have happened along the way to call that image into question and to push us to redefine it. Some things have come into our time, our history, that make us search for a new way to understand who men are and what it is we are to be militant about.
a
First, may I suggest that the military experience is not all that it was supposed to be, and that in our time, the old images of glory have faded far, far away. You see, within the last century American men have marched away by the thousands upon thousands. They marched away to remember the Maine and charge up San Juan Hill, and that seemed glorious, dashing, and heroic. They marched away to fight the war to end wars, which had already taken a horrible toll in the muddy trenches of Europe, but the late arrival of American soldiers on that scene helped rescue the day and left some of the sheen of glory on that victory.
But the tide began to turn. Scarcely twenty years later, the ugly tentacles of fascism and Nazism reached out and began to devour territory and freedom. Whole peoples were under duress, and we marched again. Anschluss and blitzkrieg became part of our vocabulary. The day which shall live in infamy was forever etched on our consciousness. And again thousands of men, and a few women, marched off. This time, however, the glory was severely diminished. The horror of mechanized warfare left little room for glory and valor. The legacy was death and disfigurement and social dislocation in huge proportions.
Do you see where I am going with this? The myth of militancy that men had lived out of was growing very thin indeed. A generation or so before it had seemed there was some glamour in marching off to battle, hurrah, hurrah. But now we wondered. We wondered. And a few years later, when we sent thousands off to Korea, we didn’t even call it a war, but a police action, and we didn’t find anything glamorous at all in the cold, forbidding heights of that peninsula. It ended in a stalemate, which continues to this day.
And then Vietnam. The spiritual agony of Vietnam. The war fought on the six o’clock news on your television screen. The war which many were calling America’s moral morass, her disgrace. The war for the hearts and souls of a southeast Asian people we could not understand and did not respect. Few there were who marched home proud after Vietnam. The nation rejected its tradition of militant men. The American people wanted nothing to do, it seemed, with militant men. This war left in its wake only Agent Orange, political disruption, and post-traumatic stress disorder. The militant man was gone. The Band of America wasn’t playing any more.
b
But something else happened too. Something else happened to erode the old idea of the militant man. Not only did the fading of the glory of military life seem to take away men’s militancy, but also you have to factor in the changing social structures that gave women new and more public roles. The rise of feminism meant, for many men, an erosion of their leadership. And they found the new order hard to take.
Now before I get in real trouble, I want to say quickly that the place of women had to change. We had to get a new understanding of the rights and roles of women. I am by no means suggesting that there was something wrong or iII-conceived about voting rights for women, job opportunities for women, equal opportunities for women in all sectors of life. That’s only fair and just. I am not criticizing that.
I am, however, saying, that for some men that movement made it harder to exert leadership. Some men felt diminished by that, some felt devalued. It’s too bad that they did so, but they did. And it goes a lot deeper than just not knowing whether she wants you to hold the door for her. I shall never forget a conversation with a pastor friend of mine whose church opened the ranks of its Diaconate to women, well after our church did. He knew it was the right thing, the fair thing to do; but he also saw the leadership of men in his church declining, as men who didn’t know how to be leaders in this new era just sat on the sidelines. Let us not get into a debate on that today; my only point is that the feminist movement, right and proper though it was, helped to undermine the confidence of many men. It left them wondering who they were. The Band of America no longer had only 48 states and 48 stars, and it certainly no longer had only 48 men. It had women too, and plenty of them.
The age of the militant man, it seems, has gone. The age of men who are looked to as leaders, as take-charge, as marchers for something, it seems, is over.
II
Is there anything today about which men can be militant? Is there anything today, on this Father’s Day, which can fire the hearts and claim the loyalty of the male of the species? What will pick us up and cause us to march today?
The 68th Psalm is one of the most militant selections of Scripture you will ever want to read. The Psalmist gives vent to a warlike cry for God to be victorious. He writes of God scattering his enemies, of driving them away in smoke and fire. He pictures God on the march, marching through the wilderness, with the earth quaking and the heavens pouring rain. He paints a vivid imagery of God in command of thousands of chariots, routing the kings of opposing armies, and, when it is all done, according to this Psalmist, the women who stayed home get to divide the spoil and the men march in a great procession to the Temple. This Psalm is full of a sense of the manliness of God, if you like; of one whose arms get glory for himself and who is awesome in strength and majesty. Sounds very masculine, very virile.
But dropped right in the middle of this psalm of shouts and victory, this song of blood and battle, are these two verses. Almost forgotten, easily overlooked in the tumult and the turmoil of the rest of the Psalm, he says: "Father of orphans and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation. God gives the desolate a home to live in; he leads out the prisoners to prosperity, but the rebellious live in a parched land."
