How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life and Faith

Of the four Gospels, only Luke mentions Jesus’ most decisive moment: His knowing journey toward his own death. Prior to this moment, Jesus and his disciples were primarily based near the Sea of Galilee and the region of Nazareth. Jesus took a break from ministry to climb a mountain, atop which his spiritual ancestors Moses and Elijah spoke to him, and the voice of God appeared to his disciples to announce Jesus as the son of God. Though this was a pivotal moment, Jesus immediately refocused on the mortal concerns of his ministry. However, he now knew that he had to die, and he began the journey toward Jerusalem. On the journey, Jesus’ teachings to his disciples became more urgent, which Budde states is the only clue that he knew he would die, something his disciples attempted to ignore.

Budde states that the call to start is significant and personal and that it often starts with a stirring, followed by small steps that few outside the individual on their own journey notice. Budde offers the example of Cindy, one of her parishioners, who, after years of waiting, decided to return to school to become a nurse. Budde was surprised, given Cindy’s previous struggles with school and her dedication to her family life. Still, over the course of six years, starting with night school classes once a week, Cindy finished her Registered Nurse degree. When Budde asked Cindy about her decision to become a nurse 20 years after leaving school, Cindy mentioned being inspired by the memory of her grandfather, an endocrinologist who sought to give back to the medical community that he benefited from as a diabetic. She later was also inspired by a church course on discerning life’s purpose. Finally, her journey into caretaking after becoming a mother inspired her to pursue a job with caretaking at its center.

Budde illustrates that while the start to each courageous journey is unique, the experience is universal. While humans are not the only species to begin journeys, they are the only ones to feel a spiritual beckoning toward some sort of destiny. Whatever lies beyond the horizon can only be found by moving toward it. Budde offers an example of an unknown horizon she pursued herself. After her recommitment to her role in Minneapolis, Budde visited her alma mater, Virginia Theological Seminary, to give a guest lecture. The academic dean then invited Budde to stay and complete her doctorate. Inspired by others starting their own journeys, Budde agreed. While working on her doctorate, Budde served as conference leader for CREDO (Clergy Reflection, Education, and Discernment Opportunity) and hosted several conferences, inspiring her peers through self-examination.

During these conferences, Budde heard many perspectives and aspirations, and the two she highlights are from Ernesto, who sought to live to see his grandchildren grow up despite his demographic’s low life expectancy and his diabetes, and Ruthanna, who sought success in her work and to be known for more than her LGBTQ+ identity during a time of heated debate about queer rights within the church.

Budde carried the aspirations of Ernesto and Ruthanna with her for 20 years as a reminder of the importance of daily intentionality in reaching aspirations over time. Budde also felt called to follow her own aspiration toward leadership, and she put her name in for the next nomination for bishophood despite her previous disappointment. She worked with a group to try to make sense of the decline of the Episcopalian Church. A leadership consultant challenged Budde to move past the culture of critique to point out a suggestion for improvement with each critique. Budde questioned the meaning of preserving the church, wondering whether Jesus would think that the preservation of a singular denomination was important, but a friend reminded her that since this was the church that had called her to Christianity, it was worth saving.

Budde was again passed over for bishophood, but afterward, a friend sent her the news of the bishop of Washington’s upcoming retirement. Budde put her name in, and she earned the role. She cautions her readers not to view her journey through the lens of inevitability; Budde could only see as far as each step she took. She revisits Ernesto and Ruthanna and shares their successes in going above and beyond their initial aspirations, though there were difficulties and pitfalls scattered throughout. She explains the historical tendency to overlook the challenging processes necessary to achieve successful outcomes. She gives the example of Thurgood Marshall, the first Black Supreme Court justice, and Dr. Pauli Murray, a legal contemporary of Marshall’s and the first Black woman ordained as an Episcopal priest. Both played crucial roles in the civil rights movement of the 1960s and underwent arduous journeys to achieve success and prominence at great cost, illustrating that while both are remembered for the outcome of their work, it is also crucial to note the journeys they took to start such work.

A vision of possibilities is what inspires people to begin their journeys, and the decision to start a journey adds new meaning to past experiences. However, there are no guarantees that a person will reach the horizon they seek when they begin such a courageous journey, as there are forces beyond control that can stall and halt people and failures from which they cannot return, leading to a different call for courage.

Budde’s sister, Christine, called her one day with the news that Christine’s life partner, Jack, had stage-IV lung cancer. Throughout rounds of chemotherapy, radiation, and attempts to complete Jack’s bucket list, Christine tirelessly cared for Jack despite her own grief and exhaustion. Christine could not control the situation; the only thing she could control was how she responded, and Budde notes that Christine responded with love. This segues into Budde’s assertion that one of the most courageous decisions a person can make is to accept what one did not choose and cannot change. Acceptance is difficult, as people often try to deny or avoid situations first. Acceptance may feel passive, but it actually requires active engagement with whatever a person is facing. The only way out is through.

Budde revisits the decision she made to close the Episcopal churches of the diocese of Washington on March 8, 2020, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. During her first homily after the closure, Budde used Frodo’s journey to Mordor from Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings to remind her parishioners that, though it may not feel like it, there are still forces for good in the world; when people are their best selves, they join with these forces and tip the scale toward good. Budde reminded her community to do just that as the difficulties of the pandemic raged on.

