Courage, or fortitude, is one of the four cardinal virtues. Allied with wisdom, temperance, and justice, the ability to endure hardship without faltering and to move toward the good and best without fear, encompasses all the other qualities that define the highest path of living.

            I read the news today.  Oh boy!

            Jim got out of bed a little later than me this morning.  I’d already had a chance to shower and dress and sit down with my laptop and start looking at the day’s headlines.  He asked, “What’s today’s outrage?”

            I knew exactly what he meant.  We are back in the era of the daily outrage coming out of Washington.  The outrages the last week have been fast and furious.

And cruel.  And vindictive.  And destructive.  And ignorant.  And chaotic.  There’s a religious word for that mix of purposeful sin:  the word is evil.

Today is only the seventh day of the Trump Presidency.  

            Oh boy.

            We also had an example this week of a courageous response to the Administration’s actions and their announced plans for future action.

            The Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, at the National Cathedral in Washington, during a prayer service as part of this week’s inauguration ceremonies, acknowledged that many persons in the United States are feeling fearful right now, and she asked the President to show mercy to those people affected by his decisions and by his inflammatory rhetoric.

            I want to quote Bishop Budde’s sermon exactly because I found it extremely impressive.  She said:

“Let me make one final plea, Mr. President. Millions have put their trust in you and, as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and Independent families, some who fear for their lives. The people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings; who labor in poultry farms and meat packing plants; who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals. They…may not be citizens or have the proper documentation. But the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues, gurudwaras and temples.

I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away. And that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here.

Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land. May God grant us the strength and courage to honor the dignity of every human being, to speak the truth to one another in love and walk humbly with each other and our God for the good of all people. Good of all people in this nation and the world. Amen”

I was impressed with how Bishop Budde’s words focused on the core of the Christian message:  suffering people, a merciful God.  A loving God.  Concern for the vulnerable among us.  Concern for the stranger, related to the foundational story of the Judeo-Christian tradition that we were once the immigrant, we were once the oppressed people fleeing persecution.

Bishop Budde gave the message of a pastor, not a political opponent.  She didn’t criticize Trump’s policies.  She didn’t even accuse Trump of doing anything to stoke the fear.  She simply acknowledged the reality that people are feeling fear.  And she reminded the most powerful man in the world, sitting in the front pew, that the moral responsibility of a powerful leader includes the quality of mercy.

I was impressed with her words.  I was impressed with her tone:  calm, compassionate.  And I was impressed with Bishop Budde’s courage.

Courage was the theme that I had chosen for this Sunday as I planned this worship year last summer.  Courage is one of the foundational spiritual issues that I wanted to speak about this year.  I knew that in the week following the inauguration, whichever candidate had won, that our country would be riven, and as we face the future, we would need to do so with courage.

It took courage to do what Bishop Budde did.  Surely she knew that any remark short of fawning praise would raise Trump’s anger.  And Trump does not constrain his anger.  And he does encourage his followers to attack on his behalf.  Knowing this danger, Bishop Budde said what she said anyway.  And she persisted as Trump glared back at her and as Vice President Vance smirked and whispered to his wife.  Later she responded to Trump’s criticisms and insults with continued courage.

Amid the tidal wave of destruction coming out of Washington this week, threatening to wipe out decades of advances in human rights and social care in our nation, and dismantling of international structures for peace-keeping and responding to global pandemics and cooperative strategies for addressing climate change, it was refreshing, this week, to have one quiet voice say “no.”

Refreshing isn’t the word.  It was liberating.  It was her own act of mercy for all of us who have been suffering this week.  It was encouraging.

I said, as we began this worship year, that I would challenge myself, week by week, as we focused on different spiritual themes, to share some personal conclusions on these core issues.  The usual Unitarian Universalist worship practice is to raise the questions, to offer a range of insights from various wisdom sources, but to leave the answers to each individual in the pew.

That’s the liberal religious method.  It’s good.  But the fault in that, is that it never provides from the pulpit a model of religious conviction.  Being open to all beliefs in our community helps us learn, but having specific beliefs for oneself is necessary for a faith to be useful.

So I want to say this about the issue of speaking politics from the pulpit.  Here’s what I’ve come to conclude about the place of preaching sermons focused on political issues of the day.

The role of a pastor is to preach to the congregation in front of them, on the day they have gathered, attending to the spiritual concerns that are moving in the people’s hearts and minds.

I know that political issues are part of what is moving through your hearts and minds today, and most weeks as you arrive for worship.  I know you care about a healthy planet, protection for racial and sexual minorities, preservation of our democratic system.  I know you care about U.S. immigration policy.  I know you care about practical issues in your own life such as staying safe, finding a job, paying for housing and health care.

So it’s appropriate for the church to minister to those concerns.  And it’s also the case that those are political issues being debated at City Hall, and in states, and in Washington.

But I’m not a politician.  It’s not my responsibility to propose political solutions or write policy.  I’m your representative in this house, not the state house.  Although it might feel invigorating to hear a sermon that forcefully articulates exactly what you’ve been feeling about the “outrage of the day” that use of this hour neglects our spiritual work.  That’s not my role.  And that’s not our work.

There are dozens of places you can get better analysis of political questions than from the pulpit.  And if you want fired-up affirmation of the politics you already hold, there are plenty of places to find that, too.  I’m sure you already know where to look.

Although political action is a legitimate expression of our faith, politics is not our faith.  You may hear your faith calling you to political work either through organizing within our church community, or by joining an effort outside our community.  But to express our faith, we must first have a faith:  learn our faith, develop our faith.  Faith development is the proper role of the church.

