Those "Hero-ees"

 I’ve been thinking about heroes lately, but another thought came into my mind as I was reading the 12th chapter of Romans.  

You’ll remember last week I talked about men who lived with sacrifice and hard work, a product of their dedication to God.  Those efforts impacted so many people we can’t even imagine.  

And that started me thinking about ‘those people’ who were impacted.  Not the Heroes, but let's say the “Hero-ees”: the people on the receiving end of the heroism……..

Tony remembered one sweet but frank church lady in our first church in Japan, back in 1979.  Here we were, all puffed up about ourselves and planning to bring God to these shores and save the whole Japanese Nation. Over tea and rice crackers, this sweet lady asked simply, “Are you planning to bury your bones here?”

What a question! We didn’t know how to answer, and in fact, didn’t answer it very well. Who started talking about burying bones?  We were planning to be HEROES, not martyrs. But as I’ve thought about that conversation over and over, I keep coming back to the people on the receiving end of our heroes out there. How are they affected by what they see and hear? Can they trust us? How far does the “ripple affect” extend?

I think immediately of a (different) lady many years later. She watched us bring our child’s ashes back to Japan and bury them at the church where he had grown up. Soon after, she, and many others like her, became believers, in spite of the fact that we had practically no personal contact with any of them. It’s a fact: these people were WATCHING!  

What about those mean, awful prison guards with Paul, who watched and thought about these people called ‘Christians”? They quietly observed, watched how they behaved in the face of persecution, and many became believers.

I’ve told you about the American pastor we met while on furlough one year. He told us that he became a Christian after returning to freedom, simply because an unknown guard in a Japanese prison camp gave him an egg once or twice a week, keeping him alive.  Neither spoke the other’s language, and when the American kept gesturing, “Why?” the guard simply smiled and surreptitiously made the sign of a cross.

I had the privilege of teaching English for a few years in one of the Imperial Universities in Japan.  One day I asked these elite future leaders of Japan to write an essay.  

Tears of repentance came to my eyes when I read one of them. He said, “I was 8 or 9, standing by the road with my friends when we spotted a beautiful blond lady waiting for a bus.  We started up with our usual harassment shouting, 'Harrow!!!!' (in our best English).  'You Pletty!!' one of the more adroit boys added. But then, instead of turning away or moving on (as I myself was often prone to do when this happened), she turned and SMILED at us!”  Now this student concluded,  “And now I’m studying English because these people are so kind.”  

I will never know until Heaven how many of those students found Christ.  Even though I was forbidden from teaching anything religious, Tony and I taught the C. S. Lewis’ book, “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” as ‘literature’. With that, I was able to ’teach’ all the Christian symbolism and present them with a Bible each for further ‘research’. 

Paul says “We are Ambassadors for Christ” but does that mean we are heroic? Only God knows, I suppose, what our actions will produce in the lives of those around us, but think about it: the neighbor, a parking attendant or that sweet young girl checking your ID and testing your mask to make sure you’re not spreading Covid. Lots of temptations there to be “less than a hero”. All the more reason to read Paul’s words again:

“Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God.                                                                                           (2 Corinthians 5:20)

Lets see what we can do for those who are waiting this week!!  I would love to hear of your experiences. 

Marsha