The pandemic exposed many fault lines within American society, as disproportionate numbers of people of color died from COVID-19 and police violence against Black communities dominated the news cycles, illustrating the connection between the coronavirus pandemic and the pandemic of systemic racism. Budde led an ecumenical leadership seminar with other religious practitioners. A Jewish leader asked Budde if the time was nigh to leave the United States due to the rising injustices and oppressions of human rights. Budde responded by validating his anxiety, stating that it can be “wise” and “life-affirming” to leave but that the country still needs leaders who know that it can be changed for the better and are willing to persevere to do the work (77). Budde goes on to give the example of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor and theologian who vocally opposed the Nazis during World War II. Though he was offered safety and security in the United States, he returned to Germany because he did not feel that he could participate in German reconstruction if he did not suffer alongside his people. He was arrested and executed by the Gestapo before the end of the war. Budde reminded the seminar participants that they did not choose the state of the world around them but that they could choose how to respond.

Accepting what one does not choose means making peace with suffering, a concept that appears frequently in the sacred texts of both Judaism and Christianity. The apostle Paul, in many of his letters throughout the New Testament of the Bible, emphasized that suffering was necessary to develop spiritual maturity and to develop a mystical relationship with Jesus. Paul was not originally a follower of Christ and even persecuted Christians before his own miraculous conversion; he came to believe that God’s love for mankind “found its fullest expression” in Jesus’ crucifixion (79), and he felt called to take on his own share of suffering for the sake of love.

Paul shouldered his own sufferings without complaint, except for a brief mention in his second letter to the Corinthians in which he discloses that he prayed three times to God to relieve him of some of his pain but instead found new meaning in his suffering. Budde often returns to Paul’s perspective, especially given her own struggle with chronic back pain. After years of various treatments and therapies, Budde now manages her back pain with stretches and exercises, but she will never live fully without pain. The pain has given her acceptance, as well as greater empathy for those who live with chronic pain. She is careful to acknowledge that those with even worse chronic pain may not necessarily find meaning in their suffering, but it is significant that most major religions find pain to be a mysterious and transformative force. Budde then offers the example of Rachel Naomi Remen, one of the first practitioners of mind/body health. Remen suffers from Crohn’s disease, and over time and working both within and outside the boundaries of Western medicine, she found acceptance in her pain and has helped others find a “courage beyond what they thought would have been possible, an unsuspected sense of compassion or a capacity for love deeper than they have ever dreamed” (86), which Budde likens to Jesus’ reference to the kingdom of God as a pearl with a great price.

Budde reminds her readers that Jesus was fully human and fully God and that his humanity led him to experience fear and the desire to live. Though Jesus fully accepted his vocation and his inevitable fate, on the night before his crucifixion, he asked God to spare him if it was God’s will. At some point, though it is unclear how long into the night it took, Jesus found renewed acceptance in his destiny. God revealed in Jesus what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., called “redemptive suffering,” or, as Budde defines it, the “mystical, and admittedly controversial, assertion that undeserved suffering has spiritual power beyond our understanding or experience” (87). This concept appears throughout the Old and New Testaments, but especially in a series of poems known as “The Songs of the Suffering Servant” found in Isaiah, which depict a gentle person despised for their goodness and gentility. While God demands the suffering of the servant and at times even causes the suffering, God’s image is redeemed by the sacrifice and suffering of Jesus, what Budde calls “an expression of how far God will go in love for us” (90).

Budde has wrestled with the question of why innocent people suffer throughout her private and public faith lives. She does not believe that Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross was merely a transactional exchange. Jesus did not just die for mankind’s sins; he lived for mankind, and his teachings guide people toward liberation. Still, there are no good answers as to why people suffer, and well-meaning platitudes rarely help. Budde asserts that the best response to the suffering of others is “​​empathic presence and efforts to ameliorate the pain and prevent its recurrence” (91). When those efforts fail, people must find whatever meaning they can in their suffering.

King was assassinated when Budde was eight years old, and she did not study his writings until college. She was inspired by his dedication to social change and nonviolent protest and his embodiment of redemptive suffering. Though King was not the only face of the civil rights movement, he captured the imagination and attention of those who were ready to reckon with the evils of slavery and racism. At the beginning of his life, King was optimistic about the cause, and, despite a brief imprisonment, he found some success in addressing the greatest social inequities. However, when he opposed the Vietnam War, King fell out of favor with white liberals and the press. The FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) began targeting King, and he attempted to organize the Poor People’s Campaign for a nonviolent solution in a country that was seeming increasingly set on violence. Exhausted, he went to Memphis, Tennessee, to speak during a sanitation workers’ strike. While he watched in horror as police violence erupted throughout the city, King was shaken. He left Memphis before returning to give his final speech, in which he said, “Either the Movement lives or dies in Memphis” (98). He was murdered the next day.

Budde is struck by King’s compassion and by his strength in continuing on his mission even though he knew it might cost him his life. His question was not what would happen to him if he spoke up but about what would happen to the people he advocated for if he remained quiet. This question, Budde states, is at the core of sacrificial love and acceptance. Only love, King believed, could break the cycles of violence and hate—a truth revealed by Jesus on the cross.

Budde then offers an example of someone inspired by King: Bishop Michael Curry, who states in his writings that sacrificial love has the power to heal people and change the world for the better and that only through sacrificial love can people become the versions of themselves that God calls them to be. Curry frames the acceptance of suffering as humanity’s collective responsibility, something that calls for a response of sacrificial love. Acceptance is one of the hardest things people are called to do. The price is high, but acceptance offers a courageous path forward.