It’s as if there is a hint here of something more to come. It’s as though the Psalmist is saying to us, "I know what you think God is like, I know that you see Him as Lord of armies and victor in battle. But there is another side. There is another aspect of God. And when you are singing about this militant God, do not forget that He is also militant in mercy." Militant in mercy.
I believe that Father’s Day 1996 calls on us, Christian men and the women and children who surround them, to be militant, yes, but militant in a new way. Militant in mercy.
Let’s unpack these verses. I see in them at least four ways in which men today can become militant in mercy.
A
The militant God is, first, "father of orphans". God takes responsibility for the children, the fatherless, those without support. In the midst of God’s militancy, if this Psalm is to be believed, He sees the plight of the children and steps in where He is needed.
If men are to be men today, and to exercise their proper leadership role, they -- we -- are going to have to get involved with the lives of children. Too long we have left the raising of children only to women, somehow thinking that our role was to procreate and then pay the bills. And in some situations, paying the bills was questionable. But no, the day has come when men must be militant in mercy for children.
I am still struck by a report I heard months ago by an educator studying the needs of the District’s school system. He had found, in studying the children, that up to about the third grade they were bright, ambitious, eager to learn; but that somewhere after that, the boys in particular would become apathetic, hostile, antagonistic. Whatever the reasons, this educator found out that if you put them with male teachers, things changed. Give them men, and they brightened, they worked, they felt proud of themselves. They had role models. And we’ve seen much the same thing in our After-School program. Women volunteers get ignored; men get attention. Role models for children.
I think the lesson is plain. Men of militant mercy need to get involved with children. I’d like to see more of the young men in this congregation consider teaching as their career. I’d like to see our church Nominating Committee asking men to work with the preschoolers and the elementary age children in our Sunday School. I am thrilled to know that at least two of our teen-age males help in the nursery. I hope we are growing here some men of militant mercy, who serve the God who is "father of the orphans".
B
But this God, this militant, victorious God, is also, if you dig it out of this hideaway verse in Psalm 68 ... this God is protector of widows. Protector of widows. Now that means a whole lot more than saying that God takes care of little old ladies in their declining years. If you know something about the social and economic system of ancient Israel, you know that a widow was of all people most pitied because she had no means of support. With no jobs available and with the labor of her husband cut off, a widow was the most vulnerable person around. So when the Psalmist says that God, this militant God, is protector of widows, he is saying that God looks out for those whose circumstances make it impossible for them to be self-sufficient.
You see, our world, our society, set up some people to fail. There are just some folks who are never going to make it on their own, given the circumstances they were dealt. If you were born in poverty, cradled in ignorance, raised in instability, and put out on the streets with no skills but your own wits and no success models but the drug dealer on the
corner, then you have been set up to fail. You have been programmed for disaster. You really don’t have much of a chance to build a decent life.
Except that, I can hear some of you saying, well, that sounds like my childhood. That sounds like the way I grew up, and I turned out all right. I got hold of myself, and with the Lord’s help, I did all right. Yes, you did. And I applaud that. But I have to ask, "Who helped you?" Who gave you a hand, who offered you an arm of protection? You really didn’t do it all on your own; you did it because somebody protected you, maybe even against your will, from the negative influences out there. Somebody saw potential in you and reached out and found you and put you under his wing. Somebody, and I’ve heard some of your stories, somebody was your man of militant mercy.
Our militant God, the protector of the widows, the help of those who are helpless, calls for men of militant mercy, who will take a chance on somebody who is headed the wrong way, who will fight to save somebody’s life and heart and soul, even when everything else has set them up to fail. God give us men of militant mercy.
c
There is more. This God, this militant God, this God whose strength and power are painted so vividly... not only is father to the orphans and protector of the widow, but God gives the desolate a home to live in. God’s compassion and care for people is so comprehensive that He even sees those who have not gotten ahead, and does something practical for them. He gives the desolate a home to live in.
It’s not uncommon to make comments about the relative scarcity of men in the churches. Even though at one level, the ministry, the churches have been dominated by men, down at the practical level, where things happen, the women have predominated. And if you ask why, I suspect the answer is not very hard to come by. The answer, or at least one of the answers, is that the church has been so focused on talk and not on action that the men have become impatient with it. The church is so focused on teaching and preaching and singing and all that verbal stuff ... and it has to be done, mind you, I’m not throwing it out. But it means that there hasn’t been much time or energy left for practical, hands-on Christianity.
I tell you, I am impressed by Christians and by churches which get about the business of doing something in brick and mortar for those who need it. Maybe you have read in the papers lately about some churches that are putting up housing for the homeless in ways that the government cannot or will not do. And when I looked at the pictures accompanying those articles, I saw men: men hammering, men plastering and painting, men doing. Not talking, doing.