I have political opinions, like anyone else, and I’m happy to share them with you in my office or at coffee hour.  But If I were to preach about politics, I would only add an opinion I’m not really qualified to make into a mix of political opinions that are already plentiful, while losing the chance to speak to you about something helpful I actually know about and that you’re not likely to get from the opinion pages of the New York Times or your favorite political podcast.

I’m clear now, after thirty years of this work, that it’s my role to minister to your spirits not your politics.  That’s my expertise, my training, my calling.  I need to stay in my lane.  And I think your spiritual health is better served if I do so.

So that brings me back to why I was so impressed with Bishop Budde’s message.  With President Trump sitting right in front of her.  She didn’t speak as an activist; she spoke as a pastor.  She acknowledged the people’s fear and she ministered to it.  She spoke of the quality of mercy, grounded in her faith tradition.  She spoke truth to power, but to the politically powerful she spoke spiritual truth.

And that took courage.

Courage, or fortitude, is one of the four cardinal virtues of the Christian religion.

There are seven virtues all together, to match the seven primary sins.  There are the three so-called “theological” virtues that are named by Paul and are said to be derived from God:  those are faith, hope, and charity.  And then there are the four cardinal virtues which are said to be human traits that we can develop in ourselves:  prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance.

Prudence is an intellectual virtue.  Prudence is the wisdom to know right from wrong.  The virtue of prudence is the wisdom to distinguish the correct path, the moral choice.  Prudence is the virtue of putting reason and thoughtfulness at the service of the good.

Justice is the virtue of giving to others their due.  Justice includes both the punitive aspect of holding people accountable for bad behavior, but also positive reinforcement.  And giving people their due also means fair distribution of resources.

So if prudence is knowledge of the good.  And Justice is the will to do the good.  Courage is the virtue of actually doing the good and continuing to do the good even in the face of obstruction.  Courage is not letting fear prevent you from doing what is right.  And courage is persisting with right action even under threat.  Courage doesn’t mean risk-taking, that wouldn’t be prudent.  But it means accepting reasonable risk to do what we know we morally ought to do.

And for the fourth virtue, if courage is the virtue of doing more in the service of the good than we might if we were led by self-interest alone; temperance is the virtue of knowing when to quit.  Temperance is stopping our doing when over-indulgence, including over-indulgence in activities that might be good in themselves, leads away from the good.

The four virtues are called cardinal virtues because together they form the basis for all other virtues.  Cardinal, comes from the Latin word cardo, which means “hinge”.  So all the other virtues hinge on these four.  And these four themselves connect to each other and move together.  The foundation of all virtue is to know the good, to do the good, to keep doing good even under duress, and to stop doing that which distracts from the good.

The four cardinal virtues were originally identified by Plato.  He speaks about them in the Republic as necessary qualities of a well-ordered society:  wise rulers, just law makers, courageous soldiers, temperate citizens.  They were later lifted up by Thomas Acquinas as he worked to formulate a Christian theology grounded in the wisdom of Greek philosophy.

It’s important in thinking about the virtue of courage, or any of the four, to know that the virtues are not supposed to be gifts dependent on God’s grace, or natural gifts granted to some at birth.  Courage, and the other three, are supposed to be character traits that any human can develop and that all of us should aspire to.  We aren’t born courageous.  We become courageous.  

In these last few weeks, as I’ve been thinking about courage, I noticed how often the feeling of fear has come up for me.

Fear, first of all, with the fire danger.  Fear of the glow in the sky, and the images of burning homes, and the news reports of zero containment, winds picking up again, and emergency alerts announcing new fire locations coming in on my phone.

And I felt fear as one after another purposefully shocking Executive Order came out.  I felt fear as I wondered what this new outrage would do to me and my loved ones, what this would mean for my nation and our world, and what new shocker would come next.

And then I realized, in this onslaught of Executive Orders, that shock was the strategy.  The Administration wants me to feel overwhelmed, wants us to feel powerless.  They want our fear.

So I decided not to give it to them.  Remembering the virtue of courage.  And remembering that courage is a virtue that develops, not a gift you either luckily have or unluckily don’t, I decided to feel my fear, when I felt it, because feelings are valid, and even courageous people feel fear when they are in danger.  But then, like the person of courage I wish to be, to not let my fear stop me from doing what I know is right.

I choose to develop my courage.

And so, when I watched news reports of the wildfires, I looked not only at the bright line of flame creeping up the hillside, but also at the line of firefighters on the ridge clearing brush and spraying water.  I felt their courage, and it lifted my own.

And as Trump careened destructively through our democratic institutions and rule of law this week, I looked not just at his smug narcissism showing off his signature at the bottom of another Executive Order, but I looked also at Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde.  I felt her courage, and it lifted my own.

It will take courage, friends, to get through the next four years, or let’s face it, the next four days.  As Wayne Arnason reminds us “The way is often hard, the path is never clear, and the stakes are very high.”  Take courage, friends, from the examples of courageous persons around us, and from the knowledge that courage is a human virtue that we develop by doing.  Take courage, make courage, be courage, keep courage, “for deep down, there is another truth:  you are not alone.”

And so we pray, as we sang in our Opening Hymn, for a heart to fight, even at the risk of losing; to ever an insurgent be, more daring, more devout.  To free ourselves of contentment that accepts evil as inevitable, to retain our doubt about what we’re given and told, and to look for alternatives to their dark vision.

We pray, as we sang, “From compromise and things half-done, keep me, with stern and stubborn pride; and when, at last, the fight is won, O, keep me still unsatisfied.”

We pray with the words of Bishop Budde, “May God grant us the strength and courage to honor the dignity of every human being, to speak the truth to one another in love and walk humbly with each other and our God for the good of all people. Good of all people in this nation and the world. Amen”