Fortitude and Faith Joshua 1:1-9 When Gwen Carr came to New London this past week as a guest of the NAACP, she had a story to tell. Her name may be unfamiliar to you, but her testimony certainly is not. She is the mother of Eric Garner, who was killed on July 17, 2014 when New York City Police Officer, Daniel Panteleo, applied a notorious chokehold to keep Garner pinned to the ground. In a punishment that didn’t fit the crime, Eric, along with others, had been selling individual cigarettes on the street corner—hardly much of a misdemeanor, let alone something that should cost him his life. Garner’s final words have since been immortalized around the world: “I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!”—the same plea heard from numerous victims of this infamous police tactic, including Elijah McClain in Aurora, CO and George Floyd in Minneapolis. The story Gwen Carr tells, however, isn’t limited to the death of her son nor to incidents of police brutality. It also includes her life of faith as part of the Christian Love Baptist Church in Irvington, New Jersey. As is true for many within the Black community, the role of the church as an advocate and supportive cast is crucial for families who have suffered injustices, indignities, and traumas, as it does for Gwen Carr. Except, she is one who often takes up the role of advocate and moral support to those who have lost family members, particularly to police violence. She has written a book on the topic and now travels around the country at the invitation of churches and community groups (like the one in New London) addressing concerns 1 about racial injustice and hardships many in the Black community face. Gwen’s personal story is one of overcoming hardship. At 26, her husband—Eric Garner’s father—died from a stroke, leaving her with three children, ages 4 months, 4 years old, and 5 years old. With help from her parents, Carr went back to school and earned an accounting degree. When her brother and his wife died a few years later, she took in his three children without hesitation—raising the brood of six on her salary as a post office accounting technician, in a house she bought in Bedford Stuyvesant. “My brother would have [done] the same for me,” she says. “I never even put them on welfare.” …1 Her story sounds much like those she hears from others in her church family. “They’ve been very beautiful—showed us a lot of love,” her husband, Benjamin, acknowledged. I’m not surprised by Gwen Carr’s ties to her church. Many Black leaders arise from congregations that birthed and nurtured their faith. Inspiration from God is often the guiding force for those who face difficult challenges, whose faith seeks a measure of solace, strength, and hope that is tangible and life-empowering. Faith is often the source of fortitude—the courage that allows one to act boldly and maintain one’s focus against overwhelming odds, which certainly is true of Gwen Carr. It’s the type of strength that turns an average individual into an extraordinary one—a common person into an uncommon hero. Fortitude is what often creates the leaders we admire most. The late Rev. Dr. Peter Gomes, who served for many years as the Dean of the Chapel at Harvard, described fortitude in this way: 1 Karen Rouse, “Family and Faith Guide Eric Garner’s Mother a Year After His Death,” WNYC News, July 17, 2015. 2 Fortitude is the ability to stand in hope against the overwhelming pressures, tragedies, and fears of the world and, most especially, against the fear of death and the reality of mortality. … Fortitude supplies us for the combat that allows our inner strength to contest and ultimately prevail over outward turmoil…Fortitude is that moral quality that allows us to persevere when others would give up or give in; it is the fuel of the long-distance moral runner who, despite inner fatigue and the apparent outward success of others, nevertheless keeps on keeping on. It is thus perhaps the most enabling and valuable of all the virtues. 2 Fortitude in the life of Gwen Carr is what it takes to stand up for what is right when so much is wrong. It is something we all possess in varying degrees, but with so many Black mothers burying their sons and daughters, fortitude found in faith becomes a source of deeply- needed grace in the Black community. Reinhold Niebuhr’s famous prayer is often whispered daily: “Lord, grant me the strength to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Courage or bravery, though, isn’t something a person discovers in the abstract. It is discovered in the process of living life—moving forward from trauma to find meaning out of that which is otherwise meaningless. As Aristotle noted: We become brave by doing brave acts; …[B]y being habituated to despise things that are terrible and to stand our ground against them we become brave, and it is when we have become so that we shall be most able to stand our ground against them. As Carr speaks of her own life before her son’s death: I was just going about my daily routine, minding my business, a very low- keyed individual. Life was okay as I know it…I had the basic necessities, and as far as I was concerned, my children were good. My grandchildren were good. It was like, life was okay. 2 Peter Gomes, The Good Life, 228, 229. 3 Until, of course, the day Eric died—senselessly for no reason. Then her zeal was born from grief. It was a stepping out in faith against all odds, doing the right thing, and trusting God. Mind you, brave people are not fearless—they are merely acting in ways not to allow their fears to define them or disable them. I find that to be true in many people I encounter who initially let their fears rise when faced with a frightening prospect, but then, with perspective and faith, realize they are able to move forward and find strength and courage they were not aware was within them. It is to, as Martin Luther King put it, “…build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.” Courage and bravery are summoned up within us when we act to do what is right. In the action, the “dike of courage” is built to hold back fear. There is much truth to this, not just in relation to social causes or injustices. It’s true whatever challenge we face—be it personal or social, related to our health and welfare or in a workplace, school setting, and the like. Summoning courage to right what’s wrong begins when we act, because until we act, we are not fully committed. Courage and fortitude come to those who are committed. The Bible, of course, is replete with various “brave hearts”— depicting remarkable courage and strength in the face of adversity. Where would we be without the story of David and Goliath, or Elijah facing down the prophets of Baal; or Daniel in the lion’s den and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace? All sorts of stories and memory verses inspire both faith and fortitude. Such is true in the character, Joshua, who was portrayed by the storyteller as one who never doubted himself, never questioned his 4 calling, and never seemed to come up short. He was a man of action—the prototypical strong and courageous warrior—with legends about his exploits in leading the conquest of Canaan and the Israelites into the Promised Land. It’s both glorious and gruesome in the annals of Israel’s history, except, according to archaeologists, none of this ever happened. There is no evidence of such a conquest into Canaan; at most, it is believed the Israelites emerged from within Canaan initially as hill tribes and nomadic shepherds. So what we have then is not recorded history in chapter and verse, but legends developed much later in time to justify a claim to the land itself— something that still occurs in our time with Jewish settlements on the West Bank. Still, even as a creation from a storyteller’s mind, what is noteworthy about Joshua is the courage he possessed going against overwhelming odds, just like David going up against the Philistine giant, and all the other hero stories that romantically present Israel’s amazing strength and success against more imposing rivals. From the start, Joshua was not well-equipped for the assignment he was given. Yes, he was the right-hand man of Moses, who had led the Israelites from Egypt through the wilderness, but now Joshua was commissioned to lead them into the Promised Land by militant conquest and then go on to conquer the entire Mesopotamian region! Though he seemed fearless for the task, in truth, what threat did they pose? Joshua’s army was an inferior force. His people had no sense of the land they were entering. They had no arsenal of weapons. His own leadership was relatively untested. He was given a commission to lead his people into enemy land and take possession of it, and to 5 ensure their survival and success after forty years wandering in the wilderness. As the storyteller wanted to impress his audience—the impossible odds were against them all.