When Jimmy Carter became president of the United States, he startled everybody by joining a local Baptist church and by teaching a Sunday School class, even occasionally showing up for Wednesday night prayer meeting. But, if you remember, that brought a kind of amused skepticism out of the press. They suspected he was doing it for effect, to create an image, to burnish his down-home character.
But when he left the White House and lifted hammers and saws to build houses in the most out-of-the-way, uncomfortable places you can imagine, then they saw that his faith was genuine. Then they saw a man who was not all talk, because he literally gave the desolate a home to live in. They saw a man of militant mercy.
I hope the day will come when the men of this congregation will organize for some kind of practical, hands-on ministry. I hope the day will come when we too will be known as builders, not just talkers. This past week my wife’s sister and her friend visited with us for a couple of days. These two women were out vacationing while their husbands, both doctors, and both leaders in the Presbyterian Church in Hickory, North Carolina, were off doing a medical clinic in West Virginia. Every year they take a team from their church somewhere for medical work and for home building. Every other year it is to Mexico, and on alternate years it is to someplace in the United States. But my sister-in-Iaw’s friend said of my brother-in-law, "He has single-handedly changed our church. He started working with the youth years ago, when his own daughters were teenagers, and he has kept on with it, and by taking them on mission trips, he has transformed our church." She went on to say, "We see those youth, now, coming back, young parents themselves, with little children, saying that this thing of doing something for somebody else meant so much to them, they want that for their children too."
And then my sister-in-law turned to me and said, "Does your church take mission trips too?" I mumbled some excuse and filed that away for use in today’s sermon!
God give us men of militant mercy, who will put hammer and saw, paint and plaster, onto their faith, and give the desolate a home to live in! Give us some hands-on, built to last, accomplishments!
d
But one thing more. One more ingredient in the recipe for men of militant mercy. The psalmist speaks of our God not only as father of orphans and protector of widows, not only as the one who gives the desolate a home; but the psalmist, almost hiding it away in page after page of battle cries and victory anthems, says, "God leads out the prisoners to prosperity." God leads out the prisoners to prosperity.
In the ancient world, it was no fun, let me assure you, to be a prisoner of war. I guess it still isn’t any fun, but at least today we do have the Geneva Convention and forces of international law which are supposed to ease the plight of prisoners of war. Not so in the ancient world. Prisoners could be paraded before a jeering public; they could be enslaved; they could be taken into exile, along with their families; their personal property could be confiscated. And, when the conqueror had had his sport with them, their lives were cheap and were often forfeited. It was the end of the road if you were a prisoner of war.
But the psalmist hints that God’s way with the prisoner might be different; that God might be more interested in leading the prisoner out than in keeping him in. That God might be more invested in giving the prisoner a new start than in keeping him in prison. Our God is a God of militant mercy, whose greatest victories come when the captives are not only set free, but set free and empowered for prosperity.
Today we need men of militant mercy who will see the prisoners and set them free. For, I tell you, there is a prison house into which the unwary have fallen, that it is more terrible than Lorton, more vicious than Attica, more impenetrable than Alcatraz. It is the prison house of sin. It is the dungeon of despair, the spiritual solitary, the soul’s deep hole.
Surely I do not need to convince this congregation that the root of our ills is spiritual. Surely you would agree that at the heart and core of the moral crisis in which we live there is a spiritual crisis. There is a prison into which all too many are confined; and whether they be in a jail cell or walking the streets, nonetheless, they are confined there. It’s called, plain and simple, sin.
I believe we are going to have to have men to lead the prisoners out. I believe that no one can witness to a man like another man, that no one can flesh out the gospel to a man like another man. Time does not permit me to expand on this, but I must say, I am compelled to say, that we will not have the impact we want until men stand up on their two feet and get over their timidity and start to take the gospel into the workplace, the neighborhood, the lodge, the club, wherever men gather. We will not get anywhere until men of militant mercy are evangelistic men.
O march, if you like. March, if that’s your thing. March with the Million Men, if that’s what you need to get some encouragement. That’s great. Do it. March with the Promise Keepers, if that’s what you need to focus on cleansing your own soul and brothering with other likeminded men. That’s fine. Fill those stadiums and form those Promise Keepers groups, if that works for you. But don’t forget the bottom line. Don’t fail to see where you are marching. In all your militancy and marching, become men of militant mercy.
The Band of America, 48 stars, 48 states, 48 men, quit marching a long time ago. We put down our pretend musical instruments a long time ago. We couldn’t march only around the first floor of our own homes any more. We the men of God have to do something more now. We have to become men of militant mercy.
