There is a wonderful new translation of the Old English epic poem Boewulf, done by Seamus Heaney. I would guess some of you have read it. I would guess that others of you, spotting the title of this morning’s sermon in the order of service thought of bolting for the door, with schooltime memories of being made to read the poem, maybe even in Old English, at least in part, and disliking it.

 It is pretty gory going. But I have always thought the poetry as skilled and strong as almost any other, and distinctive in a way I both like and probably imitate unconsciously at times, the two most distinctive characteristics being a lot of alliteration and the pairing of two nouns to make a new word. Examples abound on every page. This is a description of the passage Beowulf and his men take from their own country to the land being terrorized by the monster Grendel:

 “…with fourteen others
the warrior boarded the boat as captain,
a canny pilot along coasts and currents.
Time went by, the boat was on water,
in close under the cliffs.
Men climbed eagerly up the gangplank,
sand churned in surf, warriors loaded
a cargo of weapons, shining war-gear
in the vessel’s hold, then heaved out,
away with a will in their wood-wreathed ship.
Over the waves, with the wind behind her
and foam at her neck, she flew like a bird
until her curved prow had covered the distance
and on the following day, at the due hour,
those seafarers sighted land,
sunlit cliffs, sheer crags
and looming headlands, the landfall they sought.” [207-224]

“this danger abroad in the dark nights,
this corpse-maker mongering death” [275-6]

 “…out of the night
came the shadow-stalker, stealthy and swift;
the hall-guards were slack, asleep at their posts,
all except one….
In off the moors, down through the mist bands
God-cursed Grendel came greedily loping.
The bane of the race of men roamed forth,
hunting for a prey in the high hall.
Under the cloud-murk he moved toward it….” [702-5, 710-4]

 You know how sometimes you are given what looks like it should be an important insight into your own personality, but you can’t imagine what the insight could be? Well, that’s how it was for me, and the remark has remained mysterious to me for thirty-five years. But I take comfort in something Beowulf says to someone who has just denigrated his prowess:

“Well, friend…, you have had your say
about…me. But it was mostly beer
that was doing the talking.” [530-2]

“In his day, my father was a famous man,
a noble warrior-lord….
He outlasted many a long winter
and went on his way.” [262-5]

 And what is the wisdom Hrothgar offers? Don’t let success go to your head, or give in to pride when all goes well, forgetting your own mortality and indulging your desires. It is wisdom Beowulf seems to have at heart, practicing deference to his king and then, becoming king himself, service to his people, the people of Geat.

“So [when Beowulf died] the Geat people, his hearth companions,
sorrowed for the lord who had been laid low.
They said that of all the kings upon the earth
he was the man most gracious and fair-minded,
kindest to his people and keenest to win fame.” [3180-3182]

 But while the poem insists that Beowulf was “the mightiest man on earth” [197] and that “of all men/ to have lived and thrived and lorded it on earth/ his worth and due as a warrior were the greatest” [3098-3100], it also lauds his “greatheartedness” [2809], generosity, loyalty, forgiveness and consideration, sense of civic responsibility, and religious faith.

 Beowulf is never shy about citing his triumphs and martial skill, but when, dying, he looks back over his reign as king, he recalls a wider range of accomplishments: “For fifty years/ I ruled this nation. No king/ of any neighboring clan would dare/ face me with troops, none had the power/ to intimidate me. I took what came,/ cared for and stood by things in my keeping,/ never fomented quarrels, never/ swore to a lie. All this consoles me, doomed as I am and sickening for death;/ because of my right ways, the Ruler of mankind/ need never blame me when the breath leaves my body/ for murder of kinsmen.” [2732-43]

 This is a different epitaph than many of the most powerful leaders of the twentieth century could claim, who not only indulged in all manner of murder and mayhem, but were able to do so with a sense of justification, and even high purpose. Lenin, Mao, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, the list goes on and on, the killers, the causes, the justifications.

 I first read the new Beowulf translation a few weeks ago, and I just loved it. I knew I’d have fun sharing some of the beautiful poetry with you if an excuse came along. And I had been surprised that the poem had an ethic, a morality, more nuanced and humane than I had recalled. But I didn’t have this sermon in mind until I came upon seven words in the midst an essay on post-Zionism by David Biale, professor of Jewish history at the Universiaty of California, Davis.

 Biale notes that “Israel is rapidly becoming multicultural and multiethnic in ways that its founders never envisioned (as the joke goes, in 50 years the majority of Israelis will be Orthodox – Russian Orthodox). It will have to confront the needs of all its citizens, even if it does not give up its historically justified Jewish character. And, Israel will also have to deal with the consequences of the Occupation [or] relations between Israel and the Palestinians will descend more and more into apartheid…. The age of heroic ideologies is over, notwithstanding the nostalgia that many understandably nurse for them. The Jewish people still need a state, but it will be a more normal, which is to say, more fragmented, less heroic, state….” [quoted in Martin Marty, Context, 12/15/00, p.1]

 If it’s okay with you, I won’t try just now to solve the situation in the middle east. That may take another Sunday. But those seven words resound: “The age of heroic ideologies is over….”

Surely that isn’t true quite yet. There are some forms of some religions, maybe even some political outlooks, that still elicit ideological heroism in Afghanistan and Algeria, in Ireland and the middle east, and here and there round the world. But the phrase does resonate, not just regarding Israel but more globally: there was an age when ideology could foster heroic behavior, as it can less successfully now, in the aftermath of the failure of those sweepingly-grand, utopian, optimistic, apocalyptic ideologies.

