GA08132

Walking humbly takes courage, preacher says

by Mike Ferguson

The Rev. Diane Givens Moffet, an Oakland native and pastor of Saint James Presbyterian Church of Greensboro, NC, delivered an impassioned sermon on courage at Friday’s worship service. Photo by Joseph Williams

SAN JOSE, June 27, 2008 — It takes courage to walk humbly with our God — just as it took courage for daredevil Charles Blondin to walk across Niagara Falls almost 150 years ago.

Blondin, as the Rev. Diane Givens Moffett reminded worshipers Friday at General Assembly, was the tightrope walker who would stop across the falls midway to cook and eat an omelet.

The crowds of the day loved his act.

But when Blondin would offer to take a spectator across the raging waters on his shoulders, no one volunteered — except his manager, whom Blondin had to tell, as Moffett told the story, “You will feel like turning around when you don’t need to turn. If you trust your feelings, we will both fall. You must become part of me.”

To the relief and delight of the crowd, the two men made a successful crossing.
Blondin’s advice to his manager applies to our walk with God, Moffett said.

“Walking humbly with God means we have to be one with God,” she said. “Looking at us is about the closest thing people will see when they think of Jesus.”

The founder of the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman, also had the courage to walk humbly with God, Moffett said — and she was so successful at smuggling slaves north that she became a marked woman.

That same call Tubman answered led others to risk their lives to liberate others, “not in the sweet by and by, but in the nasty here and now,” Moffett said.

That courage lives today. Three candidates for president — John McCain, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton — all have “the courage to fight the destructive forces” of ageism, racism and sexism, she said.

That courage to walk humbly with God, she said, is “borne of a deep-seated commitment to Jesus Christ.” What Moffett called “cosmetic Christianity” cannot “change our character or heal our spirit or make our world whole.”

The prophet Micah spoke to an economic situation not unlike today, she said.

“Their ways resulted in turmoil and tragedy, and they worshipped a god of greed, which was insatiable. Sound familiar? Today homelessness and hopelessness hover over our land, and they’re taking their toll on our sad state of affairs. We need the presence of the living God, molding and shaping us like soft clay in God’s hands.”

Instead of criticizing Peter for sinking while walking on the water to meet Jesus, Moffett blessed the disciple’s courage while “11 disciples stayed on the boat.”

“Sometimes we too wonder, ‘Does Jesus have the power to keep us?’” she said. Even when we fall, Jesus — like a parent hovering near a child taking its first steps — “reaches out with a hand of love, catches us in his embrace and says, ‘O ye of little faith, why did you doubt?’”

“I have lived long enough to know,” Moffett said, “that change doesn’t happen overnight. God uses feet of clay to transform the world, and I thank God, who never gives up on us.”

A choir from the Sojourner Truth United Presbyterian Church in Richmond, Calif., provided joyful music during worship.