Dcn Leah Sandwell-Weiss

Dear friends,

Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. Romans 5:7

I thought of this verse as I was preparing this Daily Bread. Have you ever wondered how you would act in a life and death situation? Could you throw yourself in front of a car to save a child? Or try to negotiate with a hostage taker holding a gun? I’ve wondered if I could react quickly enough or if I’d freeze, from fear or uncertainty. As a retired military officer, I understood that even in the remote possibility of danger in my career as a lawyer it might happen. How would I react?

Today we honor Jonathan Myrick Daniels, a young Episcopal seminarian who faced this dilemma in 1965 while in Alabama working on civil rights. He wrote that he made the decision to go to Selma while singing the Magnificat during Evening Prayer. These phrases convinced him to go:  “He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and meek. He hath filled the hungry with good things." He wrote, “I knew then that I must go to Selma.”

Later in August, Jonathan and others were arrested for picketing whites-only stores. Six days later the group was suddenly released from jail; while waiting for transportation, he and three other civil rights workers, including 17-year-old Ruby Sales, went to a store to get something to drink. They were confronted by a man with a shotgun who refused to let them in. As the man lifted his shotgun, Jonathan pushed Ruby aside and took the shotgun blast full on, dying immediately.

Shortly before his death, Jonathan wrote this that might help explain his actions and help us in our difficult decision-making:

I lost fear … when I began to know in my bones and sinews that I had been truly baptized into the Lord's death and Resurrection, that in the only sense that really matters I am already dead, and my life is hid with Christ in God.[*]

O God of justice and compassion, who puts down the proud and mighty from their place, and lifts up the poor and the afflicted:  We give you thanks for your faithful witness Jonathan Myrick Daniels, who, in the midst of injustice and violence, risked and gave his life for another; and we pray that we, following his example, may make no peace with oppression; through Jesus Christ our Savior, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

—Dcn Leah

[*] Read more at about Jonathan Daniels at http://www.satucket.com/lectionary/Jonathan_Daniels.htm.