We need a hero….Captain America or maybe.. someone else

“Pray as though everything depended on God.
Work as though everything depended on you.”
St. Augustine

I need a hero
I’m holding out for a hero ’til the end of the night
He’s gotta be strong
And he’s gotta be fast
And he’s gotta be fresh from the fight
I need a hero
I’m holding out for a hero ’til the morning light
He’s gotta be sure
And it’s gotta be soon
And he’s gotta be larger than life!
Larger than life
Bonnie Tyler lyrics / Hero

(a young Captian America with his “Da” / Julie Cook / 2020)

According to Wikipedia:
Captain America is a superhero appearing in American comic books
published by Marvel Comics. Created by cartoonists Joe Simon and Jack Kirby,
the character first appeared in Captain America Comics #1 (cover-dated March 1941)
from Timely Comics, a predecessor of Marvel Comics.
Captain America was designed as a patriotic supersoldier who often fought
the Axis powers of World War II and was Timely Comics’ most popular character
during the wartime period.
The popularity of superheroes waned following the war,
and the Captain America comic book was discontinued in 1950,
with a short-lived revival in 1953. Since Marvel Comics revived
the character in 1964, Captain America has remained in publication.

In 1964, when he made a bit of a resurgence since 1941 and 1953,
that’s when I discovered my love for this superhero.

What greater superhero could there be but a Captian America?
The seeming hero of our very own nation, our very own national superhero?!
One who fought the Axis powers—Fascism, Communism, Socialism…

As a young kid in the early ’60s, I loved Captian America.
Who wouldn’t during those early uncertain days of the Cold War.
We needed a hero.

My son seems have fallen not far from the tree as he too loves Captian America–
as his son dons the tee shirt.

And so it seems that we need more Captian Americas in our world.
Someone who fights for our Nation and for her principles.
A defender of our Constitution.

And so yes, we need a hero.

But the only true hero, the only one who can save us from ourselves…
Jesus Christ.

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin,
so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
2 Corinthians 5:21

I need a hero

“Great heroes need great sorrows and burdens,
or half their greatness goes unnoticed.
It is all part of the fairy tale.”
Peter S. Beagle

“Even death is going to die!”
― Sally Lloyd-Jones

(a sweater wearing little goat jumps from a hay bale as seen on the Weather Channel from Farm Sanctuary image 2014)

Look up, in the sky…
It’s a bird…
It’s a plane…
No….
it’s Super…. goat??!!

Well… maybe that’s not exactly the hero you were hoping for….
albeit…it’s a pretty darn cute one…

For who among us hasn’t, at some time or other, longed for a cape crusader who would
come flying into our lives… ready to save the day…
Or perhaps even more aptly…
save us from ourselves…

“I need a hero
I’m holding out for a hero ’til the end of the night
He’s gotta be strong
And he’s gotta be fast
And he’s gotta be fresh from the fight”

Song lyrics by Bonnie Tyler most recently heard and seen used in the KIA car commercial
showcasing Melissa McCarthy being called in to come save the whales, then the rhinos, etc
…with all calls being met with dire consequences for the heroine McCarthy…

Yet who among us hasn’t at some point in life looked up hoping to see someone, anyone,
swooping in who would have all the answers…
all the solutions…
the one person who possessed that magic bullet…that remedy, that saving hope…

Someone who would come to the rescue and who could stop all the craziness…
stopping all the bad guys,
stopping all the hurting,
stopping all the madness….

And it just so happens that we may have to look no further than to a small mountain bald
outside of the gates of old Jerusalem…

looking no further to….
Gagultâ… in Aramaic
Golgotha… in Greek Γολγοθᾶς
Calvariæ Locus… in Latin
Calvary… in English…

Otherwise known as simply ‘the place of the skull’…

For it was here on this bare outcropping of desolate land,
known to locals as the cap of the skull,
that just a little over 2000 years ago, a real hero,
nay the only true hero who has ever lived,
was put to death.

But, as most would imagine,
our hero’s story was not merely finished with his being put to death.
Absolutely far from the end….
Because the story was truly only beginning…

For it was in the death of this hero that our own endings, our own loss of life,
our own deaths….
were defeated…

Meaning, death would be no more….

No longer would death be a forever closed ending…
of which we have all so imagined things to be…
A permanent ending of a black hole sucking in all life…into the aphotic void of total
impenetrable light or hope…

But rather…in this death of our hero…
was to be found…
a beginning….
our beginning…
and a beginning not just for our hero, but for all who so choose….

And so it is to the cross where we are look in order to find our hero…

“If man had his way, the plan of redemption would be an endless and bloody conflict.
In reality, salvation was bought not by Jesus’ fist, but by His nail-pierced hands;
not by muscle but by love; not by vengeance but by forgiveness;
not by force but by sacrifice.
Jesus Christ our Lord surrendered in order that He might win;
He destroyed His enemies by dying for them and conquered death by
allowing death to conquer Him.”
― A.W. Tozer