 It was the age portrayed in Leni Riefenstahl’s Nazi propaganda films with their stirring images of square-jawed young men in terrific shape marching in flawless order, kicking high, images of massive crowds of everyday folks, chanting their adoration of the Fuhrer, their arms raised in salute. The age is on display again in Soviet posters of steelworkers creating a workers’ paradise, or in the news footage of May Day parades past the Kremlin, with tanks and rockets on proud display.

 I don’t need to continue the list, every one of you could construct one just as good, possible including evidence of that age alive in America, too. To recall that age well, it may even help if you were yourself drawn to an ideology that elicited your enthusiasm, at least a little, at least enough that you know how seductive ideological fervor can be, the passion for a system of understanding and action that purports to serve some greater human good.

 After all, service to the greater good is presumably a virtue. In fact, it is one. To help us remember and act on that conviction is part of why many of us come to church. We hope to be renewed in our devotion to values like love, compassion, mercy, justice, and peace. We appreciate suggestions as how those values might have more success in the world.

But when some outlook imagines that it represents that the greater good above all reservation, above all critical self-regard, above all sense of proportion, there is cause for deep worry. To take an amusing example from my own, leftist side of the political spectrum, it was recently written that Henry Wallace, New Deal cabinet member and eventual third-party presidential candidate, cast “politics as a clash between good and evil, the enlightened and the blind. ‘Henry would cut off his right hand for the sake of an idea – and yours too, for that matter,’ commented a friend….” [The American Prospect, 7/17/00, p.49]

 These are the people that Eric Hoffer called “true believers.” They are among the people that Isaiah Berlin called hedgehogs – hedgehogs because, unlike foxes, who know many things, they know one thing, their truth. Berlin was the last century’s most dedicated philosophical opponent of true belief.

 When he died a few years ago, I put off speaking of him in my yearly Memorial Day weekend sermon, when I remembered others among the noteworthy dead. I wanted to wait until a time like this, when his outlook gets its proper praise. In an era of ideological heroism, he had the heroism to be for those liberal values of thoughfulness, skepticism, humanitarianism, and moderation.

 Because I have not referred to his work or his obituary much till now, I haven’t yet shared two little stories about him that I like. One concerned his religious education as a Jew, and I say this with all due respect for the Jewish tradition and assured that some of our students could offer a comment just as amusing at our expense. Though he did have his bar mitzvah, along the way he struggled because he found the Talmud a “very, very boring book. I could never figure out why I should care why the bull gored the cow.”

 And then there was the time that Winston Churchill thought he had sent Berlin an invitation to lunch in 1944. Churchill turned to his guest and asked, “Berlin, what do you think is your most important piece you’ve done for us lately?” To which his guest replied, “White Christmas,” since the invitation had actually gone to Irving Berlin.

 Back to our theme, one also reads that Berlin “insisted that there could be no single all-embracing solution to the central problems of society. He wrote, ‘any study of society shows that every solution creates a new situation which breeds its own new needs and problems, new demands.’”

 “…He suggested that ‘Utopias have their value – nothing so wonderfully expands the imaginative horizons of human potentialities – but as guides to conduct they can prove literally fatal.’

 “He wrote that the idea of a single solution ‘turns out to be an illusion; and a very dangerous one. For if one really believes that such a solution is possible, then surely no cost would be too high to obtain it: to make mankind just and happy and creative and harmonious forever – what could be too high a price to pay for that? To make such an omelet, there is surely no limit to the number of eggs that should be broken – that was the fate of Lenin, of Trotsky, of Mao, and for all I know of Pol Pot.” [New York Times, 11/7/97, p. C24]

 The New Yorker called Berlin “the century’s foremost defender of liberty,” [9/28/98, p.60] but of course he was far from alone. Among those who also resisted the enticements of totalitarian thought was the French novelist Albert Camus, among whose works was a small 1946 book, Neither Victims Nor Executioners.  In the midst of the age of ideological heroism, aspiring to various Utopias, Camus – under fire from former friends who castigated him for failing to support the French Communist Party -- argued instead for what he called “relative Utopia. Those who want to change the world must, it seems to me, now choose between the charnel house threatened by the [mood of absolute Utopia], and the acceptance of relative Utopia which … is our last frail hope of saving our skins.” [41]

 I have sometimes quoted Camus as saying that, in a world of competing ideologies, he sought to defend those few human values like kindness and justice, without which it didn’t much matter which side should win. And maybe he said that somewhere, but it is more likely that over time that has become my own reworking of what he actually wrote in 1946, which was that “there is no reason why some of us should not take on the job of keeping alive, through the apocalyptic historical vista that stretches before us, a modest thoughtfulness which, without pretending to solve everything, will constantly be prepared to give some human meaning to everyday life.” [54-5]

 Being prepared to give some human meaning to everyday life – not ideological meaning but human -- it may be that that is what heroism will look like from now on. Yes, there will be a special heroism that falls upon only a few -- fighter pilots, fire fighters, care-givers in the emergency room, those who arise to defeat the modern Grendels, the banes of our race today -- illness, nationalism, bigotry, greed, environmental desecration, and all the rest. We may be among them ourselves on occasion.

But neither they nor we can afford the luxury of believing in some theoretical cause of the sort that inspired the age that may be dying, one can hope, with its systems of utopian assurance. The toll has been too great. It always has been, and it would be again.

In its place, in our new age, we seek a heroism that will serve – not the advance of any scheme -- but will serve, with modest thoughtfulness, other people and life. Our heroes may be more like the legendary Dane of Old English lore, Beowulf, skilled and strong, brave and determined, “gracious, fair-minded, and kind.” [3181-2] So may it be. Amen.
 
 

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