Profiles in Courage 

Trevor introduces our summer sermon series

There are many differences between the expectations the British have of their Prime Minister and that the Americans have of their President. Among these is the expectation that any serious candidate for the US Presidency ought to have written a book at some point in their career. Barack Obama famously wrote The Audacity of Hope while Gavin Newsom, regarded by many as the favourite for the Democrat nomination in 2028, has recently released a memoir called Young Man in a Hurry. 

One of the first aspiring Presidents to do this was John F Kennedy, whose 1956 book, Profiles in Courage, examined the contributions of eight senators who had shown political and moral bravery in rising to a significant challenge. In later years, there was some controversy about how much of the book Kennedy actually wrote. His ‘ghostwriter’ Ted Sorenson famously admitted that he ‘did a first draft of most chapters’ and ‘helped choose the words of many of its sentences’. But that didn’t prevent the book from being a bestseller, and critically acclaimed, at the time of its release. It won the Pulitzer Prize, spawned a TV series of the same name and then an annual award given to leaders who have taken risks for the greater good. During the summer months, we’ll be doing some ‘profiles in courage’ of our own. Courage is one of the three values we seek to live out in SBC, aspiring to be people who are willing to say ‘yes’ to whatever God is asking of us at any given moment. 

We’ll think about the stories of several Old Testament characters, ordinary people who found themselves in unexpected or challenging circumstances, when they became the means by which God’s plans for his people were fulfilled. We’ll reflect on how courage can take many different forms. Sometimes, it means doing something that seems absurd to those around us – Noah’s construction of his ark is a prime example. But courage can also mean holding our nerve and refusing to bow to the pressure of others (like the prophets Jeremiah and Daniel) or the willingness to speak truth to power (think Esther or Nathan).

We are thousands of years removed from these stories, and yet they feel as fresh as ever, given the unexpected and challenging nature of the times we now live in. Our prayer is that these long-ago characters will become alive to us once more, helping us to understand afresh how God might use us in our own time and place.